Christopher Steele | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1964-06-24)24 June 1964 (age 60) |
| Citizenship | United Kingdom |
| Alma mater | Girton College, Cambridge (BA) |
| Occupation(s) | Secret Intelligence Service (1987–2009) Private intelligence consultant |
| Known for | Steele dossier |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 4 |
Christopher David Steele (born 24 June 1964) is a British formerintelligence officer with theSecret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1987 until his retirement in 2009. He ran the Russia desk atMI6 headquarters in London between 2006 and 2009. In 2009, he co-founded Orbis Business Intelligence, aLondon-basedprivate intelligence firm.
Steele became the centre of controversy after he authored a 35-page series of memos for a controversial politicalopposition research report known as theSteele dossier.[1] It was prepared forFusion GPS, a firm hired by an attorney associated with theHillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign. The dossier claims, based on anonymous sources, that Russia collected a file ofcompromising information onDonald Trump and that his presidential campaign conspired to cooperate withRussian interference in the 2016 United States elections.[2][3]
Trump and his allies have falsely claimed[4][5][6] theCrossfire Hurricane FBI probe into Russian interference was launched due to Steele's dossier.[7] The Republican-controlledHouse Intelligence Committee concluded in an April 2018 report that the FBI probe had been triggered by previous information from Trump adviserGeorge Papadopoulos; the February 2018Nunes memo reached the same conclusion.[8][9]
Christopher David Steele was born in theYemeni city ofAden (then part of theBritish-controlledFederation of South Arabia), on 24 June 1964.[10][11] His parents, Perris and Janet, met while working at theMet Office, the United Kingdom's national weather service. His paternal grandfather was a coal miner fromPontypridd inWales.[12] Steele was raised in Aden, theShetland Islands, and Cyprus, as well as atWellington College, Berkshire.[12]
Steele matriculated atGirton College, Cambridge in 1982. While at theUniversity of Cambridge, he wrote for thestudent newspaper,Varsity.[13] In the Easter term of 1986, Steele waspresident of theCambridge Union debating society.[14] He graduated with a degree in Social and Political Sciences in 1986.[10]
Steele was recruited byMI6 directly following his graduation from Cambridge,[15] and initially worked in London at theForeign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) from 1987 to 1989.[11] From 1990 to 1993, Steele worked under diplomatic cover as an MI6 officer in Moscow, serving at theEmbassy of the United Kingdom in Moscow.[10][16][17] Steele was an "internal traveller",[18] visiting newly-accessible cities such asSamara andKazan.[12]
He returned to London in 1993, working again at the FCO until his posting with the British Embassy in Bangkok in 1998 and then shortly after to Paris in the same year, where he servedunder diplomatic cover until 2002. The identity of Steele as an MI6 officer and those of a hundred and sixteen other British spies were revealed in an anonymouslypublished list.[19][17][20]
Steele spent time teaching new MI6 recruits, then returned to London between 2006 and 2009 where he headed the Russia Desk at MI6.[10][12][16] He served as a senior officer underJohn Scarlett, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), from 2004 to 2009.[21] Steele was acounterintelligence specialist[15] and was selected ascase officer forAlexander Litvinenko and participated in the investigation of theLitvinenko poisoning in 2006.[17] Twelve years later, Russian double agent Boris Karpichkov alleged that Steele himself was included in a hit list of the RussianFederal Security Service, along withSergei Skripal who waspoisoned in 2018 by a binary chemical weaponNovichok in Britain.[22] Steele worked for MI6 for a total of 22 years.[21]
Since 2009, Steele has avoided travel to Russia. In 2012, an Orbis informant quoted an FSB-agent describing him as an "enemy of Mother Russia".[10] Steele refrained from travelling to the United States since his authorship of the Steele dossier became public, citing the political and legal situation.[23]
In 2012, Orbis was subcontracted by a law firm representingOleg Deripaska,[24] who was also a "person of interest" to the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russia's election interference.[25] Between 2014 and 2016, together withBruce Ohr, Steele cooperated with the FBI's and Justice Department's unsuccessful efforts toflip Deripaska into aninformant.[26]
In March 2009, Steele and fellow MI6-retiree Chris Burrows co-founded theprivate intelligence agency Orbis Business Intelligence, Ltd., based inGrosvenor Square Gardens.[27][16] Between 2014 and 2016, Steele created over 100 reports on Russian and Ukrainian issues, which were read within theUnited States Department of State, and he was viewed as credible by theUnited States intelligence community.[12] The business was commercially successful, grossing approximately $20,000,000 in the first nine years of operation.[10]
Steele ran an investigation dubbed "Project Charlemagne", which noted Russian interference in the domestic politics ofFrance,Italy,Germany,Turkey, and theUnited Kingdom. In April 2016, Steele concluded that Russia was engaged in aninformation warfare campaign with the goal of destroying theEuropean Union.[10]
In November 2018, Steele sued the German industrial groupBilfinger, alleging that the company owed €150,000 for an investigation into Bilfinger's activities inNigeria andSakhalin.[28]
According to theOrganized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), in 2023, Texas-basedSteward Health Care ran a "smear campaign" against Fraser Perring, a critic of Steward and the founder ofViceroy Research, a short-selling firm. Steward hired Audere International, a London-based private intelligence firm, to help them. Audere paid Steele 29,000 British pounds to advise British Member of ParliamentLiam Byrne on how to ask a question in parliament "about Perring and Russian short-selling attacks": "Audere provided the text of a proposed question on Viceroy to Steele, who later confirmed he had sent the question to Byrne with minor changes." The OCCRP wrote:
A private intelligence firm working for a disgraced U.S. healthcare operator fed what appears to be false information to a British politician, leading him to claim in parliament that a well-known businessman was a Russian agent, leaked communications show.[29]
In 2010,The Football Association (FA), England's domestic football governing body, organised acommittee in the hope of hosting the 2018 or 2022 World Cups.[30] The FA hired Orbis Business Intelligence to investigateFIFA (International Federation of Association Football). In advance of the FBI launching its2015 FIFA corruption case, members of the FBI's Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force met with Steele in London to discuss allegations of possible corruption in FIFA.[27][31] Steele's research indicated that RussianDeputy Prime MinisterIgor Sechin had riggedthe bidding of the 2018 World Cups by employing bribery.[10]
Steele contributed to a privately commissioned report that alleged China attempted to influence key figures in British politics and business. The report was submitted to selected British MPs and some media.[32]
In September 2015,The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, retained the services ofFusion GPS, a private Washington D.C. politicalresearch firm, to conduct research on several primary Republican Party candidates, including Trump. The research was not primarily related to Russia and was ended once Trump was determined to be the GOP nominee for the 2016 general election.
Fusion GPS was subsequently hired by theHillary Clinton campaign and theDemocratic National Committee through their shared attorney at Perkins Coie,Marc Elias. Fusion GPS then hired Steele,[33] to investigate the possibility of Russia-related activities by Trump.[27] This investigation produced what became known as the Steele dossier.[34]
In July 2016, Steele supplied a report he had written to anFBI agent in Rome.[35] His contact at the FBI was the same senior agent with whom he had worked when investigating the FIFA scandal.[17][10] Two individuals "affiliated" with Russian Intelligence were also aware of Steele's election investigation at this time.[36]
In September 2016, Steele held a series ofoff the record meetings with journalists fromThe New York Times,The Washington Post,Yahoo! News,The New Yorker andCNN.[12] In October 2016, Steele spoke about his discoveries toDavid Corn of the progressive American political magazineMother Jones. Steele said he decided to provide his dossier to both British and American intelligence officials after concluding that the material should not solely be in the possession Trump's political opponents, but was a matter of national security for both countries.[37] Steele re-iterated these concerns a few months later, in January 2018.[38][39]) Corn's resulting 31 October article inMother Jones was the first to publicly mention information which became part of the dossier, although the article did not disclose Steele's identity.[37] The magazine did not publish the dossier itself, however, or detail its allegations, since they could not be verified.[40]
Steele's reaction to the revelations from his sources has been described as that of awhistleblower. Steele said that he found "troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government". According to his sources, "there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit".[37] According to Harding, "Steele was shocked by the extent of collusion his sources were reporting", and told his friends: "For anyone who reads it, this is a life-changing experience."[41] Steele felt what he had unearthed "was something of huge significance, way above party politics".[42] American reporterHoward Blum described Steele's rationale for becoming awhistleblower: "The greater good trumps all other concerns."[42]
According to Simpson's testimony, Steele, who enjoyed a good working reputation "for the knowledge he had developed over nearly 20 years working on Russia-related issues forBritish intelligence,[43] approached theFBI because he was concerned that Trump, then a candidate, was beingblackmailed by Russia.[44]
In relation to a defamation lawsuit filed by Aleksej Gubarev againstBuzzFeed, regarding their publication of the dossier,Senior MasterBarbara Fontaine said Steele was "in many respects in the same position as a whistle-blower" because of his actions "in sending part of the dossier to SenatorJohn McCain and a senior government national security official, and in briefing sections of the US media".[45]
Steele first became aconfidential human source (CHS) for the FBI in 2013 in connection with the investigation of theFIFA corruption case, but he considered the relationship as contractual. He said the relationship "was never really resolved and both sides turned a blind eye to it. It was not really ideal."[46] Later, theInspector General report on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation discusses "divergent expectations about Steele's conduct in connection with his election reporting", as Steele considered his first duty to his paying clients, and not to the FBI. The Inspector General's report states that "Steele contends that he was never a CHS for the FBI but rather that his consulting firm had a contractual relationship with the FBI." (Footnote 200) Steele said "he never recalled being told that he was a CHS and that he never would have accepted such an arrangement, ..." This divergence in expectations was a factor that "ultimately resulted in the FBI formally closing Steele as a CHS in November 2016 (although ... the FBI continued its relationship with Steele through Ohr)".[47]
On 28 October 2016, days before the election, Comey notified Congress that the FBI had started looking into newly discovered Hillary Clinton emails. Simpson and Fritsch described their reaction: "Comey's bombshell prompted the Fusion partners to decide they needed to do what they could to expose the FBI's probe of Trump and Russia. It was Hail Mary time."[48] The founders of Fusion GPS were very upset by what they claimed was a misleading 1 November 2016,New York Times article "published a week before the election with the headline: 'Investigating Donald Trump, FBI Sees No Clear Link to Russia'. In fact, Russiawasmeddling in the election to help Trump win, the U.S. intelligence community would later conclude, though Special CounselRobert Mueller did not find evidence that Trump’s campaign team conspired with the country."[49]
During questioning from Special CounselJohn Durham, Brian Auten, a supervisory counterintelligence analyst with the FBI, testified that, shortly before the 2016 election, the FBI offered Steele "up to $1 million" if he could corroborate allegations in the dossier, but that Steele could not do so.[50] Steele has disputed this description: "And to correct theDanchenko trial record, we were not offered $1 million by the FBI to ‘prove up’ our Trump-Russia reporting. Rather, we were told there were substantial funds to resettle sources in the US if they were prepared to testify in public. Understandably they were not."[51]
In November 2016, after Steele discussed his findings with the press, the FBI formally closed Steele as aconfidential human source.[47][52][53] Simpson later said that "Steele severed his contacts with [the] FBI before the election following public statements by the FBI that it had found no connection between the Trump campaign and Russia and concerns that [the FBI] was being 'manipulated for political ends by the Trump people'."[54][47] Steele had become frustrated with the FBI, whom he believed failed to investigate his reports, choosing instead to focus on theinvestigation into Clinton's emails.[39] According toThe Independent, Steele came to believe there was a "cabal" inside the FBI, particularly its New York field office linked to Trump advisorRudy Giuliani, because it blocked any attempts to investigate the many suspicious[55]links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies.[39]
Steele continued to work for Fusion GPS on the dossier without a client to pay him.[56] After the election, Steele's dossier "became one of Washington's worst-kept secrets, and journalists worked to verify the allegations".[56] On 18 November 2016,Sir Andrew Wood, British ambassador to Moscow from 1995 to 2000, met with U.S. SenatorJohn McCain at theHalifax International Security Forum in Canada, and told McCain about the existence of the dossier.[57] Wood vouched for Steele's professionalism and integrity.[58] In early December, McCain obtained a copy of the dossier fromDavid J. Kramer, a former U.S. State Department official working atArizona State University.[56] On 9 December 2016, McCain met with FBI DirectorJames Comey to pass on the information.[57]
In a second memo Steele wrote in November 2016, after the termination of his contract with Fusion GPS, he reported that Russian officials had claimed that Russia had blocked Donald Trump from nominatingMitt Romney to be hisSecretary of State, due to Romney's hawkishness on Russia.[10][59]
On 11 January 2017,The Wall Street Journal revealed that Steele was the author of the dossier about Trump, citing "people familiar with the matter".[2] Although the dossier's existence had been "common knowledge" among journalists for months at that point and had become public knowledge during the previous week, Steele's name had not been revealed.The Telegraph asserted that Steele's anonymity had been "fatally compromised" afterCNN published his nationality.[33]
The Independent reported that Steele left his home in England several hours before his name was published as the author of the dossier, as he was fearful of retaliation by Russian authorities.[33] In contrast,The Washington Post reported that he left after he had been identified earlier in the day by the initialThe Wall Street Journal report.[60]
On 7 March 2017, as some members of the United States Congress were expressing interest in meeting with or hearing testimony from Steele, he re-emerged after weeks in hiding, appearing publicly on camera and stating, "I'm really pleased to be back here working again at Orbis's offices in London today".[61]
In early January 2017, a two-page summary of the dossier was presented to PresidentBarack Obama and incoming President Donald Trump in meetings with Director of National IntelligenceJames Clapper, FBI DirectorJames Comey, CIA DirectorJohn Brennan, and NSA Director AdmiralMike Rogers.[62][63]
On 10 January 2017,BuzzFeed News was the first media outlet to publish the full 35-page dossier. In publishing the Trump dossier, BuzzFeed said it had been unable to verify or corroborate the allegations.[64] The UK issued a DSMA notice on 10 January 2017, requesting that the media not reveal Steele's identity,[65] although the BBC and other UK news media released the information in news stories the same day. Trump said the dossier's allegations were "fake news" during a press conference.[66]Vladimir Putin also dismissed the claims.[67]
Ynet, an Israeli online news site, reported that US intelligence advised Israeli intelligence officers to be cautious about sharing information with the incoming Trump administration, until the possibility of Russian influence over Trump, suggested by Steele's report, has been fully investigated.[68]
Former British ambassador to Russia, SirTony Brenton, read Steele's report. Speaking onSky News he said, "I've seen quite a lot of intelligence on Russia, and there are some things in it which look pretty shaky". Brenton expressed some doubts due to discrepancies in how the dossier described aspects of the hacking activities, as well as Steele's ability to penetrate the Kremlin and Russian security agencies, given that he is an outsider.[69]
On 15 March 2017, former Acting CIA DirectorMichael Morell raised questions about the dossier. He was concerned about the accuracy of the information, due to the approach taken by Steele to gather it. Steele gave money to intermediaries and the intermediaries paid the sources. Morell said, "Unless you know the sources, and unless you know how a particular source acquired a particular piece of information, you can't judge the information—you just can't." Morell, described as a "Clinton ally" byNBC News, strongly believes that Russia attempted to influence the election via social media, but that there is "smoke but no fire" on Trump's collusion with Russia.[70] In a 2020Washington Post editorial, Morell summarized his view that Russia launched a "human intelligence operation" against the Trump campaign, and that several officials in the Trump campaign may have passed on information due to "naivete".[71]
Although the dossier later became one factor among many in the FBI'sCrossfire Hurricane investigation, a continuation of their existing Russia investigation, it had no role in the start of either investigation. This fact has been the subject of intense discussion and controversy, largely fuelled by false claims made by Trump and his supporters.[72][73]
In early February 2018, theNunes memo, written by aides of RepublicanU.S. RepresentativeDevin Nunes (who was at the time the Chair of theHouse Intelligence Committee), said the information on George Papadopoulos "triggered the opening of" the original FBI investigation in late July 2016 into links between the Trump campaign and Russia.[74] In late February 2018, arebuttal memo by Democrats in the House Intelligence Committee stated that "Christopher Steele's reporting ... played no role in launching the counterintelligence investigation ... In fact, Steele's reporting did not reach the counterintelligence team investigating Russia at FBI headquarters until mid-September 2016, more than seven weeks after the FBI opened its investigation, because the probe's existence was so closely held within the FBI."[75][76]
In April 2018, the House Intelligence Committee, then under Republican control, released a final report on Russian interference in the 2016 election; the report said the House Intelligence Committee had found that "in late July 2016, the FBI opened an enterprise CI [counterintelligence] investigation into the Trump campaign following the receipt of derogatory information about foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos".[8][9][77]
In the summer of 2017, two Republican staffers for theUnited States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence travelled to London to investigate the dossier, visiting the office of Steele's lawyer but not meeting with Steele.[78] In August 2018,RepresentativeDevin Nunes, Chair of theHouse Intelligence Committee, travelled to London in an attempt to meet with the heads ofMI5,MI6, andGCHQ for information about Steele, but was rebuffed by the three agencies.[79][80]
Steele reportedly revealed the identities of the sources used in the dossier to theFBI.[81] Investigators fromRobert Mueller'sSpecial Counselinvestigation team met with Steele in September 2017 to interview him about the dossier's claims.[82][83] TheUnited States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was in contact with lawyers representing Steele.[84]
Over the course of two days in June 2019, Steele was interviewed in London by investigators from theUnited States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General regarding theSteele dossier. They found his testimony surprising[85] and his "information sufficiently credible to have to extend the investigation".[86]
In February 2017, lawyers for Russian internet entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev filed a libel suit against Steele in London. Gubarev claimed he was defamed by allegations in the dossier.[87]
In August 2017, lawyers for Gubarev demanded Steele give a deposition regarding the dossier, as part of alibel lawsuit againstBuzzFeed News[88][89] filed in February.[90] Steele objected to testifying but his objections were rejected by U.S. District Court JudgeUrsula Mancusi Ungaro, who allowed the deposition to proceed.[91][92][90]
In April 2018,Mikhail Fridman,Petr Aven, andGerman Khan—the owners of Russian commercial bankAlfa Bank—filed a libel suit in Washington D.C. against Steele, who mentioned the bank in theSteele dossier.[93] The lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Anthony C. Epstein on 20 August 2018.[94][95]
Alfa Bank partners Petr Aven, Mikhail Fridman, and German Khan brought a lawsuit for defamation in Britain against Orbis Business Intelligence, Steele's private intelligence firm. In July 2020, Justice Warby from theQueen's Bench Division of the BritishHigh Court of Justice ordered Steele to pay damages to Aven and Fridman who Steele claimed had delivered "large amounts of illicit cash" to Vladimir Putin when Putin was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. Judge Warby said the claim was "demonstrably false" and awarded the damages to compensate "for the loss of autonomy, distress and reputational damage caused by the breaches of duty". The judge stated that Steele's dossier also inaccurately claimed that Aven and Fridman provided foreign policy advice to Putin.[96][97][98]
On 5 January 2018,Senate Judiciary Committee ChairmanChuck Grassley, joined by senior Republican memberLindsey Graham, issued acriminal referral regarding Steele to theJustice Department for it to investigate whether Steele had lied to the FBI about his interactions with the media.[99][100][101][102] Because the referral is based on classified FBI documents, the context in which the Republican senators allege Steele to have lied is limited to references that he discussed the dossier with media outlets.[102] Both Grassley and Graham declared that they were not alleging Steele "had committed any crime. Rather, they had passed on the information for 'further investigation only'".[103]
The referral was met with scepticism from legal experts, as well as members of both parties on the Judiciary Committee.[101] Fusion GPS lawyer Joshua A. Levy said the referral was just another effort to discredit the investigation into Russian interference in the election and that, "after a year of investigations into Donald Trump's ties to Russia, the only person Republicans seek to accuse of wrongdoing is one who reported on these matters to law enforcement in the first place."[101] Veteran prosecutorPeter Zeidenberg called the referral "nonsense" because "the FBI doesn't need any prompting from politicians to prosecute people who have lied to them."[101] Another former federal prosecutor, Justin Dillon, said it was "too early to assume the letter was simply a political attack". The senior Democrat on the Committee,Dianne Feinstein, said the referral was made without consultation of any Democrats on the committee and released a five-page rebuttal.[104] A Republican aide said Grassley and Graham were "carrying water for the White House"; that their actions did not reflect the views of the committee as a whole; and that other members were upset with Grassley over the matter.[101]
In an opinion-editorial forPolitico, former CIA official John Sipher said the attacks on Steele, a private citizen who provided information to the FBI that alarmed him, will make future tipsters less likely to approach American law enforcement with information bearing on national security.[105]
On 9 December 2019,U.S. Inspector GeneralMichael Horowitz testified to the House Judiciary Committee that, despite having made 17 mistakes in their applications to theForeign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), the FBI showed no political bias during the investigation of Trump and the Russian government.[106][107][108][109] A redacted version of his report was released the same day.[47]
Steele was a paidconfidential human source for the FBI before preparing the Steele dossier, and the FBI found "Steele's information to be valuable and that it warranted compensation", with Steele receiving $95,000 from the FBI between 2014 and 2016 for information on previous matters unrelated to Trump.[110] From information in the report,ABC News determined that Steele andIvanka Trump had had a business and personal relationship from 2007 for a number of years.[111][112]
One of the report's findings related to conflicting accounts of sourced content in the dossier. When one of Steele's sources was later interviewed by the FBI about the allegations sourced to them, they gave accounts which conflicted with Steele's renderings in the dossier. They indicated that Steele "misstated or exaggerated" the source's statements.[47][109]
The IG found it difficult to discern the causes for the discrepancies between some dossier allegations and explanations later provided to the FBI by the sources of those allegations. The IG attributed the discrepancies to three possible factors: miscommunication between Steele and the sources, "exaggerations or misrepresentations" by Steele, or misrepresentations by the sources when questioned by the FBI.[47]
Another factor was described by the Supervisory Intel Analyst, who believed someone described as "one of the key sources" for the dossier "may have been attempting to minimise his/her role in the election reporting following its release to the public." That person had been the source for "the alleged meeting between Carter Page and Igor Divyekin" and the "allegations concerning Michael Cohen and events in Prague".[47]
Following the dossier's release, Steele completely avoided on-camera interviews until he participated in an ABC News documentary that was aired onHulu on October 18, 2021. In that documentary, Steele maintained that his sources were credible and that it was typical in intelligence investigations to "never get to the point where you're 99% certain of the evidence to secure a conviction". Steele also acknowledged that one of his sources had faced repercussions; he confirmed that the source was still alive, but he would not provide further details.[113]
In 2018, Steele was included as number 38 inVanity Fair's 100-person "New Establishment" list.[114][115] He had grown a beard and been in hiding, but sent a thank you note explaining why he could not attend given his "present legal and political situation".[115][114] When he broke his silence, he used it to criticize Trump[116] during these "strange and troubling times".[117]
Steele was first married to Laura Hunt in July 1990.[118] They had three children; Hunt died in 2009 after a long illness. He remarried in 2012. He and his second wife Katherine had one child and are raising all four children together. He lives inFarnham, Surrey.[10]
In his 2024 bookUnredacted: Russia, Trump, and the Fight for Democracy:[119]
Steele predicts a 'new world disorder' if Trump wins back the presidency in November, and portrays him as more dangerous than U.S. adversaries such as China and Iran. He calls the Republican Party and the former president who dominates it 'the gravest threat to Western democracy and the rule of law … increasingly the willing handmaidens for Putin.'"[120]
C. H. Beck published a translation of this book (titleUngefiltert. Trump, Russland und der globale Kampf um die Demokratie) in October 2024.[121]
Steele, Christopher David; Second later First Secretary FCO since April 1993; born 24.6.64; FCO 1987; Second Secretary (Chancery) Moscow 1990; FCO 1987; m 1990 Laura Katharine Hunt.
Christopher David Steele: 90 Moscow; dob 1964.
Steele, Christopher David; First Secretary (Financial) Paris since September 1998; born 24.6.64; FCO 1987; Second Secretary (Chancery) Moscow 1990; Second later First Secretary FCO 1993; First Secretary Bangkok 1998; m 1990 Laura Katharine Hunt (2s 1996, 1998).
Over a career that spanned more than 20 years, Steele performed a series of roles, but always appeared to be drawn back to Russia; he was, sources say, head of MI6's Russia desk.
The former intelligence officer indicated he is unable to travel to the US at a time of deep divisions between Republicans and Democrats over the Russia probe.
After he left the spy service, Steele supplied the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with information on corruption at FIFA, international soccer's governing body.
Chris said he was very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat and said ... he thought we were obligated to tell someone in government, in our government about this information," Glenn Simpson, the man who hired Steele to conduct opposition research on Trump, told Senate staffers in a transcript released Tuesday. "He said he was professionally obligated to do it.
Chris said he was very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat and said he wanted to—he said he thought we were obligated to tell someone in government, in our government about this information," Simpson said. "He thought from his perspective there was an issue—a security issue about whether a presidential candidate was being blackmailed."
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)According to the report, Mr. Steele created another, previously unreleased memo in late November 2016, which said the Kremlin "intervened to block" Mr. Trump's choice of Mr. Romney for secretary of state. The memo is attributed to a single source described as "a senior Russian official."
US media names ex-MI6 agent as source of the CNN/BuzzFeed dossier on Trump. UK media gets a D-Notice ...
The memo underscores the intensifying partisan debate over special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia. ... The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok.
Despite rhetoric that could help to undermine Mueller's investigation, the Nunes memo specifically says that George Papadopoulos sparked the counterintelligence investigation that ultimately led to the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, the firing of FBI Director James Comey, and the appointment of Mueller as special counsel.
Well, if the newly released Nunes memo is correct, House Republicans and the Trump administration just confirmed the Times' scoop ... Ironically enough, the memo in fact confirms the necessity of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The four-page document released on Friday is at the heart of a firestorm over Donald Trump, Russia and special counsel Robert Mueller. What's in it? ... the memo acknowledges that Papadopoulos, not Page, "triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016".
according to the memo released Friday by House Intelligence Committee Republicans ... Russia investigation itself—and by extension, special counsel Robert Mueller's probe—was launched from ... 'information' about Papadapoulos, rather than the dossier.
But the memo doesn't just fail to discredit the investigation into the Trump campaign—it actually confirms its validity. The core of the GOP's argument against the Mueller probe has been that it was based on unsubstantiated allegations gathered by a Clinton operative. The memo suggests this might be true of the Carter Page warrant—but not of the broader investigation.
Even as Democrats described it as inaccurate, some Republicans quickly cited the memo—released over the objections of the FBI and Justice Department—in their arguments that Mueller's investigation is politically tainted. A closer read presents a far more nuanced picture ... the memo confirms the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign began in July 2016, months before the surveillance warrant was sought, and was "triggered" by information concerning campaign aide George Papadopoulos.
Finding #17
The 35-page document contained several unsubstantiated allegations about Mr Trump, specifically a 2013 trip to Moscow and Mr Steele provided names of the sources of those claims, ABC News reported.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators met this past summer with the former British spy whose dossier on alleged Russian efforts to aid the Trump campaign spawned months of investigations that have hobbled the Trump administration, according to two people familiar with the matter.
A Florida federal judge declined Tuesday to allow a British security company director who is widely believed to have compiled a dossier alleging Russia has compromising information on President Donald Trump to intervene in a Russian technology executive'sdefamation suit against BuzzFeed over the publication of his name in the dossier.
On Monday, a judge in the District of Columbia, Anthony C Epstein, upheld a motion by Steele to have the oligarchs' case thrown out.
In a shocking move Friday afternoon, GOP Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham referred the so-called "Trump dossier" writer Christopher Steele for criminal investigation. They are referring him to the Justice Department for what they say are potential violations regarding inconsistencies Steele made in statements provided to authorities.
Their letter makes what's called a criminal referral to the Justice Department, suggesting they investigate the dossier author, former British spy Christopher Steele, for possibly lying to the FBI.