Senators Grassley and Graham revealed their referral to the Justice Department for an investigation into former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. They wanted the FBI and the DOJ to look into whether Steele provided misleading information to the agencies about connections between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.
After approval from the FBI, the senators released their referral today. In it, the senators allude to the fact that the now infamous Steele dossier was the “second in a series” and that it was “received from the U.S. State Department.” The referral also states that the information contained in the report came for a foreign source who was in touch with a “friend of the Clintons.”
“(U) One memorandum by Mr. Steele that was not published by Buzzfeed is dated October 19, 2016. The report alleges [redacted], as well as [redacted]. Mr. Steele’s memorandum states that his company “received this report from [redacted] US State Department,” that the report was the second in a series, and that the report was information that came from a sub-source who “is in touch with [redacted], a contact of [redacted], a friend of the Clintons, who passed it to [redacted].” It is troubling enough that the Clinton Campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele allegations raises additional concerns about his credibility.”
Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and author of the Republican memo, Devin Nunes, hinted over the weekend that there may be more memos forthcoming, and that they would focus on other departments, such as the State Department.
“Yes, this completes just the FISA abuse portion of our investigation. We are in the middle of what I call ‘phase two’ of our investigation, which involved other departments. Specifically the State Department and some of the involvement they had in this,” Nunes said.
Senators Grassley and Graham have also asked the FBI to release the FISA applications used to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, specifically former foreign policy adviser Carter Page. The senators say that in light of President Trump’s declassification of the Nunes Memo on Friday, much of the underlying information should be declassified as well.