Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley on Friday asked the FBI to explain what steps it took to ensure that foreign intelligence reports it was receiving about President Trump weren’t ultimately sourced back to the infamous “Russian dossier” put together by former British spy Christopher Steele.
In a letter to the FBI, Grassley said he’s worried that some of the information the FBI might have about Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia might come from foreign sources whose ultimate source was this dossier, which many Republicans have said is full of inaccurate or unverified information.
“Mr. Steele’s dossier allegations might appear to be ‘confirmed’ by foreign intelligence, rather than just an echo of the same ‘research’ that Fusion bought from Steele and that the FBI reportedly also attempted to buy from Steele,” Grassley wrote.
Grassley asked the FBI to provide all intelligence reports it has that are being used for the FBI’s investigation, what steps it took to ensure if the dossier was the source for these reports, and what other information the FBI might be relying on outside the dossier.
The new push by Grassley comes as the House Intelligence Committee has been in a months-long standoff with the FBI to turn over documents related to the dossier.
The dossier, also sometimes called the Steel dossier, has a lengthy history in the ongoing congressional investigations. During the transition period for the Trump administration, U.S. intelligence officials briefed then-President Elect Trump on the dossier’s contents to apprise him of potential blackmail threats.
Not long after that, Buzzfeed published the document in full, and Buzzfeed is now being sued by a Russian banker who was named in the document.
According to media reports, the dossier was also used as a basis for a surveillance warrant obtained in 2016 by the FBI to monitor Carter Page, who briefly worked in the Trump campaign.
And this week, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., said his committee’s investigation has tried on numerous occasions to make contact with Steele, but those efforts had, “hit a wall.”
“I strongly suggest that you come in and speak with us,” Burr said to authors of the dossier. “If we believe that you have something valuable to bring to the committee if you don’t voluntarily do it, I will assure you today, you will be compelled to do it. I can compel you to come, I can’t compel you to talk. But that will be in a very — done in a very public way if, in fact, you turn down the private offer.”
