Pols urge probe of dossier author
Report involved allegations about Trump’s link to Russia
WASHINGTON » Two Republican senators have made the first known criminal referral in congressional investigations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, targeting the author of a dossier of allegations about President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Friday they had referred former British spy Christopher Steele to the Justice Department for investigation about false statements he may have made to the government. Graham is the chairman of a Judiciary subcommittee that is investigating the Russian meddling.
The referral comes after Republicans in Congress have made several attempts in recent weeks to undermine the credibility of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, the Justice Department and the FBI, charging there is anti-Trump bias within the ranks of federal agents and prosecutors.
In a cover letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray released by the committee, the senators say the referral relates to “certain communications between Christopher Steele and multiple U.S. news outlets regarding the socalled ‘Trump dossier.’” The rest of the referral is classified and was not released.
Lawmakers cannot prosecute, but generally refer any criminal violations they find to the Justice Department. On Friday, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said the department had received the referral and will review it.
The dossier is a compilation of memos Steele wrote during the 2016 campaign that contained several allegations of connections between Trump and Russia, including that Trump had been compromised by the Kremlin. Trump has called the dossier “phony” and derided it as a politically motivated hit job, and many Republicans in Congress have been focused on discrediting it.
The cover letter does not say who the senators believe Steele lied to, but Grassley said in a statement about the referral that “everyone needs to follow the law and be truthful in their interactions with the FBI.”
Republicans have been asking the Justice Department for months whether the dossier was used as part of its initial investigation into Russian interference.
The dossier was turned over to the FBI in 2016, and federal investigators worked to corroborate portions of it. Some of the information was distilled into a summary that then-FBI Director James Comey presented to then-president-elect Trump in January 2017.
More recently, Mueller’s investigators interviewed Steele in Europe as part of their probe into Russian election interference and ties between Trump associates and the Kremlin.