Tag Archives: Christopher Steele
Did Brits warn about Steele's credibility, before Mueller's probe? Congress has evidence
By John Solomon
One of the deepest, darkest secrets of Russiagate soon may be unmasked. Even President Trump may be surprised.
Multiple witnesses have told Congress that, a week before Trump's inauguration in January 2017, Britain's top national security official sent a private communique to the incoming administration, addressing his country's participation in the counterintelligence probe into the now-debunked Trump-Russia election collusion.
Most significantly, then-British national security adviser Sir Mark Lyall Grant claimed in the memo, hand-delivered to incoming U.S. national security adviser Mike Flynn's team, that the British government lacked confidence in the credibility of former MI6 spy Christopher Steele's Russia collusion evidence, according to congressional investigators who interviewed witnesses familiar with the memo.
Steele, of course, was the political opposition researcher-turned-FBI-informant whose dossier the FBI and Obama Justice Department used to justify spying on the Trump campaign in the final days of the 2016 election cycle. The dossier was funded by Fusion GPS, a research firm hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Congressional investigators have interviewed two U.S. officials who handled the memo, confirmed with the British government that a communique was sent, and alerted the Department of Justice (DOJ) to the information. One witness confirmed to Congress that he was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller about the memo.
Now the race is on to locate the document in U.S. intelligence archives, to see if the witnesses' recollections are correct. And Trump is headed to Britain this weekend, where he might just get a chance to ask his own questions.
Standard | Posted in Uncategorized	| Tagged Christopher Steele, Congress, Trump-Russia Dossier	| 0 comments
FBI Records Show Dossier Author Deemed 'Not Suitable For Use' as Source, Show Several FBI Payments in 2016
Documents Reveal Steele Was Admonished in February, 2016
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today the FBI turned over 70 pages of heavily redacted records about Christopher Steele, the former British spy, hired with Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee funds, who authored the infamous Dossier targeting President Trump during last year's presidential campaign. The documents show that Steele was cut off as a "Confidential Human Source" (CHS) after he disclosed his relationship with the FBI to a third party. The documents show at least 11 FBI payments to Steele in 2016 and document that he was admonished for unknown reasons in February, 2016. The documents were turned over in response to Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for records of communications and payments between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and his private firm, Orbis Business Intelligence (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:17-cv-00916)).
The documents include a "source closing communication" that states that Steele (referred to as "CHS" or Confidential Human Source) "is being closed" because:
CHS confirmed to an outside third party that CHS has a confidential relationship with the FBI. CHS was used as a source for an online article. In the article, CHS revealed CHS' relationship with the FBI as well as information that CHS obtained and provided to FBI. On November 1, 2016, CHS confirmed all of this to the handling agent. At that time, handling agent advised CHS that the nature of the relationship between the FBI and CHS would change completely and that it was unlikely that the FBI would continue a relationship with the CHS. Additionally, handling agent advised that CHS was not to operate to obtain any intelligence whatsoever on behalf of the FBI.
The documents also show that Steele was paid repeatedly by the FBI and was "admonished" for some unknown misconduct in February, 2016. The documents include:
Fifteen (15) FD-1023, Source Reports.
Thirteen (13) FD-209a, Contact Reports.
Eleven (11) FD-794b, Payment Requests. (It appears Steele was paid money eleven of the thirteen times he met with the FBI and gave them information.)
An Electronic Communication (EC) documenting that on February 2, 2016, Steele was admonished in accordance with the Justice Department guidelines and the FBI CHS Policy Manual.
The documents were obtained as a result of a lawsuit was filed after the Department of Justice failed to respond to a March 8, 2017, FOIA request seeking:
All records of communications between any official, employee, or representative of the FBI and Mr. Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer and the owner of the private firm Orbis Business Intelligence.
All records related to the proposed, planned, or actual payment of any funds to Mr. Steele and/or Orbis Business Intelligence.
All records produced in preparation for, during, or pursuant to any meetings or telephonic conversations between any official, employee, or representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Mr. Christopher Steele and/or any employee or representative of Orbis Business Intelligence.
"These new docs show the shady, cash-based relationship the Obama FBI had with Clinton operative Christopher Steele," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "The anti-Trump Russia 'investigation' had Christopher Steele at its center and his misconduct was no impediment to using information from his Russia intelligence collaborators to spy on the Trump team. The corruption and abuse is astonishing."
Last week, a separate Judicial Watch lawsuit uncovered the FISA warrant documents used to justify spying on Carter Page. The warrants are controversial because the FISA court was never told that the key information justifying the requests came from a "dossier" that was created by Fusion GPS, a paid agent of the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. Fusion GPS hired Steele to create the Dossier and Steele is referenced repeatedly as "Source #1" in the warrants. The initial Carter Page warrant was granted just weeks before the 2016 election. Steele and his "minimally corroborated" Clinton-DNC dossier was an essential part of the FBI and DOJ's applications for surveillance warrants to spy on Page.
Standard | Posted in Uncategorized	| Tagged Christopher Steele, Dossier	| 0 comments
It's Suspicious That The FBI And DOJ Didn't Check Into Christopher Steele's Leaks To The Press
Image via breitbart.com
Would you do everything you could to determine whether you could trust a source who lied to you before relying on him to treat a U.S. citizen guilty of treason?
By Jason Beale
Here's a hypothetical question for journalists: Let's say you managed to convince the translator in the room during the President Trump-Vladimir Putin meeting to speak to you, and you only, on the condition of anonymity, and you're in the midst of writing an explosive, exclusive story for your publication. As you're writing, you look up to see BREAKING NEWS on CNN, and listen as Wolf Blitzer reports the story you're writing, with the exact fly-on-the-wall detail you received from your "exclusive" source.
So what's your first move? Would you assume CNN must've convinced the Russian translator to talk to them and move on with your story without taking any action, or would you call your source to figure out where that CNN information came from? If your source denied talking to CNN, would you believe him and move on, or would you do whatever you could to determine whether you can trust this source on such an important matter? You'd want to know the answer to that question before proceeding, would you not?
A hypothetical question for editors: Let's say you're editing an article on a Pentagon policy change and notice a number of paragraphs that you think you may have read before in another publication. You Google the lines and find that your reporter appears to have lifted entire paragraphs of copy from another article.
So what's your first move?
Standard | Posted in Uncategorized	| Tagged 'FISA Abuse', Christopher Steele, DOJ, FBI, Steele dossier	| 0 comments
Obama's Campaign Paid $972,000 To Law Firm That Secretly Paid Fusion GPS In 2016
By Sean Davis
Former president Barack Obama's official campaign organization has directed nearly a million dollars to the same law firm that funneled money to Fusion GPS, the firm behind the infamous Steele dossier. Since April of 2016, Obama For America (OFA) has paid over $972,000 to Perkins Coie, records filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show.
The Washington Post reported last week that Perkins Coie, an international law firm, was directed by both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton's campaign to retain Fusion GPS in April of 2016 to dig up dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump. Fusion GPS then hired Christopher Steele, a former British spy, to compile a dossier of allegations that Trump and his campaign actively colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election. Though many of the claims in the dossier have been directly refuted, none of the dossier's allegations of collusion have been independently verified. Lawyers for Steele admitted in court filings last April that his work was not verified and was never meant to be made public.
OFA, Obama's official campaign arm in 2016, paid nearly $800,000 to Perkins Coie in 2016 alone, according to FEC records. The first 2016 payments to Perkins Coie, classified only as "Legal Services," were made April 25-26, 2016, and totaled $98,047. A second batch of payments, also classified as "Legal Services," were disbursed to the law firm on September 29, 2016, and totaled exactly $700,000. Payments from OFA to Perkins Coie in 2017 totaled $174,725 through August 22, 2017.
Standard | Posted in Uncategorized	| Tagged Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS, Obama For America, Orbis, Steele dossier, Trump-Russia Dossier	| 2 Comments
Jim Jordan Reveals Key Figure Involved In Benghazi Involved In Steele Dossier
by Nick Givas
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan accused key Clinton allies of helping craft a second anti-Trump dossier and accused them of "rigging the game," Tuesday on "Fox & Friends."
Jordan was asked about a possible second dossier and said Clinton operatives Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer had paid Christopher Steele to do opposition research, but then told Steele which specific details to include.
"The names we keep hearing are Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer — people who have been around the Clintons as being a part of this. But I also think it's kind of interesting because what it looks like is, they paid Steele to put together the dossier and told him what to put in," Jordan said. "Talk about rigging the game and putting together a document that will serve your purposes as an opposition research document."
"That is what the Clinton team did and then when you see names like Sidney Blumenthal coming up. We deposed this guy during the Benghazi hearings," Jordan continued. "He has been with the Clintons forever. He was knee deep in the whole Libya, Benghazi story, particularly the story where they weren't square with the American people about what was the actual catalyst of the attack, and they tried to blame it on video."
Jordan expressed outrage at how the government omitted information about the dossier while seeking a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant and said it was vital for the American public to have seen the GOP's recently released FISA memo.
"That dossier was taken to a secret court to get a secret warrant to spy on fellow citizen and they weren't clear with the court who paid for it, who was involved with, and the fact that they had already fired Chris Steele from any type of relationship with the FBI because he broke a fundamental trust. He went to the press and told them he was working with the FBI. And yet they still used this work product, this dossier," Jordan concluded. "That's what's so ridiculous about how they handled this, and why that memo last week from the Republicans was so important that the American people see."
Standard | Posted in Uncategorized	| Tagged Benghazi, Christopher Steele, Fox & Friends, Jim Jordan, Sidney Blumenthal	| 1 Comment