PRESS RELEASE
Senator Grassley Demands Answers on FBI’s Role in Steele Dossier, Trump Investigation
April 2, 2017 (EIRNS)—In a March 28 letter to FBI Director James Comey, the second such letter to Comey in the space of a month, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, demands answers to questions about the FBI’s role in the case of the "dodgy dossier" prepared by "ex"-MI6 agent Christopher Steele, and about the murky role of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe in the Trump-Russia investigation.
As indicated by his March 24 letter to the head of the political opposition research firm Fusion GPS, Grassley is unrelenting in pursuing issues related to the British intelligence origins of the assault on President Donald Trump.
In his March 28 letter, reported by the Washington Examiner, Grassley asked the FBI to turn over all records relating to Steele and the dossier, as well as an explanation of
"all FBI policies, procedures and guidelines applicable when the FBI seeks to fund an investigator associated with a political opposition research firm connected to a political candidate or with any outside entity."
As for Andrew McCabe, Grassley points out that he didn’t recuse himself from the Clinton email investigation, despite the fact that his wife had received a $700,000 donation from a close Clinton associate for her campaign for Virginia State Senator. Moreover, if McCabe is participating in the Trump-Russia proble, how could he investigate Trump if he had a conflict of being too close to Clinton? Senator Grassley underscores that the importance of these questions is magnified
"if Mr. McCabe was involved in approving or establishing the FBI’s reported arrangement with Mr. Steele, or if Mr. McCabe vouched for or otherwise relied on the politically-funded dossier in the course of the investigation.... The American people should know if the FBI’s second-in-command relied on Democrat-funded opposition research to justify an investigation of the Republican presidential campaign."
Grassley concludes with several pointed questions about McCabe, including whether he had had any interactions with Steele; whether he had briefed anyone in the Obama administration on the Trump-Russia investigation; whether he was ever authorized to speak to the media about the case; and whether "anyone in the FBI [has] raised questions about McCabe’s possible Clinton-Trump conflict of interests."
