ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — An FBI analyst who has been John Durham’s first witness in the false statements trial against Igor Danchenko testified that the special counsel previously threatened to investigate him criminally in the summer of 2021.
FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten testified Wednesday during a grilling by lawyers for British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s main dossier source that, during his first meeting with Durham’s team in late July 2021, the special counsel told him he was a subject of the investigation — not a witness.
Auten agreed with Danchenko’s defense lawyer, Danny Onorato, that it was “scary” to be told that he had been named a subject of the investigation at that time.
The FBI analyst added that he was not directly threatened with possible prosecution but said that is understood to be a possibility when you are the subject of a criminal investigation. Auten said he had never been the subject of an investigation prior to then. The FBI analyst said he ended up meeting with Durham’s investigators three or four times total, including twice last week.
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Danchenko’s lawyer noted that, before meeting with Durham in the summer of 2021, Auten had met with investigators from the office of the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz, and Auten testified he was told at that time that he was not the subject or target of an investigation.
The FBI analyst met with Horowitz’s team in October 2018, in November 2018, and twice in April 2019, and Auten met with the Senate Judiciary Committee in October 2020 as well. Auten agreed with Onorato that he repeatedly provided “positive statements” about Danchenko during these meetings with investigators before being interviewed by Durham in 2021. The FBI analyst had been a member of the Crossfire Hurricane team investigating unfounded claims of Trump-Russia collusion within days of its launch in the summer of 2016, and Auten said he led a team of analysts throughout the effort, also joining Robert Mueller’s team when the special counsel took over the FBI’s efforts in May 2017.
Auten, who interviewed Danchenko in January 2017, was also among the FBI employees who interviewed Steele overseas in early October 2016 as the FBI sought more details on the dossier. Auten revealed the FBI had offered Steele an incentive of up to $1 million if he could prove the allegations of collusion in his dossier, but the FBI analyst said the former MI6 agent was unable to corroborate the claims.
Steele also declined to provide the identity of his sources, including Danchenko. The FBI analyst circulated a February 2017 intelligence memo to top FBI officials about the Danchenko interview he had conducted a month prior, but Horowitz said it “did not describe the inconsistencies” from the FBI interview in January 2017.
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The FBI soon made Danchenko a paid confidential human source starting in March 2017 through October 2020. Horowitz said FBI interviews with Danchenko “raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting.”
Notably, Auten had been referred by FBI Director Christopher Wray to the Office of Professional Responsibility for potential disciplinary action following the release of Horowitz’s report, though Wray said those proceedings were slowed down to cooperate with Durham’s criminal investigation.
According to Durham, Danchenko anonymously sourced a fabricated claim about Trump 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort to Charles Dolan, a Clinton ally who spent years, including 2016, doing work with Russian businesses and the Russian government.
Durham’s indictment also says Danchenko lied to the FBI about a phone call he claims he received from Sergei Millian, a Belarus-born U.S. citizen and businessman who the Steele source had said told him about a conspiracy of cooperation between former President Donald Trump and the Russians — which the special counsel says is false. Auten testified Wednesday that he believed Danchenko should’ve handed over to the FBI relevant emails he had sent to Millian and which he had exchanged with Dolan but said that the Russian lawyer did not do so.
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Danchenko’s trial, which started this week, comes after Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann was found not guilty in May on a false statements charge of concealing his representation of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign from the FBI when he pushed since-debunked Trump-Russia collusion claims about Alfa Bank to the bureau in 2016.
Horowitz said in 2019 that Auten “told us that he factored the Alfa Bank/Trump server allegations into his assessment of Steele’s reporting.”
