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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFormer Obama official confirms Steele dossier was given to State
BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 02/09/18 11:01 AM EST
An official at former President Obamas State Department has confirmed a claim made by Republicans that British spy Michael Steele and allies of Hillary Clinton gave him intelligence reports claiming that President Trump was compromised by the Russians.
In an op-ed for the Washington Post titled Devin Nunes is investigating me: Heres the Truth, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of State Jonathan Winer writes about how Steele and Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal approached him with separate dossiers claiming malfeasance between Trump and the Russians.
Winers op-ed confirms the chain of events Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) detailed in a criminal referral for Steele, in which he asks the Justice Department to investigate the British spy for allegedly lying to the FBI about his contacts with the media.
-snip-
In the op-ed, Winer states that Steele first approached him in September of 2016 with the infamous dossier about Trump. Winer distilled the dossier into a two-page summary that he shared with former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who notified then-secretary of State John Kerry.
Later that month, Winer said he met with Blumenthal, who he described as an old friend. They discussed the Steele report and Blumenthal showed Winer notes put together by another longtime Clinton operative, Cody Shearer, that echoed the claims made in the Steele dossier.
What struck me was how some of the material echoed Steeles but appeared to involve different sources, Winer writes.
more
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/373131-former-obama-official-confirms-steele-dossier-was-given-to-state
underpants
(182,868 posts)Winer insists there was nothing improper about his meetings with Steele, who was separately providing State with reports on geopolitical developments about Russia and Ukraine while he was also working for the FBI and Fusion GPS, who contracted him to dig into Trumps background on behalf of Clintons campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
I am in no position to judge the accuracy of the information generated by Steele or Shearer, Winer says. But I was alarmed at Russias role in the 2016 election, and so were U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials. I believe all Americans should be alarmed and united in the search for the truth about Russian interference in our democracy, and whether Trump and his campaign had any part in it.
asiliveandbreathe
(8,203 posts)is a report "trump allies seek to tie Kerry's state dept to the dossier".. cornered rats..
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2018/01/23/trump-allies-seek-to-tie-kerrys-state-department-to-the-steele-dossier/?utm_term=.4fd704bd88ff
...snip....
Kerrys State Department officials have already recounted this information to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Kerry himself talked to Senate investigators in the middle of last year.
Investigators will likely find that Kerry and his State Department are not connected to the dossier in any way thats relevant to the Trump-Russia investigation.
But in the process, they are likely to succeed in sowing more confusion into the effort to get to the bottom of what Russia did in 2016.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)Should they have not sent out the alert?