U.S. spy agencies assessed that Russian intelligence services were aware of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s investigation into then-candidate Donald Trump during the summer of 2016, and at least one of his subsources supported Hillary Clinton, declassified footnotes show.
The revelations made their public debut in five pages of declassified portions from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI’s Russia investigation, obtained by the Washington Examiner. The footnotes provide further evidence that Moscow was aware of what Steele was up to and may have been attempting to compromise his dossier with Russian disinformation.
“An early June 2017 [U.S. intelligence community] report indicated that two persons affiliated with [Russian intelligence services] were aware of Steele’s election investigation in early July 2016,” one footnote said. “The Supervisory Intel Analyst told us he was aware of these reports, but that he had no information as of June 2017 that Steele’s election reporting source network had been penetrated or compromised.”
The same still partially redacted footnote also revealed that in late January 2017, a member of the Crossfire Hurricane team received word that Russian intelligence services “may have targeted” Steele’s private firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, and the Russians attempted to “research all publicly available information” about Steele’s company.
These footnotes were made public at the request of Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
“Having consulted the heads of the relevant Intelligence Community elements, I have declassified the enclosed footnotes,” Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell told the senators in a letter. “Having reviewed the matter, I consulted with the Attorney General William Barr, and he has authorized the ODNI to say that he concurs in the declassification insofar as it relates to DOJ equities.”
Horowitz’s report, which was released with redactions in December, criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page and for the bureau’s reliance on Steele’s unverified dossier. Steele put his research together at the behest of Glenn Simpson’s opposition research firm Fusion GPS, funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm. Horowitz also criticized the bureau for not sharing exculpatory information from confidential human sources with the FISA court.
The newly visible footnotes show the FBI also received information in early June 2017 about business ties between Steele’s primary subsource and another subsource, who was said to be communicating with someone in Russia’s presidential administration in June or July 2016. The bureau learned the subsource was “voicing strong support for candidate Clinton in the 2016 U.S. elections.”
The newly unredacted footnotes also revealed that a 2015 report about oligarchs by the FBI’s Transnational Organized Crime Intelligence Unit noted that from January 2015 through May 2015, 10 Eurasian oligarchs sought meetings with the FBI, with five of them having their intermediaries reach out to Steele to make it happen. The report noted that Steele’s contact with five Russian oligarchs in a short period of time was “unusual” and recommended that a validation review be completed on Steele because of this. The FBI’s Validation Management Unit did not do so until early 2017, well after the bureau had begun relying on his dossier to obtain FISA warrants to wiretap Page. The report was not found in Steele’s FBI Delta file. A handling agent said he “was not concerned about its findings concerning Steele because he was aware of Steele’s outreach efforts to Russian oligarchs.”
The footnotes showed that “sensitive source reporting” from June 2017 indicated that a person affiliated to “Russian Oligarch 1,” a powerful Russian businessman for whom Steele had done work, was “possibly aware” of Steele’s Trump-Russia investigation as of early July 2016.
Steele’s dossier claimed Page held a “secret meeting” in the summer of 2016 with Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin during which Sechin mentioned “lifting Western sanctions against Russia.” But Steele’s primary sub-source told the FBI the sub-source who provided the information about this meeting also had connections to Russian intelligence.
Declassified footnotes from Horowitz’s FISA report released last Friday showed that the Crossfire Hurricane team were briefed on a document which assessed that an individual dubbed “Person 1,” described as a “key Steele sub-source,” had been described to them as someone with “historical contact with persons and entities suspected of being linked to RIS” — or Russian Intelligence Services. The document described reporting that Person 1 “was rumored to be a former KGB/SVR officer.” Further, the declassified footnote shows in late December 2016 DOJ official Bruce Ohr told “SSA 1,” believed to be FBI agent Joseph Pientka, that he met with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who assessed that Person 1 was a “RIS officer” central in connecting Trump to Russia.
FBI investigators received information in 2017 “indicating the potential for Russian disinformation influencing Steele’s election reporting” seemingly related to the biggest salacious and unverified claims in Steele’s dossier: Trump fooling around with prostitutes in Moscow during the Miss Universe Pageant in 2013 and about former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen meeting with Russians in Prague in 2016.
Horowitz released a memo earlier in April showing FISA flaws were not just limited to the surveillance of Trump campaign associate Carter Page, who was never charged with any wrongdoing. The findings of Horowitz’s audit focused on the FBI’s requirement to maintain an accuracy subfile known as a “Woods file.” Investigators found serious problems in each of the 29 FISA applications they examined — including four FISA applications where the Woods File was either missing or never existed.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report, released last April, found the Russians had interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion,” but “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May 2017 after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey and the leaking of portions of Comey’s memos to the press in an effort he admitted was meant to prompt a special counsel. There is little indication that Mueller investigated possible Russian disinformation in Steele’s dossier.
