Former FBI Director James Comey defended the FBI’s use of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s unverified dossier during a CNN town hall on Thursday.
He brushed aside pointed questions from moderator Anderson Cooper, saying “the most important part” of the dossier was on “Russians coming for the American election,” which he asserted was “consistent with our other intelligence” and “true.”
Steele’s dossier was used in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications to justify surveillance warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page. Comey personally signed off on three of the applications before he was fired by President Trump in May 2017. Steele’s dossier was funded in part by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign through the Perkins Coie law firm and the opposition research group Fusion GPS, which had reached out to and contracted Steele.
A Wall Street Journal report this week said that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is investigating the FBI’s reliance on the dossier “despite questions about [Steele’s] credibility” as part of an inquiry into alleged FISA abuse and more. The report said Horowitz “is homing in on” and “has been asking witnesses about” the FBI’s “treatment of information” provided by Steele. A report from The Hill showed Steele admitted to a top State Department official that he was encouraged by a client to get his research out before the 2016 election, signaling a possible political motivation.
Cooper told Comey that “just today [Trump lawyer] Rudy Giuliani was raising questions about how well you, the FBI, vetted the dossier.” He cited a tweet from Giuliani that said “the Steele dossier was unverified,” Comey “never tried to verify it,” and “deliberately avoided discovering the truth.” Cooper asked Comey: “What do you think about what he says and how much work did the FBI do to verify the dossier?”
Comey said these critiques were “false in two respects.”
“First, I told President Trump that the particular allegation about him being involved with prostitutes in Moscow was unverified, but I felt it important that he know about it,” Comey said. “More broadly, the bureau began an effort after we got the Steele dossier to see how much of it we could replicate. That work was ongoing when I was fired.”
“Some of it was consistent with our other intelligence, the most important part,” Comey said, adding, “the Steele dossier said the Russians are coming for the American election.”
“It’s a huge effort. It has multiple goals, that I laid out for the audience, and that was true,” Comey said. “There were a lot of spokes off of that that we didn’t know whether they were true or false, and we were trying to figure out what we could make of it.”
According to a New York Times report in April, the FBI reached out to some of Steele’s foreign sources in an attempt to determine their credibility, and as early as January 2017 agents had concluded that some of the dossier’s contents may have been based upon “rumors and hearsay” which were “passed from source to source.” The agents believed some of Steele’s information may have been based upon “Russian disinformation.”
Among the dossier’s harshest critics is journalist Bob Woodward, who has been calling it “garbage” for more than two years. Former CIA Moscow station chief Daniel Hoffman said: “I called what bullshit the dossier was a year and a half ago … It’s likely FSB [the successor agency to the KGB] disinformation.”
In the town hall, Cooper reminded Comey of an April 2018 interview with George Stephanopoulos in which he appeared to lend credence to the most salacious of the unverified claims in Steele’s dossier. When asked by Stephanopoulos whether he believed Trump’s denials, Comey said, “I honestly never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013. It’s possible, but I don’t know.”
Cooper, noting that special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report did not corroborate the dossier’s allegations about tapes and prostitutes, asked Comey if he regretted making comments “which some would see as sort of stoking the fires or leaving as an open question.”
Comey stood by what he said. “No, I was trying to give an honest answer, and my answer would be the same today,” he responded.
Cooper said Comey “could have just said those were unverified” and asked if it is possible that “the Russians have leverage over President Trump.”
Comey said “yes,” but did not elaborate.
Despite Comey’s defenses of the dossier, a number of Steele’s biggest claims, including its allegation from “Kremlin insiders” that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had met in Prague with Putin associates and foreign hackers, were knocked down by Mueller’s report. Mueller did not charge Trump or any Trump associates, or any Americans for that matter, with criminal collusion with the Russians.
