Newly released FBI documents give the public a better insight into the working relationship between former British spy Christopher Steele and the Bureau in the year leading up to the presidential election. The documents, obtained by Judicial Watch, are highly redacted, but they still contain some interesting tidbits of information that were not previously known. Unfortunately, due to the amount of information that the FBI blacked out, the documents raise more questions than answers. What they do, however, is continue the trend, which is simply: The more we dig beneath the surface of what the FBI was up to in 2016, the more this whole thing stinks to high heaven. God only knows what the full truth will reveal.
Among other things, the new records reveal that the FBI first issued an admonishment to Steele in early 2016 before he was even on the Donald Trump trail (officially, that is). Steele signed and acknowledged the warning but went on to speak to the news media at least twice over the course of the year, both times in violation of his “confidential human source” agreement with the Bureau. On the second of these occasions, the FBI terminated his contract and stopped working with Steele in an official capacity. It is not clear, however, if they continued to speak with him about his “dossier” work after that time in an unofficial way.
From the Washington Times:
News of the verbal admonishment is contained in 70 pages of mostly redacted FBI documents on what Mr. Steele reported as a CHS, how much he was paid and how he met his demise as a key bureau undercover source.
The documents were obtained by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which went to court to obtain them.
Totally redacted pay request forms show 11 payments in 2016, but don’t reveal his project. Mr. Steele, a Kremlin expert who runs Orbis Business Intelligence in London, had a previous FBI association and the payments could have been for other work.
If the money was for Trump-related spying or Russia intelligence, then Mr. Steele was collecting from two sources: the bureau and the Hillary Clinton campaign/Democratic Party. They hired Fusion GPS to run Mr. Steele as a source for Trump opposition research.
This couldn’t look any dirtier if it were literally covered in street mud. Steele was double-dipping, getting a paycheck from both Fusion (read: Hillary Clinton) and the FBI (read: Barack Obama). And yet we’re supposed to take seriously the memos he was writing on behalf of his partisan clients?
When the hell is Jeff Sessions going to step in and put an end to all of this? It’s built on a foundation of utter nonsense and it is getting more nonsensical with every passing day. Enough is enough.
