FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
‘Grassley’ Memo Seeks Criminal Action on Steele; Implicates State Department, Clinton Campaign
Feb. 5, 2018 (EIRNS)—This morning Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) a subcommittee chairman, released an eight-page memorandum, which they had provided to authorities back on Jan. 4, backing up their call for criminal action against “ex” British MI6 spy Christopher Steele, for illegal anti-Trump activity during the 2016 Presidential election period, and implicating the State Department and the Clinton campaign.
There were weeks of delay in getting the FBI and Justice Department to perform the redactions they insisted on.
A facsimile of the document is on Senator Grassley’s Senate website, plus related correspondence with Justice Department and FBI figures.
The Memo’s eight pages are highly redacted, but the essential point becomes clear: A Clinton campaign associate shopped anti-Trump information, from an unnamed foreign source, to a State Department figure. This State Department individual shopped the information to Christopher Steele, who then produced a dossier (dated Oct. 19, 2016, and not so far released), and who spread it to media and the FBI. (Nota bene: This Steele dossier in question is not the infamous dodgy dossier against Trump that was revealed in January 2017.)
It is widely reported that the key figures referred to in this chain of anti-Trump collusion with the British operative, are: Jonathan Winer at the State Department; and Cory Shearer, an associate of the Clintons.
Here is the exact language from the “Grassley” memo:
“One memorandum by Mr. Steele that was not published by BuzzFeed is dated October 19, 2016. The report alleges BLANK, as well as BLANK. Mr. Steele’s memorandum states that his company ‘received this report from U.S. State Department,’ that the report was the second in a series, and that the report was information that came from a foreign sub-source ‘who is in touch with BLANK, a contact of BLANK, a friend of the Clintons, who passed it to BLANK.’ It is troubling enough that the Clinton Campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele allegations raises additional concerns about his credibility.”
Senator Grassley has repeatedly pointed to the glaring “discrepancies” in what Steele has told a court in London over the past year, and what he has told authorities here in the U.S.
Jonathan Winer has had a career at the State Department spanning time as Obama’s Special Envoy for Libya (2013-2016), Senior Advisor for MEK [Mujahideen e-Khalq] matters (resettling, protection, out of Iraq); Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (1990s) for law enforcement, including cross-border money, drugs and financial matters. He served when Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State, under which the Wall Street deal with Colombian FARC narco-terrorists was struck in June 1999, featuring the “Grasso Abrazo”—embrace of Richard Grasso, president of the New York Stock Exchange, with Colombian FARC financial matters leader Raul Reyes.
Cody Shearer is a shadowy figure, who has done operations in Bosnia and other conflict zones. He is described as a “fixer” for Bill and Hillary Clinton; and a partner of Clinton associate Sidney Blumenthal.
On the Memo’s delay, in brief: The memorandum was first provided Jan. 4 by Grassley and Graham to Justice Department and FBI authorities, as support for a separate letter from the Senators demanding a criminal investigation of Christopher Steele. Release of the memo has been held up for weeks.
On Feb. 2, the day the “Nunes” memo was released, after it was approved by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and approved for public issuance by President Donald Trump that day, then Senator Grassley fired off a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, that they must finish what was necessary to approve the memo in question for release by Feb. 6. This Feb. 2 letter is available on Chuck Grassley’s Senate website.
He also posted a statement this morning, headlined, “FBI Required Redactions of Unclassified Material; Grassley Seeks Full Declassification Review.” In the statement Grassley says,
“The government should not be blotting out information that it admits isn’t secret, and it should not take dramatic steps by Congress and the White House to get answers that the American people are demanding.... That means declassifying as much of the underlying documents as possible.”
