Primary source of Steele dossier acquitted on charges of lying to the FBI in major defeat for Durham investigation on July 12, 2019.
Special counsel Robert Mueller‘s office told House Intelligence Committee leaders that it was “close,” three days after the committee voted to authorize its staff to investigate the origins of the anti-Trump dossier that formed the basis for several FBI and DOJ Russia collusion investigations, according to a source who spoke with Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and other House Democratic members.
The report came in response to Nunes’ call for information from the Mueller team. The source told The Daily Beast that the information was the Mueller team’s “final, complete and unedited” response to the committee.
Mueller’s Office told the leadership that the dossier was “not the sole basis for [its] investigation” because it did not mention a link with Russia.
But it told the leadership that it could not say whether the dossier was the “sole basis for the investigation of the committee,” a request that came in response to a question about why investigators had been so focused on Steele.
The Mueller team’s report to House leadership was the first time the dossier came to light publicly. It was released by BuzzFeed during the final weeks of the House Intelligence Committee’s Republican-led investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia.
In their response to Nunes, the Mueller team said that its investigation was prompted by “a separate source” and that the Fusion GPS opposition research firm had “no knowledge of the existence” of the dossier. It said that BuzzFeed’s reporting was “not a corroboration of the dossier.” But it noted that “[t]he existence of the dossier has been repeatedly reported by multiple news outlets, including BuzzFeed, CNN, the New York Times, as well as members of Congress.”
A senior Senate intelligence official told The Daily Beast that the Mueller team’s report to the leadership was “a pretty definitive denial of BuzzFeed’s reporting” and that a senior prosecutor “actually said to a member of the leadership team, ‘I don’t know if BuzzFeed’s reporting is a corroboration of the dossier, but I’m telling you that BuzzFeed’s reporting has not caused us to change the way