A classified document released to the public Thursday reveals the FBI acknowledged it had only ‘limited corroboration’ of the infamous dossier which claimed Russia had ‘kompromat’ on Donald Trump when James Comey told him about its existence.
The ‘golden showers’ dossier was briefed to Trump just before his inauguration and Comey treated his discussion of it with Trump as possible evidence for the FBI’s investigation into whether his campaign was colluding with the Kremlin.
But now a declassified document released by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, to Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, shows that the FBI knew there were doubts about it.
The dossier was produced by former British spy Christopher Steele, who passed it to the FBI.
He had been paid for his work indirectly through opposition research company Fusion GPS, which had first been tasked to look into then-candidate Trump by an anti-Trump Republican, then paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to continue.
Steele is not named in the declassified document but is clearly the ‘FBI source’ referred to.
The declassified document is a two-page index to the crucial intelligence community assessment which was published just after Christmas 2016 and concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election with the intention of helping Trump.
The still-heavily redacted document says that the dossier played no part in that conclusion – which will be a blow to Trump’s supporters’ belief that it did. They will also dislike its conclusion that there was ‘limited,’ rather than no corroboration.
But it will offer them some ammunition in his long-running war with Comey, whom he fired as FBI director and has spent three years deriding on Twitter.
An intelligence report was declassified Wednesday that shares details former British intelligence official Christopher Steele (pictured) shared with the Intelligence Committee regarding his infamous dossier surrounding Russian interference in the 2016 election
The dossier famously alleges Trump and his campaign were blackmailed by the Russian government because it had obtained a video of Trump watching prostitutes urinate on a hotel bed in Moscow in 2013 when he traveled there for the Miss Universe pageant
‘An FBI source, using both identified and unidentified sub sources, volunteered highly politically sensitive information from the summer to the fall of 2016 on Russian influence efforts aimed at the US presidential election,’ the declassified document reads.
‘We have only limited corroboration of the source’s reporting in this case and did not use it to reach the analytic conclusion of the CIA/FBI/NSA assessment,’ it continued of Steele.
The document, marked as ‘sensitive,’ reveals that the source claimed Trump had a close relationship with the Kremlin and that some of his top advisers were offered financial compensation from Moscow.
Steele formerly worked for British Intelligence Agency MI6, including a stint where he ran the Russia desk at the London headquarters, and in 2009 he co-founded Orbis Business Intelligence.
Among the allegations in the dossier was Steele’s claim that Russia was able to blackmail Trump because they had a tape of him watching prostitutes urinate on a hotel bed in Moscow in 2013 when he traveled there for the Miss Universe pageant.
The claim, which led to the dossier being dubbed the ‘Golden Showers Dossier,’ has never been confirmed and no such tapes have ever emerged; the president has vehemently denied it ever happened.
Steele, however, made several other more serious claims against Trump and Russia.
‘The source claimed that the President-elect and his top campaign advisers knowingly worked with Russian officials to bolster his chances of beating Secretary [Hillary] Clinton; were fully knowledgeable of Russia’s direction of leaked Democratic emails; and were offered financial compensation from Moscow,’ the Intelligence Committee report reads.
It was, however, the most sexually explicit part of it which lay at the heart of Comey’s briefing to Trump.
Trump has repeatedly denied that is true and called the dossier made up.
The dossier was first published in full by Buzzfeed News shortly after it was revealed that Trump had been briefed by Comey on the existence of the document.
The document itself had been seen by several media outlets before the election, and passed not just to the FBI but after the election was given to John McCain who then also sent it to the FBI, not knowing that Steele was already a source for the bureau.
What the newly-declassified document reveals is a summary of the dossier.
The summary was part of the report into Russian interference, in the form of a classified annex to the public report.
What the newly-public document shows is that there was a detailed summary of Steele’s dossier given to those reading the full classified report – who would include lawmakers and senior government officials.
In the dossier: The newly-declassified document shows what the FBI thought of Christopher Steele’s work – saying it had ‘limited corroboration’ but parts tracked with the intelligence community’s own conclusions
It shows that the FBI reported that: ‘The FBI source also claimed Russian authorities possessed compromising material on the President-elect’s activities when he was in Russia as well as a compromising dossier on Secretary Clinton’s political activities that was controlled by the Kremlin and not shared with the President-elect or his team.’
That suggests that those sent the classified version of the report were not appraised of the sexually graphic nature of the alleged compromising material.
The document also shows that the intelligence community said that Steele’s conclusions tracked their own about Russia, and that the former spy acknowledged himself that not all of it was corroborated or reliable.
Only Comey and Trump know if those doubts were passed to the then-president elect when the FBI chief briefed him on the dossier.
However the dossier was a part of material presented to a secret court to obtain a FISA eavesdropping warrant on Carter Page, by then a former Trump campaign aide, without the judges being told that there were FBI doubts about the information in it.
The information in it was used to support one of four bases of the application.
But an Inspector General report revealed that the FBI fell short of standards that everything in a FISA application by ‘scrupulously accurate,’ that it over-stated Steele’s reliability, and said that the FBI ‘speculates’ that he was being paid by someone likely looking to discredit Trump, rather than spelling out the full political motivation of the dossier’s commissioning.
The declassification is the latest such move by a Trump official and comes after the list of people who asked for ‘unmaskings’ during the transition to the Trump presidency which revealed the name of Mike Flynn, the incoming national security advisor.
Flynn was fired for lying about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador, and who later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about it too but is now at the center of a legal storm with the Department of Justice trying to withdraw support for his conviction.
The list of names, like the declassified index, gave ammunition to both sides who claim either that there was abuse by the FBI and possibly the larger intelligence community to try to discredit Trump, or that Trump and his campaign’s activities were at the very least worthy of thorough criminal and counter-intelligence investigation.
It is unclear if other material will be declassified; the release came as the Senate Judiciary Committee voted on party lines to subpoena a series of Obama-era officials, FBI bosses and others involved in Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation into Trump and Russia which became the Mueller report.