The FBI has removed multiple redactions from a Jan. 4 criminal referral related to “Trump dossier” author Christopher Steele that was released this week, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced Tuesday evening.
The referral, which says the ex-British spy wrote an additional memo about President Trump and Russia with details that were not among those included in the dossier published early last year by BuzzFeed, was made by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
In a press release, Grassley explained that he sought the cooperation of the FBI to make as much of the referral available to the public as possible, via a second review, after the first left much of the document redacted.
“I appreciate the FBI’s quick turnaround on a tight deadline to my request for a classification review of the Steele referral,” Grassley said in a statement. “The more clarity we can provide to the American people about decisions at the FBI and Justice Department, the better. I will keep pushing for additional transparency and thank the men and women of the FBI and Justice Department for their continued service.”
Grassley’s push for transparency comes in the aftermath of last week’s public release of the House Intelligence Committee memo, which outlines alleged abuses of surveillance authority by the U.S. government.
The referral, which was first released in heavily redacted form on Monday, appears to confirm some level of coordination between the extended Clinton circle and the Obama administration in the effort to seek damaging information about then-candidate Trump.
The less-redacted referral fails to provide further illumination on the memo mentioned in the dossier obtained by BuzzFeed, mentioning how Steele allegedly received information from “a foreign sub-source who is in touch with [redacted], a contact of [redacted], a friend of the Clintons, who passed it to [redacted]” — redactions that appeared in the first issuance of the referral.
The unredacted referral does discuss the controversial FISA applications seeking permission to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The House Intel memo stressed that the effort to obtain a warrant to renew the surveillance would not have happened without the Trump dossier, which contained salacious and unverified claims about Trump’s ties to Russia, and that DOJ officials knew Steele had an anti-Trump bias but made no mention of that in their effort to renew FISA surveillance on Page.
Though Nunes has since conceded there was a vague “footnote” that did mention the political strings attached to the memo, the referral said the “application failed to disclose that the identities of Mr. Simpson’s ultimate clients were the Clinton campaign and the DNC.” That is a reference to Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, whose opposition research firm commissioned the dossier.
The referral also mentioned how then-FBI Director James Comey in March 2017 spoke with Grassley and Judiciary Committee ranking member Dianne Feinstein, and was asked “why the FBI relied on dossier in the FISA applications absent meaningful corroboration — and in light of the highly political motives surrounding its creation.”
According to the referral Comey “stated that the FBI included the dossier allegations about Carter Page in the FISA applications because Mr. Steele himself was considered reliable due to his past work for the Bureau.”
The referral says that though the FBI suspended its relationship with Steele in October 2016 for unauthorized contact with the media, the agency defended his credibility before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court multiple times under the assumption that Steele had told the truth when he said he had not contacted journalists. The Judiciary Committee said that documents and testimony it received showed that Steele provided dossier information to “numerous media organization” before his relationship with the FBI was terminated.
Read the newly released referral below:
