Fusion GPS Transcript Debunks Key GOP Claim About Trump-Russia Dossier
Republicans definitely didn’t want this information to be made public.
Donald Trump and Republicans have had two major claims in an attempt to discredit the Trump-Russia dossier.
First, Trump and the Republicans have said that the dossier authored by British spy Christopher Steele has been disproven. We know from a wide range of public reporting that this GOP claim is not true. In fact, public reporting shows that substantial portions of Steele’s work has been proven correct. And largely none of it has been disproven.
Second, over and over, again Republicans have said that the FBI used the Trump-Russia dossier as the basis for opening their investigation into the Trump campaign. However, the testimony released by Senator Feinstein today contradicts this the Republican claim.
So the argument that Trump and Republicans have been making is that the FBI used an unreliable dossier to open an investigation into the Trump campaign. But, as we now know, neither of the GOP’s two claims are correct.
The dossier has largely been proven to be true and now, thanks to the newly released transcript of the testimony of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, the FBI didn’t open their investigation because of the Trump-Russia dossier.
In fact, the FBI was already investigating Donald Trump’s campaign for collusion with the Russian government prior to receiving any information from Christopher Steele and his dossier.
According to the testimony of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson before the Senate, the FBI told Steele they had already received a “walk-in” source informing them of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
Simpson told Congress the FBI “believed Chris’s information might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing, and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization.”
This line in the transcript has caused a significant amount of speculation that the FBI has a mole in the Trump campaign.
However, others have said they believe this is a reference to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos accidentally initiating the FBI’s investigation after a night of heavy drinking where he told an Australian diplomat that Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton. This led the Austrailian diplomat to inform the FBI that the Trump campaign may be colluding with Russia to win the election.
But either way, the testimony from the Fusion GPS founder certainly debunks the key Republican claim about the Russia investigation. The FBI initiated their investigation before Steele came to them with his warning, and Steele’s information simply confirmed much of what they already knew.
[images via CSPAN screenshots]
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