GOP Senators Seek Charges Against Trump Dossier Author
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
The phony Trump dossier was prepared by former UK MI6 intelligence operative Christopher Steele.
It contained spurious accusations without evidence, alleging misconduct and collusion between Trump, his campaign and Russia during the presidential campaign – including fabricated accusations of Russian US election interference.
None whatever occurred. No evidence suggests it, just baseless accusations, nothing substantiating them.
In the 1990s, Steele was an MI6 spy, based at Britain’s Moscow embassy. London’s Guardian once described him as “a retired western European former counter-intelligence official, with a long history of dealing with the shadow world of Moscow’s spooks and siloviki (securocrats).”
GOP Senators Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham called for the Justice Department to investigate Steele, claiming he made false and misleading statements to federal authorities.
Grassley chairs the Senate’s Judiciary Committee. Lindsey heads its Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism. Their letter to Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and FBI director Christopher Wray said the following:
“Attached please find a classified memorandum related to certain communications between Christopher Steele and multiple US news outlets regarding the so-called ‘Trump dossier’ that Mr. Steele compiled on behalf of Fusion GPS for the Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee and also provided to the FBI.”
“Based on the information contained therein, we are respectfully referring Mr. Steele to you for investigation of potential violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1001, for statements the Committee has reason to believe Mr. Steele made regarding his distribution of information contained in the dossier.”
Steele refused to testify before witch-hunt congressional committees, investigating phony allegations and suspicions of Trump team’s improper or illegal dealings with Russia during the presidential campaign.
He reportedly had numerous contacts with FBI counterintelligence officials pre-and-post-election. He claimed his dossier is largely accurate.
Fact-checking can’t corroborate any of it. Trump was right calling it spurious “fake news” – the dossier financed by the anti-Trump right-wing Washington Free Beacon and the DNC, producing rubbish to vilify him for the wrong reasons.
So far, the Justice Department hasn’t commented on the Grassley/Graham letter.
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