It wasn’t the only dossier.
That’s the report today, that Christopher Steele authored not one, but two dossiers that held negative information on Donald Trump.
Thanks to information released by the Senate Judiciary Committee, we know of the second dossier, which was not revealed by Buzzfeed News or any other source, until now.
According to The Washington Examiner:
The newly-released document is an unclassified and heavily redacted version of the criminal referral targeting Steele filed on Jan. 4 by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, and Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina. It appears to confirm some level of coordination between the extended Clinton circle and the Obama administration in the effort to seek damaging information about then-candidate Trump.
According to the referral, Steele wrote the additional memo based on anti-Trump information that originated with a foreign source. In a convoluted scheme outlined in the referral, the foreign source gave the information to an unnamed associate of Hillary and Bill Clinton, who then gave the information to an unnamed official in the Obama State Department, who then gave the information to Steele. Steele wrote a report based on the information, but the redacted version of the referral does not say what Steele did with the report after that.
The Clinton associate whose name seems to be popping up is Cody Shearer. Also, an Obama-era State Department official named Jonathan Winer acted as the go-between with Steele and the State Department during the 2016 election.
For a month, Grassley and Graham went back and forth with the State Department over what parts of the referral they could release to the public
What they eventually came to was something so heavily redacted, you just about have to use your imagination to get anything coherent from it.
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.
Also redacted is information related to the key allegation of the Grassley-Graham referral: that Steele was untruthful with the FBI and Justice Department over the issue of his many contacts with the press. If Steele was acting as a trusted source for the FBI on the highly confidential Trump-Russia investigation, it would have been improper for him to share his information with the press at the same time.
That’s why he was fired by the FBI.
Some of the redacted portions are in regards to Steeles’ press contacts and those statements made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by the FBI, as they were applying for surveillance warrants for former Trump aide, Carter Page.
To be clear, this dossier never made it public.
I’m sure until more information comes forward, however, we’ll hear plenty from the social media spin machine.
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