Ex-spy defends his Trump-Russia dossier

CHRISTOPHER STEELE, the ex-MI6 officer, has broken his silence to defend his Trump-Russia dossier and criticise the Mueller report as “too narrow.”

In a rare public speaking appearance Mr Steele attended a “members only” event at the Oxford Union.

The former head of MI6’s Russia desk dismissed allegations that he was politically biased, saying he was “an opponent of President Putin”, who was a “bully,” according to a Daily Beast reporter who was present.

The Oxford Union itself published some of Mr Steele’s remarks on Twitter. In those comments Mr Steele said: “I stand by the integrity of our work, our sources and what we did. Trump himself doesn’t like intelligence because its ground truth is inconvenient for him.

“Russia is a hostile state as it is run at the moment, it is out to destabilise the West and it is nefarious in the way it goes about its business.”

According to The Daily Beast, Mr Steele said the Mueller report into allegations of collusion between Mr Trump’s campaign and Russia had been “too narrow” and that “drilling down into financial networks and leverage” was “the way Russian influence works”.

He said: “There were many things about the report that were good…but other (aspects) that were not so good.”

Mr Steele said he was interviewed by Mr Mueller’s team for two days but was “surprised that very little of what I discussed appeared in the final report”.

He also said it “wasn’t great” that “a number of witnesses, including for instance, Donald Trump Jr” had not been interviewed.

On the inquiry, he said: “As far as I’m concerned, we’ve said everything we have to say on the matter.”