The House Select Committee on Intelligence has John Kerry in its crosshairs – as Congressional investigators explore what involvement, if any, the former Secretary of State had in the unverified “Steele dossier” which relied on intelligence from high level Kremlin officials at a time when US-Russia relations were deteriorating.
Assembled by former British spy Christopher Steele, the “dossier” is actually a collection of memos which contain both wildly salacious claims and loosely factual information – much of it based on hearsay or public knowledge.
Steele was paid $168,000 by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, while Fusion was funded by the DNC and the Clinton campaign. The FBI, however, had previously agreed to pay Steele $50,000 if he could verify the dossier’s claims – which he was unable to do.
After the House Intel Committee majority released their four-page “FISA memo” detailing how senior officials at the FBI and DOJ used the unverified and highly biased Steele dossier to obtain a FISA warant, and the House Intel Committee minority released their own “counter memo,” the investigation moved into Phase II.
Phase II
House Intel Committee chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) gave us a peek behind the curtain in early February, telling Fox’s Bret Baier “We are in the middle of what I call phase two of our investigation, which involves other departments, specifically the State Department and some of the involvement that they had in this.”
#BREAKING: Devin Nunes says this is just the first memo to be released. He says there will be another one dealing specifically with the State Department’s role in everything that happened. pic.twitter.com/kpHVDQ44WX
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) February 3, 2018
While it is unclear what role the State Department may have in surveillance abuses, the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York noted last month that former MI6 spy, Christopher Steele, was “well-connected with the Obama State Department,” according to the book Collusion: Secret meetings, dirty money, and how Russia helped Donald Trump win” written by The Guardian correspondent Luke Harding.
Harding notes that Steele’s work during the World Cup soccer corruption investigation earned the trust of both the FBI and the State Department:
The [soccer] episode burnished Steele’s reputation inside the U.S. intelligence community and the FBI. Here was a pro, a well-connected Brit, who understood Russian espionage and its subterranean tricks. Steele was regarded as credible. Between 2014 and 2016, Steele authored more than a hundred reports on Russia and Ukraine. These were written for a private client but shared widely within the State Department and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of the U.S. response to the Ukraine crisis.
Shedding more light on the subject is longtime Kerry colleague and Steele pal, Jonathan Winer – who penned a Feb. 8 op-ed in the Washington Post entitled “Devin Nunes is investigating me: Here’s the Truth”
From Winer – along with a Senate Judiciary Committee criminal referral of Christopher Steele – we learned that several Clinton allies were also connected to both the dossier and the Kerry State Department.
Winer notes that “in late September [2016], I spoke with an old friend, Sidney Blumenthal, whom I met 30 years ago when I was investigating the Iran-contra affair for then-Sen. Kerry and Blumenthal was a reporter at The Post. At the time, Russian hacking was at the front and center in the 2016 presidential campaign. The emails of Blumenthal, who had a long association with Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been hacked in 2013 through a Russian server.
And Sessions confirmed tonight that he has someone “from outside the DOJ’ investigating the claims of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sounds like he may have appointed a second special counsel. Hopefully it isn’t another swamp creature.
Kerry has rubbed elbows with Hanoi Jane(Fonda) he signed the Small Arms Control Treaty and dishornored his Swift Boat Crew and went quail hunting with a rifle he is a typical liberal democrat
They seem to have everybody in the cross hairs but the people who should be at the center of their investigation. They’re running interference for the Trump administration.
It won’t matter. They can’t stop Mueller. They’d never get away with it.
@Greg: Well, we know Kerry is a crook and untrustworthy. He proved that by hiding his yacht in RI to avoid the MA taxes. He lied about his Purple Heart and throwing away his medals. He interfered in the Paris Peace talks . Who in this mess didn’t lie? The Clintons? Comey? Mueller? They all have lied in order to find something that isn’t or to cover their crimes committed with Obama approval. Do you actually believe there will be any Russians indicted by Mueller will ever see a court room let alone a prison? He is grasping at straws as he has in most of his career.
Something that Obama or Clinton touched being contaminated…oh let me try a shocked face, nope not shocked. Seems our pet troll doesn’t want exposed how deep the tentacles of corruption reached through the entire executive branch.
@Randy, #4:
That’s very unlikely. But, as Mueller has already demonstrated, their American accomplices are in an entirely different position.
Yesterday: Mueller gathers evidence that 2017 Seychelles meeting was effort to establish back channel to Kremlin
Maybe they should have waited until Trump was sworn in as president. Then, at least, they would only have been setting up a back channel circumventing their own administration’s State Department. It wouldn’t have looked quite so much like the expansion of a covert, preexisting relationship with Putin operatives.
@Greg: The key words are “effort to establish”. Since when is that a crime?