FBI ‘used MI6 man’s dodgy dossier to spy on Trump campaign’
A ‘DODGY’ dossier compiled by a former British spy encouraged US intelligence officials to wiretap a campaign adviser to Donald Trump, a Republican memo released yesterday has claimed.
But the FBI and US Justice Department staff who requested the surveillance based on lurid claims from ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele failed to reveal that the Democrats funded his work. He was said to have been paid $160,000 by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
They also omitted to say that Mr Steele – a longtime FBI source who runs a London intelligence firm – said he was ‘desperate that Donald Trump not get elected’, as a justice official who spoke to him claimed.
Mr Steele’s explosive report about Mr Trump’s business dealings and personal conduct in Russia was commissioned by Democrats looking for ammunition against him in the US presidential election in 2016.
Although the dossier’s most scandalous claims have been not been verified, it hasn’t been debunked and some of its details have actually been corroborated.
According to the dossier, a Russian strategy to ‘exploit Trump’s personal obsessions and sexual perversion’ to obtain compromising material on him had ‘borne fruit’.
Describing one alledged incident in 2013 relating to his reported hatred of former first lady Michelle Obama, it cites two informants, one of whom claimed to have been present, when Mr Trump is said to have hired the presidential suite of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow, ‘where he knew President and Mrs Obama had stayed’ on an official trip to Moscow.
He then persuaded several prostitutes to ‘defile’ the bed by urinating on it as he watched, the report claimed.
The hotel, added the Steele report, was known to be under the control of the Russian FSB intelligence agency ‘with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to’.
Mr Trump dismissed the claims as ‘fake news’ and ‘total fabrication’, while the Kremlin rubbished it as ‘pulp fiction’ after the dossier’s existence emerged in January.
The dossier by former senior MI6 Russia specialist Mr Steele caused a furore in Washington a year ago after intelligence chiefs decided to brief the White House and senior congressmen about it, even though it hadn’t been verified.
However, the President was criticised by members of his own party for defying opposition by the FBI to push ahead with putting the four-page Republican memo into the public domain. The memo – written by Republicans on the House of Representatives intelligence committee – was top secret, but it was approved for release by the House Intelligence Committee on Monday and by Mr Trump yesterday.
Republican senator John McCain said Mr Trump was playing into the hands of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
He added: ‘The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests – no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s.’
Earlier this week, the FBI also took the unusual step of issuing a public statement warning against the memo’s release. It said key facts had been omitted,
‘Serve no American interests’ ‘People should be ashamed’
while Democrats said the memo was intended to derail investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged links with Russia.
The memo says FBI and Department of Justice officials missed four opportunities to pass on ‘relevant facts’, the memo says.
The news has led to questions about how they secured the wiretap on Trump campaign aide Carter Page before the US election in November 2016 and after Mr Trump was elected president.
Mr Trump has used the furore to accuse US intelligence agencies of political bias against him. The surveillance, approved by a secret court, became part of the investigation into Russian election meddling that has dogged Mr Trump’s first year in office.
The memo claimed the judge who granted the surveillance applications was never told that Mr Steele had been working for the Democrats and was himself virulently anti-Trump and determined to stop him becoming president.