Feds fight BuzzFeed demand for Trump dossier probe details [View all]
Source: Politico
By JOSH GERSTEIN 11/14/2017 07:23 AM EST
Federal agencies are fighting BuzzFeed's demand for information about how officials investigated a controversial dossier of claims about President Donald Trump's alleged connections to Russia.
BuzzFeed published the dossier in January along with a warning that the media outlet's reporters had been unable to verify many of the assertions in the compilation, including salacious allegations about Trump. In February, BuzzFeed was hit with a libel suit from Russian internet entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev, who was mentioned in the document as having ties to hacking directed at Democratic Party leaders.
To bolster its defense in the suit, BuzzFeed is asking a federal judge in Washington to order the FBI and perhaps others to provide details that would officially confirm the dossier circulated at the highest levels of the U.S. government and triggered some effort by American authorities to verify its contents.
Justice Department lawyers moved Monday to block that effort, telling U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta that forcing officials to answer a series of questions about their handling of the dossier could trigger "a wave" of similar requests, distract government employees involved in important intelligence work and expose sensitive details about what government attorneys referred to in vague terms as "an ongoing investigation."
Read more: https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2017/11/14/buzzfeed-trump-dossier-lawsuit-244876
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