It looks like former British spy Christopher Steele authored a second dossier against then-GOP candidate Donald Trump. This one included information from failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton associates within former President Barack Obama’s State Department.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and member Lindsey Graham (R-SC) revealed that the FBI has “signed off on an unclassified version of the criminal referral” from the two men after the White House declassified House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes’ memo on Friday:
“Seeking transparency and cooperation should not be this challenging. The government should not be blotting out information that it admits isn’t secret, and it should not take dramatic steps by Congress and the White House to get answers that the American people are demanding. There are still many questions that can only be answered by complete transparency. That means declassifying as much of the underlying documents as possible,” Grassley said.
Grassley posted the document on his website, but it’s heavily redacted. One part remained intact:
Unfortunately, this is all we have and the names are blacked out. However, I blogged at the end of January that the FBI is assessing a second dossier authored by Cody Shearer, an activist close to the Clinton family. Steele had contact with Shearer along with “Obama State Department official Jonathan Winer.” From The Washington Examiner:
For example, a press release accompanying the referral said the referral “contains verbatim quotes from the [Carter Page surveillance] application that are not included in the [House Intelligence Committee] memo. Specifically, the referral quotes the application’s descriptions of Steele’s statements to the FBI about his contacts with the media.” Lest anyone get too excited, the press release went on to say that the quotes “remain redacted” in the version of the referral released Monday.—Some of the redacted passages also relate to the question of statements about Steele’s press contacts that the FBI made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in applying for the Page surveillance warrant that was the subject of the House Intelligence Committee memo released Friday.
One of those redacted passages refers to reporting from The Washington Post. It blacks out what the report was about about, but it says that whatever it was about, “the Judiciary Committee began raising questions to the FBI and the Justice Department about these matters as part of the Committee’s constitutional oversight responsibility.”
In early January, the two senators asked the Department of Justice to investigate Steele because they believe he made false statements to the FBI concerning his talks with news outlets about the dossier.
The document released today is blacked out when it comes to this subject. Normally I wouldn’t post pictures of blacked out material, but damn. It looks like the senators have a handful of information to show that Steele misled the FBI.
Unclassified CEG LG Memo to DOJ FBI (Steele Referral) by Washington Examiner on Scribd
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