Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., pressed President Trump on Wednesday to ask British Prime Minister Theresa May about the Steele dossier when he visits the United Kingdom next month.
In a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner, Nunes lists a number of recommended questions “about the British government’s knowledge of the Steele dossier and whether the British government took any unilateral actions based on information provided by [Christopher] Steele or at the request of any U.S. departments.”
The letter cites a report from the Telegraph published over the weekend, titled “Theresa May’s spy chiefs were briefed on explosive Christopher Steele dossier before Donald Trump.”
The report said the leaders of MI5 and MI6, the United Kingdom’s top intelligence agencies, were briefed about British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier shortly after 2016 election, learning about its salacious and unverified claims about Trump’s ties to Russia before the incoming commander in chief was told about them. Sources told the Telegraph that the dossier material was “marked up to the top” but that May herself was not briefed on it.
Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, has been a leading critic of the FBI’s use of the unverified dossier to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to wiretap onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The Daily Caller recently reported that notes from a State Department official’s meeting with Steele, before the FBI submitted its first FISA application in October 2016 against Page, said he had Russian sources that included former Russian foreign intelligence director Vyacheslav Trubnikov and Vladislav Surkov, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Nunes told Fox News over the weekend that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee “plainly colluded” with the Russians to receive and disseminate false information about Trump, referring to the dossier’s Democratic benefactors, which the FBI did not reveal to the FISA Court.
Nunes’ letter specifically requests that Trump ask May about Maltese academic Joseph Mifsud, the man who told former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos the Russians had damaging information about Clinton. Papadopoulos later repeated this claim to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who informed the U.S. government and prompted the original counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s campaign in July 2016.
“Describe any communications or relationship, if any, Joseph Mifsud (potentially also known as Joseph di Gabriele) has had with British intelligence and any information the British government possesses about Mifsud’s connection to any other government or intelligence agency,” Nunes wrote to Trump.
Nunes told Fox News on Monday the FBI has “something to hide” after sending two letters to the Central Intelligence Agency, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the State Department asking for all documents they have on Mifsud, and all but the bureau were cooperating.
Although special counsel Robert Mueller’s team portrayed Mifsud, London-based professor, as a Russian asset with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin in their 448-page report, Nunes says they decided to “cherry pick” information from news reports, leaving out that he described as a Western intelligence asset. Nunes specifically noted that Mifsud has a lot of ties to U.S., British, and Italian intelligence services.
