Thread by @ClimateAudit

FBI SIA Brian Auten is once again in the news in connection with the (absurd) 2020 FBI intel assessment that Hunter laptop was "Russian disinformation". grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…
Auten has long been a person of interest to this corner of Twitter twitter.com/search?q=auten…

In the December 2019, the "Supervisory Intel Analyst" (SIA) - previously an unknown personnage - played a leading role. The Horowitz text decribed multiple mis-steps and mistakes involving the SIA, but they were mostly not listed in the whitewashing Summary.

FN, walkafyre, Hans and I began collaborating (by Twitter DM group) right after Horowitz. Identity of SIA was an early interest. In Feb 2020, I reported

https://twitter.com/ClimateAudit/status/1231766067632123905

SIA present at Crossfire birth, worked for Moffa and surmised that "Brian" in Moffa transcript was SIA

As a policy point, I observed at the time that it was ludicrous that federal civil service agreement only permitted identification of the very most senior officials. Though intimately involved in highly influential assessments, Auten's identity was concealed even from Congress.

I looked through the JARS2 list of FBI agents (A-H) and found two "Brian" SIAs with Washington phone numbers: Auten and Cohen. I located some background information on Auten - first mention of him re Russiagate that I'm aware of. But still only a short list, not identification

identification of Auten as the SIA came from an unexpected source on May 7, 2020. In Exhibit 9 to a Flynn motion, courtlistener.com/docket/6234142… ever-alert Walkafyre noticed Auten's name in a less redacted version of a Crossfire email. We were then sure that Auten was the SIA.

at the time, we were focussed on identification of Steele's Primary Sub-Source. By then, we had figured out that the FBI had lied repeatedly both to Congress and courts that the PSS was "Russian-based", when he actually lived near DC, prob northern VA.

on July 17, 2020, the heavily redacted Danchenko EC was published. We could tell right away that Auten was one of interviewers and, as it turned out, author of the EC. SA Somma, the other interviewer, left Crossfire, returning to NYFO almost immediately after interview.

as is well known to readers of this corner of Twitter, on July 19, @Hmmm57474203 cleverly identified Igor Danchenko as the PSS and within a week or two, Fool_Nelson (mainly) and others had identified all his supposed sub-sources - Fool's Rosetta Stone is a great story.

but sticking to Auten: we now knew that Auten was in Crossfire from the start, at Oct 4, 2016 Steele interview, at (and wrote up) Danchenko Jan 2017 interviews. Later we would learn that he was a contributor to Mueller investigation and at (and wrote up) Sep 2017 Steele interview

next day (Jul 20/20), as we identified Steele's PSS as former Brookings employee and Fiona Hill protege Igor Danchenko and beginning to unravel FBI role in perpetuating fraud, Dems (esp SSCI) began smearing Johnson and Grassley for "Russian disinformation"
ronjohnson.senate.gov/2020/8/johnson…

as we parsed the Danchenko EC beneath the redactions, it became very clear that Danchenko had confessed to the FBI that he had never met Millian and that the Steele dossier sourcing had been fabricated for the allegations most critical to ICA and FISA (esp Report 95)

Danchenko told Auten and Somma that he had sent two emails to Millian - the supposed source of the blockbuster collusion allegations in Report 95 - but did not receive a response to either one.

it's hard to imagine a more obvious follow up than examining these two emails.

we can speak with some authority on this, since we did exactly that within hours of first reading EC. On Jul 18, we contacted Millian and asked him to look for two summer emails from a 4+9; on Jul 19, following Hmmm's id of Danchenko, we asked him to look for two Danchenko emails

within minutes, Millian had located the two emails in which Danchenko sought a meeting under false pretences. Second email was in mid-August - after 4 Steele reports attributed to Millian. The emails proved what Millian had said all along: he had been framed as a Steele source

readers need to recall that only a few Steele dossier reports "mattered" for continued predicate of Crossfire Hurricane, for the ICA or for Carter Page FISA (which I view as absurdly oversold as an issue, but Horowitz' observations on its probable cause also apply to Crossfire)

Horowitz observed it was Steele Report 95 that was "relied upon" for Page FISA probable cause. (It was also relied upon for continued predication of Crossfire and ICA.) But, as of Jan 24, 2017, Danchenko confessed that he had never met Millian. The attribution of 95 was in ruins.