A federal judge ordered the FBI to search for more records on its interactions with the British ex-spy whose salacious dossier was used by the bureau to justify surveillance of the Trump campaign.
The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch and the FBI clashed over the adequacy of the bureau’s searches for documents related to Christopher Steele for months, with Judicial Watch calling for the FBI to do a search for records stemming from after Steele was removed as a confidential human source in November 2016, with the FBI declining to confirm or deny their existence.
Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court of D.C. ruled against the FBI on Friday. Cooper said information from after Steele’s time as an FBI informant could reveal why the FBI used him as a source and stopped working with him.
“Those records might either bolster or weaken Steele’s credibility as a source,” Cooper said. “That information, in turn, could provide a basis on which to evaluate the FBI’s performance of its law-enforcement duties, including its judgment in selecting and relying on confidential sources, especially in connection with such a politically sensitive subject.”
The FBI used Steele’s dossier, which included unverified allegations regarding Donald Trump and Russia, to obtain approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveil former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. Steele did his 2016 research for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign through Perkins Coie law firm. Steele’s Democratic funding was never revealed to the court. Steele was removed as an FBI informant after giving information to journalists, but continued communicating with the FBI through Bruce Ohr, a high-ranking DOJ official who acted as a conduit in late 2016 and 2017.
After a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2017 and a court ruling in 2018, the FBI searched Steele’s “confidential human source file” and released documents in August 2018, with all but a few pages redacted. The files showed in February 2018 the bureau admonished Steele, telling him the guidelines to follow as an FBI informant, and records showed the FBI made payments to Steele throughout 2016.
The FBI revealed Steele was deemed no longer suitable in November 2016 when he revealed his confidential relationship with the FBI to a third party and was a source for an article. Steele’s handler told him he was “not to operate to obtain any intelligence whatsoever on behalf of the FBI.”
Disagreements over the quality of the FBI’s records search emerged in May 2019 when Judicial Watch called it “unnecessarily narrow.” The group insisted in June questions remained about the time after Steele was removed, but the Justice Department cited Steele’s privacy and argued the FBI could “neither confirm nor deny the existence of such records.” Judicial Watch said the public interest was “manifest”, noting Steele is “a central figure in one of the most important public matters of recent years.”
The judge sided with Judicial Watch over the FBI, and the search for any Steele records after his time as an FBI informant must be completed within 60 days.
