MSNBC host Ari Melber scolded former FBI Director James Comey for how he publicly spread one of the most salacious allegations in British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier, which was picked apart by a Justice Department inspector general report.
Comey has discussed the “pee tape,” an alleged video obtained by the Russians of President Trump with prostitutes urinating on a bed in a Moscow hotel room, several times since he was fired in May 2017.
“That’s a major claim. Just releasing it can really hurt a public figure,” Melber said on his show Wednesday.
After explaining that it was Comey who briefed Trump on the dossier at Trump Tower in January 2017, where the FBI chief told the then-president-elect its allegations were unverified, Melber said, “And then, far less defensively, Mr. Comey after leaving government, went public with that story in his book and on his book press tour.”
Melber showed a clip of an interview Comey discussing the Trump Tower briefing during an April 2018 interview. Comey told ABC News’s chief anchor George Stephanopoulos that “it’s possible” that Trump was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013, and quipped, “I did not go into the business about — people peeing on each other.”
BuzzFeed published Steele’s dossier, a series of reports detailing allegations of Trump’s ties to Russia, in early 2017.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report found that Steele “misstated or exaggerated” claims in multiple sections of his dossier. This dossier was used by the FBI to obtain warrants to electronically monitor onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who was suspected of working for the Russians but was never charged.
The nearly 500-page report noted Steele’s dossier “stated that Trump’s alleged sexual activities at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Moscow had been ‘confirmed,'” but his source told the FBI that he or she told Steele that “Trump’s alleged unorthodox sexual activity at the Ritz Carlton hotel was ‘rumor and speculation’ and that he/she had not been able to confirm the story.”
“You hear a lot about facts these days. This may have been a small matter, but it got a lot of attention. And this a part of the DOJ report people need to reckon with,” Melber said in conclusion. “There was no verification. Mr. Comey was out over his skis in public, at least, and in fairness to those involved, the dossier didn’t seem to have perfect sourcing on this very unverified claim. And we want you to know the facts.”
Comey celebrated the release of the inspector general report, saying it showed the FBI was “smeared” by Attorney General William Barr and Trump’s allies in a Washington Post opinion piece on Monday.
“The FBI fulfilled its mission — protecting the American people and upholding the U.S. Constitution. Now those who attacked the FBI for two years should admit they were wrong,” he wrote.
But in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Horowitz criticized the FBI’s “entire chain of command” for how it handled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process in relation to Page and said his findings “don’t vindicate anybody who touched this.”
Horowitz’s report showed he also found Comey, along with his deputy Andrew McCabe, fought to include information from Steele’s dossier in the January 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference.
