On Tuesday, THE WEEKLY STANDARD noted multiple media outlets were were confirming the existence of a second anti-Trump “dossier” authored by Cody Shearer, a longtime associate of the notorious Sidney Blumenthal, who as a very checkered history of finding himself at the center of Clinton scandals going back decades. And further, that Shearer’s work was reportedly passed on to former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign. That dossier is at the center of a scandal alleging that the president’s campaign was the subject of a politically motivated investigation.
Tuesday night, the Washington Post sheds more light on what happened, reporting that that Steele did in fact pass on Shearer’s work to the FBI:
Additionally, on Tuesday night during an interivew on Fox News, Martha McCallum asked Rep. Trey Gowdy, who has been instrumental to the House’s investigative efforts on this matter, if one of the sources feeding Steele allegations was Sidney Blumenthal. Gowdy responded, “That’d be really warm. You’re warm, yeah.”
Information is dispositive, so there is a possibility, however remote, that Shearer’s information turned out to be correct and useful to the FBI. However, given Shearer’s incredible history of doing dirty work for the Clintons, as well as his close working relationship with Blumenthal—an established liar who was blackballed from working in the Obama administration—Grassley’s concerns about Steele taking Shearer’s allegations seriously seem well-founded.
If Steele fed the FBI information from Shearer, and lent credence to it in the process, that suggests Steele was at a minimum extremely ignorant of how politically motivated sources might have been trying to manipulate him. And if the appearance of information collected by Cody Shearer didn’t raise red flags at the FBI, that also raises questions about how the FBI being too credulous in acting on the information being given to them by Steele.
These revelations are compounded by another major development. Tuesday night, Judiciary chairman Grassley released a less redacted version of the letter to the Justice Department originally released Monday, that offers far more detail about the FBI’s relationship with Steele than more redacted memo put out on Monday. In Tuesday’s letter, Grassley asserts that the FBI “took important investigative steps largely based on Mr. Steele’s information—relying heavily on his credibility.” Grassley’s letter also alleges that the “bulk” of the allegations for the FISA warrant on Carter page stem from Steele and the dossier he compiled. Further, the FISA application “appears to contain no additional information corroborating the dossier allegations” and that the dossier only disclosed the political origins of the dossier to a “vaguely limited extent.”
The Grassley letter makes additional accusations questioning Steele’s credibility. One application to the FISA court cited a Yahoo News article as independent confirmation of allegations in Steele’s dossier. It is now alleged was that news article was actually sourced to Steele himself. Grassley offers a direct quote from the FISA application, where the Justice Department asserts “the FBI does not believe [Steele] directly provided this information to the press.”
However, in its January 2017 application to renew the FISA warrant on former Trump advisor Carter Page, Grassley notes that the FBI admitted suspending their relationship to Steele for disclosing information to the media without telling the FBI. Despite being misled by Steele, the FBI continued to cite his information as credible, even though it remained largely uncorroborated. The FBI also continued to posit that any connection between Steele’s information and the Yahoo news article was merely “innocuous,” per Grassley’s characterization.
But Grassley notes that the Senate Judiciary Committee’s independent investigation confirms Steele briefed numerous media outlets while working with the FBI, and notably, in sworn court filings related to litigation in London, Steele admitted to briefing several media outlets in September of 2016 while working with the FBI, including Yahoo News. And these briefings were all done at the behest of Fusion GPS, the firm that hired him and was ultimately being paid by the DNC and Clinton campaign.
