President Trump on Twitter Wednesday lashed out at corrupt officials at the FBI, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), for inflicting the fraudulent Steele dossier on the American people.
In his tweet, the president expressed shock that the Bureau in 2016 made eleven payments to British spy Christopher Steele, who was working for the Democratic opposition research firm Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC and Clinton campaign.
“Wow! FBI made 11 payments to Fake Dossier’s discredited author, Trump hater Christopher Steele. … The Witch Hunt has been a total fraud on your President and the American people!” he wrote.
“It was brought to you by Dirty Cops, Crooked Hillary and the DNC,” Trump added.
Wow! FBI made 11 payments to Fake Dossier’s discredited author, Trump hater Christopher Steele. @OANN @JudicialWatch The Witch Hunt has been a total fraud on your President and the American people! It was brought to you by Dirty Cops, Crooked Hillary and the DNC.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2019
The president referenced the conservative news outlet OANN, which reported on the story on Tuesday. Documents previously released by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch show that there were at least eleven FBI payments to Steele in 2016.
As part of its “extensive investigation” into the Clinton-funded anti-Trump dossier, Judicial Watch on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice for communication and payment records between the FBI, Steele, and his private firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.
Judicial Watch is now trying to determine how involved the FBI was in pushing the discredited anti-Trump dossier on the American people.
Beginning in late July of 2016, former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr began communicating with Steele and transferring information from Steele and Fusion GPS to the FBI, Epoch Times reported, based on Ohr’s August 2018 congressional testimony.
Sometime in late 2016, Nellie Ohr provided her husband with a memory stick containing the research she compiled while employed at Fusion GPS. Bruce Ohr testified he gave the memory stick to FBI agent Joe Pientka. Nellie Ohr had left Fusion in September 2016.
FBI records, uncovered by Judicial Watch show that Steele was cut off as a “Confidential Human Source” in November 2016 after he disclosed his relationship with the FBI to the media.
Despite this, Ohr communicated with Steele regularly for another full year, until November 2017, according to his testimony.
Ohr relayed all these communications with Steele to the FBI through Pientka and possibly two other handlers.
On Nov. 21, 2016, Ohr had a meeting with Strzok and Page and was introduced to Pientka, who became Ohr’s FBI handler. Pientka was also present with Strzok during the Jan. 24, 2017, interview of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Ohr testified to Congress that “at some point during 2017,” Christopher Steele himself spoke “with somebody from the FBI, but I don’t know who.”
Fusion GPS paid $168,000 in 2016 to Orbis Business Intelligence, according to Judicial Watch.
“How and why did the FBI pay Christopher Steele, who was already being funded by the Clinton campaign and DNC through Fusion GPS?” asked Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “That we had to sue for this basic information shows the FBI may have something more to hide.”
The Federalist’s Sean Davis reminded his followers on Twitter that the information Steele was peddling to the FBI in 2016 and 2017 was likely the result of a massive Russian disinformation campaign. “There was Russian collusion in 2016, but from Hillary and Obama,” Davis pointed out.
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1118508171511902208
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