by Chuck Ross at The Washington Free Beacon
An intelligence analyst behind the FBI’s botched Trump-Russia collusion probe is now accused of using the bureau’s authority to discredit reports about Hunter Biden’s criminal activity months before the 2020 presidential election.
Meet Brian Auten. The FBI analyst is hardly a household name, but whistleblowers who contacted the office of GOP senator Chuck Grassley say he was behind an August 2020 report that FBI officials used as part of a “scheme…to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation.”
Auten’s report also caused the FBI “to cease” investigative activity into the younger Biden, according to a letter Grassley sent the Justice Department and FBI.
The whistleblower allegations are the latest evidence of politicization at the FBI. Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the allegations, if accurate, show the FBI and Justice Department are “institutionally corrupted to their very core.”
Auten was a key figure in Crossfire Hurricane, the counterintelligence investigation into Donald Trump’s potential ties to Russia. The Justice Department inspector general said in a December 2019 report that an FBI intelligence analyst who has since been identified as Auten “failed to advise” others at the FBI about inconsistencies in the Steele dossier, the controversial report the bureau used to investigate Trump.
Auten’s involvement in the Hunter Biden saga…
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