FBI Offered Anti-Trump Spy $50k if He Could Prove Russian Connection
A report revealing that the FBI offered former MI6 spy Christopher Steele a cash payout last year to corroborate the since-debunked information in the infamous “Trump dossier” raises troubling questions about the agency’s integrity and commitment to truth.
Steele’s contact with the FBI specifically told him that if he “could get solid corroboration of his reports, the F.B.I. would pay him $50,000 for his efforts, according to two people familiar with the offer,” The New York Timesreported in April. “Ultimately, he was not paid.”
Fast forward to Dec. 13 of this year, when the House Judiciary Committee questioned Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about whether the agency offered to pay for the corroboration of a dossier that we now know is full of lies.
“I’m not in a position to answer that question,” Rosenstein said, adding that a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing would be a more “appropriate” venue to discuss such matters, according to the Fox Business Network.
The committee then dropped this line of questioning, much to the displeasure of those seeking answers, including Fox News contributor Judge Andrew Napolitano.
“I would have grilled him and subpoenaed an answer out of him because the American public has the right to know,” he told FBN’s Stuart Varney on “Varney & Co.”
Yes, we do, especially considering evidence suggests the FBI used this same sketchy dossier to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on President Donald Trump’s election campaign.
“(T)he FBI reportedly relied on the dossier in a September application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page,” The Daily Caller noted in April.
“A Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court judge granted that warrant, meaning that the court agreed there was probable cause to believe that Page was working as an agent of the Russian government.”
But why would the FBI use an uncorroborated dossier to target Trump’s campaign? And is it tied to Peter Strzok, the former top FBI counterintelligence agent who sent text messages last year that referred to an unspecified “insurance policy” against the election of Trump?
As asked by Andrew C. McCarthy of National Review, “Was the Steele dossier, in effect, the ‘insurance policy’ Agent Strzok had in mind?”
It’s certainly possible — and would be an earth-shattering scandal if proven true — but we still don’t know because the FBI has chosen to be unforthcoming.
As Napolitano noted during his appearance on “Varney & Co.,” so many questions remain unanswered: “(H)ow did the FBI get (the dossier); what was the FBI doing with it; did the FBI corroborate it; were they involved with Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence agent who is reputed to have authored this thing?”
“That’s not what we hire and pay an FBI to do,” he concluded.
And that’s the point.
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