Christopher Steele, author of the infamous
Trump-Russia dossier, misled the
FBI into making false assertions to a judge to gain a wiretap on a
Trump campaign volunteer, according to a Senate document released Tuesday evening.
The disclosure promises to tarnish further an
FBI that was already under fire from Republicans for hiding the dossier’s Democratic financing.
The chain of events has to do with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant issued by a judge on Oct. 21, 2016, to spy on Carter Page.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman
Charles Grassley, Iowa Republican, released a criminal referral on
Mr. Steelethat shows the
FBI believed it had corroboration for the ex-British spy’s dossier when it did not.
The discredited dossier, the referral said, was the main piece of evidence cited by the
FBI in the FISA application.
Mr. Steele accused the Trump campaign of colluding with the Kremlin, with Mr. Page taking part. All involved deny the charges.
Mr. Grassley’s referral, asking the Justice Department to look into possible criminal charges against
Mr. Steele, reports that a Sept. 23, 2016, Yahoo News story reporting the same information was cited by the
FBI to the judge as corroboration.
The
FBI did this because
Mr. Steele denied being Yahoo News’ source, when in fact he was. The
FBI did not have corroboration, just the dossier and a news story based on that very dossier.
Even worse, the
FBI tried to protect
Mr. Steele’s credibility before the judge because it had not verified the dossier and used the former British spy’s reputation as the selling point.
To this day, the
FBI has not verified his charges, some of which are very salacious and quickly became the stuff of public conversation when Buzzfeed printed the dossier.
“The application attempts to explain away the inconsistency between
Mr. Steele’s assertions to the
FBI and the existence of the article, apparently to shield
Mr. Steele’s credibility on which it still relied for the renewal request,” said the referral, also signed by Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican.
The referral quoted directly from the
FBI application with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).
“Given that the information contained in the September 23 news article generally matches the information about Page that [
Steele] discovered doing his/her research [redacted] the
FBI does not believe that [
Steele] directly provided this information to the press,” the
FBI told the court.
This statement to the FISC judge turned out to be wrong.
What’s more, the
FBI continued to seek 90-day wiretap renewals based not on corroborating the dossier, but relying on
Mr. Steele’s reputation, even after he misled agents.
“After all, the
FBI already believed
Mr. Steele was reliable, he had previously told the
FBI he had not shared the information with the press — and lying to the
FBI is a crime. In defending
Mr. Steele’s credibility to the FISC, the
FBIhad posited an innocuous explanation for the September 23 article, based on the assumption that
Mr. Steele had told the
FBI the truth about his press contacts. The
FBI then vouched for him twice more, using the same rationale, in subsequent renewal applications,” the Grassley-Graham document says.
The
FBI planned to pay
Mr. Steele, a partisan who hoped to sink the Trump campaign, to continue to investigate President
Trump. But
Mr. Steele then gave a interview to Mother Jones magazine and he was fired.
Mr. Grassley has been investigating
FBI abuse in obtaining the warrant and wants a criminal investigation into
Mr. Steele for lying to the bureau.
Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, reported Friday that the
FBI never told the FISC judge that the dossier was financed by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.
The application has a footnote that refers only to possible political backing.
The Grassley referral also disclosed for the first time that
Mr. Steele wrote a memo on Oct. 19, showing that
Mr. Steelereceived anti-
Trump information from Clinton associates funneled through the State Department.
Mr. Grassley is investigating the roles of Clinton operators Sid Blumenthal and Cody Shearer.
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