The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee behind operation
The Clinton’s paid for information targeting Donald Trump as part of a sophisticated strategy which used the personal connections from former Spy Christopher Steele, and Fusion GPS’s to frame the President.
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) funded the operation, which began disseminating information on Trump.
The campaign reached the highest levels of the FBI and DOJ as Simpson and Steele fed information n directly to the bureau while using their within other agencies, thus creating extra channels into the FBI.
They also used top media connections to create a ‘distribution channel’ to leak the unverified material against Donald Trump and his campaign.
A recent court filing revealed an associate of the late Senator John McCain leaked the unverified dossier to BuzzFeed News, in effect, triggering the Russia probe.
The federal court document shows that an official from the Arizona Republican’s McCain Institute, David Kramer, shared a copy of the Hillary Clinton Campaign/DNC-funded opposition research dossier with a BuzzFeed reporter.
According to Epoch Times: It was in “early March of 2016” that Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie—the law firm used by the Clinton campaign and the DNC—expressing interest in engagement, according to an Oct. 24, 2017, response letter by Perkins Coie.
Perkins Coie “engaged Fusion in April of 2016, to perform a division of research services during the 2016 election cycle.”
The law firm remarked that “the engagement concluded before the November 2016 Presidential election.”
Steel’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, was retained by Fusion during the period between June and November 2016.
During this time, Steel produced 16 memos, with the last memo dated Oct. 20, 2016.
There is one final memo that Steele wrote on Dec. 13 at the request of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Steele provided Fusion GPS with something that Simpson’s firm was lacking—access to individuals within the FBI and the State Department.
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These contacts could be traced back to at least 2010 when Steele had assisted in the FBI’s investigation into FIFA over concerns that Russia might have been engaging in bribery to host the 2018 World Cup.
Sometime in the latter portion of 2014, Steele started to informally provide reports to the State Department.
One of the recipients of the reports was Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.
“During the Ukraine crisis in 2014 and ‘15, Chris Steele had a number of commercial clients who were asking him for reports on what was going on in Russia, what was going on in Ukraine, what was going on between them,” said Nuland on CBS’ Face the Nation on Feb. 4, 2018.
“Chris had a friend at the State Department, and he offered us that reporting free so that we could also benefit from it. It was one of, you know, hundreds of sources that we were using to try to understand what was going on,” she said.
Last year Neon Nettle reported Steele had testified before a London court that he was commissioned in the run-up to the election to provide a basis to challenge the legitimacy of results if Donald Trump should win.
The law firm used by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Perkins Coie, purportedly hired the ex-spy to “unearth evidence” of the Trump campaign conspiring with Moscow on election interference, according to Steele.
If Steele’s testimony is true, it suggests that the Clinton Campaign seemingly planned the Russia probe of the election, as a plan B in case Trump won.
But after Steele’s company was hired by Fusion GPS in June, he started to reach out to the FBI through Michael Gaeta, an FBI agent, and assistant legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Rome.
Gaeta also headed up the FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime unit, which specializes in investigating criminal groups from Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine.
Details over the primary contact in June between Steele and Gaeta vary.
The Guardian reported that “In June, Steele flew to Rome to brief the FBI contact with whom he had cooperated over FIFA.”
ABC News reported that “Steele sent the FBI agent in Rome the opposition research on Trump he generated working for Fusion GPS.”
Gaeta had known Steele since at least 2010 when Steele assisted in the FIFA probe.
Gaeta was identified as Steele’s FBI handler in a July 16, 2018, Congressional testimony before the House judiciary and oversight committees by former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who earlier served as a special counsel to Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe at the time.
“In the middle of July, when he [Steele] was doing this other work and became concerned … he passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding, and our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That’s something for the FBI to investigate,” Nuland said in her February 2018 appearance on Face the Nation.
Exactly what happened with the reports that Gaeta brought back from London, and precisely who he gave them to within the FBI remains unknown.
During the period following Steele’s initial contact with the FBI, there appears to have been no further FBI interaction or communication with Steele.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel for the Trump–Russia investigation in May 2017.
Rosenstein then removed the investigation out of McCabe’s control, making FBI efforts to re-engage Steele impossible.