Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele's frustration as FBI sat on Donald Trump Russia file for months
Source: The Independent
Exclusive: Steele was so concerned by revelations he worked without payment after Trump's election victory in November
Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who investigated Donald Trumps alleged Kremlin links, was so worried by what he was discovering that at the end he was working without pay, The Independent has learned.
Mr Steele also decided to pass on information to both British and American intelligence officials after concluding that such material should not just be in the hands of political opponents of Mr Trump, who had hired his services, but was a matter of national security for both countries.
However, say security sources, Mr Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to believe there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Hillary Clintons emails.
It is believed that a colleague of Mr Steele in Washington, Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who runs the firm Fusion GPS, felt the same way and, at the end also continued with the Trump case without being paid.
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-russia-dossier-file-investigation-hacking-christopher-steele-mi6-a7526901.html
Bradical79
(4,490 posts)as far as I'm concerned. He knowingly allowed Russia to undermine our election, prop up a puppet candidate, and personally aided that effort just before the vote.
Response to Bradical79 (Reply #1)
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Phoenix61
(16,994 posts)There were comments made a while back about why have so many agencies doing Intel. Wouldn't it be better to have one agency? No!!! And this is exactly why. I don't see how Comey is going to skate out from under this. Wonder if Vegas is taking bets on who flips first?
triron
(21,984 posts)Unbelievable . This is mind blowing.
TheBlackAdder
(28,169 posts)KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)CentralMass
(15,265 posts)retaliation for the tRump dossier landing on his desk. They dropped the bogus Hillary email s'bomb as a premptive strike thinking that the details of the dossier would leak.
Phoenix61
(16,994 posts)And it makes sense. Don't know if that makes it more or less probable at this point.
Blue_Roses
(12,894 posts)And great point!
2naSalit
(86,354 posts)verify the "I won, I WON! Nobody cares about my taxes!" or something almost exactly like that.
NBachers
(17,083 posts)This is getting more and more damaging for Comey by the hour. Treason and betrayal of the highest magnitude.
When will enough be enough?
JI7
(89,241 posts)If Comey isn't directly involved others may have some control over him.
2naSalit
(86,354 posts)someone posted an article claiming that there seemed to be more than just him working against HRC... I got the impression that a kind of factions had materialized within the agency.
There's just so much going on right now, it's hard to keep up and deal with my daily obligations. I went through this during Clinton's impeachment... I still don't remember a lot of the rest of my life at the time.
pangaia
(24,324 posts)Nothing will go away.
PS.. try not to think about it while doing your daily duty... it will just shorten your life.
The come out here and let her rip!!
AgadorSparticus
(7,963 posts)Happens to correct this cabal.
Ccarmona
(1,180 posts)Would be proud of James Comey.
Stuart G
(38,414 posts)hadEnuf
(2,177 posts)that this was no election.
It was a right-wing coup orchestrated at some of the highest levels.
2naSalit
(86,354 posts)FailureToCommunicate
(14,007 posts)Our next President blackmailed by a foreign adversary.
hadEnuf
(2,177 posts)Response to .99center (Original post)
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Maraya1969
(22,464 posts)The obviously control the FBI or maybe the FBI is full of Russian spies!
What the fuck ever allowing Donald Trump to be president of the US is surrendering to a war with Russia that most of us didn't even know we were in!
world wide wally
(21,739 posts)The Subservient States of America.
Thanks, Trump
triron
(21,984 posts)Blue_Roses
(12,894 posts)I can't wrap my head around this right now...unbelievable...
Eyeball_Kid
(7,429 posts)a Russian asset. Mr. Steele apparently had good reason to suspect a cover-up. There was no response to information so explosive, so earth-shattering, that it simply HAD to be probed. And the FBI REFUSED to work on it.
Now, Comey is even refusing to say whether the FBI is investigating the Trump-Russia connection AT ALL!
FailureToCommunicate
(14,007 posts)Amaryllis
(9,524 posts)fiction?
dlk
(11,514 posts)It appears Comey intentionally violated his oath of office and the law in order to harm the Clinton campaign. He will probably get away with it.
Dreamer3
(67 posts)that the Dems walked out of in angry protest? That must have been a land mine.
Why does this cabal want Trump in the WH so bad? He will be a horrible leader and very ineffective. I guess everything always boils down to money and greed.
But this is looking like treason from a group within the US Federal Government.
Wow!
charlyvi
(6,537 posts)to sign whatever they put in front of him, no questions asked. And he's too ignorant about the Executive Branch's responsibilities and too bored with detail to do anything else.
Dreamer3
(67 posts)Yet it is clear to many that Pence will actually be running the WH.
Maybe, it was just to get a republican in the WH and it happened to end up being trump and so the cover-up ensued.
FailureToCommunicate
(14,007 posts)triron
(21,984 posts)job discussing this tonite.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)Her professorial style can get wearing sometimes but with a story like this, it's exactly what is needed. I really want to see David Corn interviewed about this story about Steele telling him that he was so outraged at what he was finding, he gave it to both US and UK intelligence.
keithbvadu2
(36,677 posts)ProudProgressiveNow
(6,129 posts)calimary
(81,127 posts)Dan Rather's recent tweet is roaring and bellowing and blasting through my mind. The one in which he cited his own decades of experience covering news that now informs him that "this feels big.'
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)LovingA2andMI
(7,006 posts)Period. What else can be said in light of this?
Between this report and David Corn's article on Mother Jones today -- ALL THE DOTS CONNECT. Congress BETTER Do Its J.O.B. with a Full and Independent Investigation!
They also alleged that Trump and his inner circle had accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin. These memos caused a media and political firestorm this week when CNN reported that President Barack Obama and Trump had been told about their existence, as part of briefings on the intelligence community's assessment that Russia hacked political targets during the 2016 campaign to help Trump become president.
For my story in October, I spoke with the former spy who wrote these memos, under the condition that I not name him or reveal his nationality or the spy service where he had worked for nearly two decades, mostly on Russian matters.
The former spy told me that he had been retained in early June by a private research firm in the United States to look into Trump's activity in Europe and Russia. "It started off as a fairly general inquiry," he recalled. One question for him, he said, was, "Are there business ties in Russia?" The American firm was conducting a Trump opposition research project that was first financed by a Republican source until the funding switched to a Democratic one. The former spy said he was never told the identity of the client.
The former intelligence official went to work and contacted his network of sources in Russia and elsewhere. He soon received what he called "hair-raising" information. His sources told him, he said, that Trump had been "sexually compromised" by Russian intelligence in 2013 (when Trump was in Moscow for the Miss Universe contest) or earlier and that there was an "established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit."
He noted he was "shocked" by these allegations. By the end of June, he was sending reports of what he was finding to the American firm.
The former spy said he soon decided the information he was receiving was "sufficiently serious" for him to forward it to contacts he had at the FBI. He did this, he said, without permission from the American firm that had hired him. "This was an extraordinary situation," he remarked.
The response to the information from the FBI, he recalled, was "shock and horror." After a few weeks, the bureau asked him for information on his sources and their reliability and on how he had obtained his reports. He was also asked to continue to send copies of his subsequent reports to the bureau.
These reports were not written, he noted, as finished work products; they were updates on what he was learning from his various sources. But he said, "My track record as a professional is second to no one."
The former spy told me that he was reluctant to be talking with a reporter. He pointed out this was not his common practice. "Someone like me stays in the shadows," he said. But he indicated that he believed this material was important, and he was unsure how the FBI was handling it. Certainly, there had been no public signs that the FBI was investigating these allegations. (The FBI at the time refused to tell me if it had received the memos or if it was examining the allegations.)
"This was something of huge significance, way above party politics," the former spy told me. "I think [Trump's] own party should be aware of this stuff as well." He noted that he believed Russian intelligence's efforts aimed at Trump were part of Vladimir Putin's campaign to "disrupt and divide and discredit the system in Western democracies."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/spy-who-wrote-trump-russia-memos-it-was-hair-raising-stuff
Dreamer3
(67 posts)but I have seen news reports say it was Jeb Bush that hired this spy/investigator. I wonder what the truth is?
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)a Democrat.
.99center
(1,237 posts)"After Mr. Trump emerged as the presumptive Republican nominee in the spring, the Republicans no longer wanted to finance the effort. But Democratic supporters of Hillary Clinton were very interested, and Fusion GPS kept doing the same deep dives into Mr. Trumps record, but on behalf of new clients.
In June, the tenor of the effort suddenly changed. The Washington Post reported that the Democratic National Committee had been hacked, apparently by Russian government agents, and a mysterious figure calling himself Guccifer 2.0 began to publish the stolen documents online.
Mr. Simpson hired Mr. Steele, a former British intelligence officer with whom he had worked before. Mr. Steele, in his early 50s, had served undercover in Moscow in the early 1990s and later was the top expert on Russia at the London headquarters of Britains spy service, MI6. When he stepped down in 2009, he started his own commercial intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.
Mr. Steele wrote up his findings in a series of memos, each a few pages long, that he began to deliver to Fusion GPS in June and continued at least until December. By then, the election was over, and neither Mr. Steele nor Mr. Simpson had a client to pay them, but they did not stop what they believed to be very important work. (Mr. Simpson declined to comment for this article, and Mr. Steele did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)"
xor
(1,204 posts)being passed around?
Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,760 posts)Snellius
(6,881 posts)Revolution is just around the corner, Marx predicted, when "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." This whole reality-show farce makes the intrigue of old Cold War spy thrillers look like Mary Poppins.
mdbl
(4,973 posts)We're Fu^&ed!
OKNancy
(41,832 posts)bucolic_frolic
(43,064 posts)is Comey sitting on this file while releasing the email investigation at the
last minute
THAT would exasperate any politician if it were done to their party
NastyRiffraff
(12,448 posts)It makes me furious, so it's not surprising that Congressional Dems were up in arms.
Any question that Comey deliberately and knowingly used Hillary's email issue to effect the election in favor of Donald Trump is hereby settled. Yes, he did. He's a traitor and he's arrogantly standing by his treasonous actions. Well, he has to, doesn't he? His Kremlin bosses are watching.
Amaryllis
(9,524 posts)I can't imagine he would volunteer that, but he can't hide if word is getting out about how long before the election he got the report.
JHan
(10,173 posts)His ass needed to be fired since forever.
pansypoo53219
(20,955 posts)then what? install hillary? no way pence gets his rule.