(Jerry Dunleavy) British ex-spy Christopher Steele testified he met with Democratic lawyers during the 2016 presidential election, and one provided him with now-debunked claims about alleged Trump-Russia collusion as he compiled his dossier.
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by Jerry Dunleavy, April 28th, 2020
Steele, a former MI6 agent whose salacious and unverified dossier was used by the FBI in its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act targeting of Trump campaign associate Carter Page, discussed his meetings with two lawyers tied to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee during a deposition in a British court in mid-March, according to a transcript obtained by the Daily Caller.
Michael Sussman and Marc Elias, two top lawyers for the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented the Clinton campaign and the DNC, played an even more significant role in the Trump-Russia investigation than previously known.
Steele testified Sussman provided him with claims about Alfa Bank’s purported ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a late July meeting. These allegations made their way into a mid-September 2016 memo that became part of Steele’s dossier, although Steele repeatedly misspells “Alfa” as “Alpha.” Shortly after writing that memo, Steele met with Elias, who was the general counsel for Clinton’s campaign and had personally hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS in April 2016 on the campaign’s behalf. Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson hired Steele in June 2016. It is not known what Steele and Elias discussed at their meeting.
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The former MI6 agent and Orbis Business Intelligence co-founder made these revelations during a deposition as part of a defamation lawsuit brought against him by the Russian founders of Alfa Bank (Mikhail Fridman, Petr Even, and German Khan), who deny the claims made about them by Steele in his dossier.
For months in 2016, Steele shared with government officials the claim that an Alfa Bank server was a mode of communication for Trump-Russia collusion.
“I’m very clear is that the first person that ever mentioned the Trump server issue, Alfa server issue, was Mr. Sussman,” he told Alfa Bank’s lawyers in March. Steele also said, “I was given the instruction sometime after that meeting by Mr. Simpson” to look into that as part of his dossier investigation, and said the Fusion GPS co-founder’s instruction “was absolutely, definitely linked to the server issue.”
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz dismissed the Alfa Bank Trump-Russia collusion claims in his December report on FISA abuse. Newly declassified footnotes also show the bureau was aware Steele’s source network might have been compromised by Russian disinformation.
Steele’s dossier claims a “top level Russian official confirms current closeness of Alpha Group – Putin relationship” and that “significant favors continue to be done in both directions” with “Fridman and Even still giving informal advice to Putin, especially on the U.S.” Steele’s dossier claims “the Russian government figure” reported Fridman, Even, and Khan “had their ups and downs” but were “currently on very good terms with Putin.”
Horowitz’s report shows Steele pushed the claim Alfa Bank was a secret conduit between Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and the Kremlin during an early October meeting with State Department figures Jonathan Winer and Kathleen Kavalec. Steele also told DOJ official Bruce Ohr in late September the Alfa Bank server was a link to the Trump campaign and that the Russia-American organization belonging to “Person 1” used the Alfa Bank server two weeks prior.
“Steele told us that the information about Alfa Bank was not generated by Orbis,” Horowitz said. “The FBI investigated whether there were cyber links between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, but had concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links.”
Although Steele was the source for a late September 2016 Yahoo News article on Carter Page and a late October 2016 Mother Jones piece alleging a Russian operation to cultivate Trump, Sussman is reportedly the source for news stories in 2016 about alleged secretive server communications between the Russian bank and the Trump Organization. It is not yet known how Sussman was led to these claims. Slate reported at the end of October 2016 that researchers found “a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank.”
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The New York Times published a piece at the start of November 2016, which stated that “FBI officials spent weeks examining computer data showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server and Alfa Bank.” The report noted that “the FBI ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts.”
Former FBI General Counsel James Baker testified in 2018 that Sussman, a former DOJ colleague of his, separately shared the Alfa Bank claims with him during a September 2016 meeting. And notes from Ohr’s December 2016 meeting with Simpson show the Fusion GPS co-founder said the New York Times was wrong to doubt the Alfa Bank server story.
Interviews that Sussman and Elias gave to the House Intelligence Committee are among the dozens of witness transcripts which Democratic Chairman Adam Schiff has declined to make public.
Horowitz criticized the Justice Department and the FBI in December for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the FISA warrants against Page in 2016 and 2017 and for the bureau’s reliance on Steele’s unverified dossier. Robert Mueller said his special counsel investigation “identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign” but “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Robby Mook, Clinton’s presidential campaign manager, said in 2017 he authorized Elias, who heads Perkins Coie’s political law group, to hire an outside firm to dig up dirt on Trump’s connections with Russia in 2016. Mook said Elias was receiving information from Fusion GPS about the research into Trump and Russia in 2016, and Elias periodically briefed the Clinton campaign.
“I’m proud that we were able to assemble some of the research that has brought this to light,” Mook said.
The FBI told Steele in October 2016 it was looking into Page as well as Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos, future Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, and Manafort. Steele passed along at least some of this to Fusion GPS.
Perkins Coie was paid more than $12 million between 2016 and 2017 for representing Clinton and the DNC. According to Simpson, Fusion GPS was paid $50,000 per month from Perkins Coie, and Fusion GPS paid Steele roughly $168,000.
Photo credit: Victoria Jones/AP
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