About That Trump Dossier ‘Wall’ Did Russia plant wild allegations? Questions from Congress are blocked at every turn. By Kimberley A. Strassel
https://www.wsj.com/articles/about-that-trump-dossier-wall-1507244278
More non-news on the Russia-collusion front came Wednesday, when the Senate Intelligence Committee said it has now verified what everyone knew nine months ago: Russia worked to sow chaos during the 2016 election; vote totals weren’t affected; and no evidence has emerged that Donald Trump was in cahoots with Moscow.
But in the more distant, less camera-filled corners of Washington, there actually is some interesting new information. It centers on the document that increasingly looks central to the “chaos” Russia sowed: the Trump dossier.
That was the infamous list of accusations compiled starting in the summer of 2016 by a former British spook, Christopher Steele, who had been hired by the liberal opposition-research firm Fusion GPS. The discredited rumors about Mr. Trump came from anonymous Russian sources. This is notable, since it turns out Fusion was separately—or maybe not so separately—working with entities tied to the Kremlin.
How close was Fusion’s leader, Glenn Simpson, to Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Kremlin-linked lawyer? Did the Russians know about the dossier all along and help plant the information in it? Were American law-enforcement agencies relying on Russian-directed disinformation when they obtained secret warrants against Trump associates? Chaos, indeed.
Witness how hard the Federal Bureau of Investigation is fighting to avoid divulging any information about the dossier. More than a month ago the House Intelligence Committee issued subpoenas to the FBI and the Justice Department, asking for dossier-related documents. Lawmakers were told to go swivel.
A little more than a week ago, the committee’s frustrated chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, took the case all the way to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who finally offered to make an FBI official available for a briefing. But the bureau is still withholding all documents. To date, Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Judiciary Committee has not received any paper from the FBI on Russia matters, despite numerous requests, some countersigned by the Democratic ranking member, Dianne Feinstein.
Increasingly, one name is popping up: Gregory Brower, who leads the FBI’s Office of Congressional Affairs. Mr. Brower is an odd man for the job. These gigs tend to go to more-junior people, since they involve the drudgery of answering calls from grumpy congressional staffers. Yet Mr. Brower is a former U.S. attorney—a job that requires Senate confirmation—and a former Nevada state senator.
Before his latest role, he was the deputy general counsel of the FBI. In that post he was described as a confidant of former FBI Director James Comey. It was Mr. Comey who installed Mr. Brower in the congressional affairs job, just a few days before President Trump fired the director.
Mr. Brower has been shutting down congressional requests and stonewalling ever since. He has even tried appealing directly to House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office to squelch committee demands for documents. The FBI keeps justifying its intransigence by saying it doesn’t want to interfere with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. But Mr. Grassley recently announced that Mr. Mueller’s separate inquiry would no longer be considered a legitimate reason for the FBI to withhold information from Congress.
Now here’s the surprise: Reuters reported Wednesday that Mr. Mueller “has taken over FBI inquiries into a former British spy’s dossier” against Mr. Trump. How very convenient. The Mueller team has leaked all manner of details from its probe, even as it had avoided the dossier. But just as Congress is ratcheting up pressure on the FBI, anonymous sources say that it’s out of the bureau’s hands. CONTINUE AT SITE
Comments are closed.
