The Trump dossier was a piece of political opposition research compiled by ex-MI6 spy Christopher Steele. The Democrats and the Clinton campaign bankrolled it. The mission was simple. Find dirt on Donald Trump and he used sources that are still active in the Kremlin. Sounds like Clinton-Russia collusion, but that’s a whole other tale. Even from the beginning of this fiasco, the document’s credibility was suspect. It’s loaded with salacious tales about Trump that are pretty much straight trash in the sense that they’re false at face value. It’s why no other outlet decided to publish the document in full, except BuzzFeed because they have no standards. This document is reportedly the insurance policy that fired FBI Agent Peter Strzok, former bureau lawyer Lisa Page, and disgraced FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe may have been referring to in texts between Strzok and Page with whom he was having an extramarital affair. It was also used to secure a FISA spy warrant against former foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Was the document verified then? Well, based on some of these glaring errors, the answer looks like a ‘hell no.’
So far, the FBI and Department of Justice was the focal point of the controversy over the alleged FISA abuses related to Spygate. Now, it seems the British were firing warning flares about the credibility of the Trump dossier compiled by Steele back in 2017. Steele had reportedly briefed members the UK’s intelligence community and MI6 and MI5 were aware of the document as well (via Washington Examiner):
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., sent a referral to the Justice Department about a message a top United Kingdom national security official delivered to the Trump transition team a week before President Trump's inauguration.
Congressional investigators told the Hill that in January 2017 then-U.K. national security adviser Sir Mark Lyall Grant hand-delivered a memo to soon-to-be national security adviser Michael Flynn's team that asserted the U.K. government had doubts about the credibility of British ex-spy Christopher Steele. Recent reports suggest Steele had briefed British intelligence officials on his dossier after the 2016 presidential election, and the heads of MI5 and MI6 were made aware of the contents of the dossier by late November.
“A whistleblower recently revealed the existence of a communique from our allies in Great Britain during the early days of the Russia collusion investigation,” Meadows said.
“Based on my conversations with that individual, and the credible timelines that are supported by other events, I made a referral to Attorney General William Barr and Inspector General Michael Horowitz for further investigation,” the North Carolina Republican added. “There now is overwhelming evidence to suggest that on multiple occasions the FBI was warned that Christopher Steele and the dossier had severe credibility issues.”
John Solomon recently wrote for the Hill that the State Department is now being roped into the FISA scandal since officials there knew the dossier was a biased piece of political opposition research. Steele told them. He said the contents had a shelf life, needing to be revealed to impact the 2016 race (via The Hill):
Donald Trump’s campaign, it sat buried for more than 2 1/2 years in the files of a high-ranking State Department official.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec’s written accountof her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele shows the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence operative admitted that his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline.
And that confession occurred 10 days before the FBI used Steele’s now-discredited dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the campaign’s ties to Russia.
Steele’s client “is keen to see this information come to light prior to November 8,” the date of the 2016 election, Kavalec wrote in a typed summary of her meeting with Steele and Tatyana Duran, a colleague from Steele’s Orbis Security firm. The memos were unearthed a few days ago through open-records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United.
Kavalec’s notes do not appear to have been provided to the House Intelligence Committee during its Russia probe, according to former Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). "They tried to hide a lot of documents from us during our investigation, and it usually turns out there’s a reason for it," Nunes told me. Senate and House Judiciary investigators told me they did not know about them, even though they investigated Steele’s behavior in 2017-18.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, an Obama appointee, is compiling a report on the alleged FISA abuses, and I think a lot of Democrats are going to get scorched by it. It’s time to investigate the investigators and bring out righteous vengeance to those who tried to put their finger on the scale.