But his apparent eagerness to sell the Trump kompromat a Russian term for information used to gain leverage over someone to American spies raised suspicions among officials that he was part of an operation to feed the information to United States intelligence agencies and pit them against Mr. Trump. Early in the negotiations, for instance, he dropped his asking price from about $10 million to just over $1 million. Then, a few months later, he showed the American businessman a 15-second clip of a video showing a man in a room talking to two women.
No audio could be heard on the video, and there was no way to verify if the man was Mr. Trump, as the Russian claimed. But the choice of venue for showing the clip heightened American suspicions of a Russian operation: The viewing took place at the Russian Embassy in Berlin, the businessman said.
There were other questions about the Russians reliability. He had a history of money laundering and a thin legitimate cover business a nearly bankrupt company that sold portable grills for streetside sausage salesmen, according to British incorporation papers.
The distinction between an organized criminal and a Russian intelligence officer and a Russian who knows some Russian intel guys it all blurs together, said Steven L. Hall, the former chief of Russia operations at the C.I.A. This is the difficulty of trying to understand how Russia and Russians operate from the Western viewpoint.
American intelligence officials were also wary of the purported kompromat the Russian wanted to sell. They saw the information, especially the video, as the stuff of tabloid gossip pages, not intelligence collection, American officials said.
