Two powerful Senate committee chairman are expanding their hunt for documents that might shine light on abuses during the bungled Russia collusion probe, demanding new evidence be turned over by CIA Director Gina Haspel and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, sent letters this week to the CIA, State Department, Office of Director of National Intelligence and the FBI that signal the scope of their probes has expanded with recent new revelations.
Many of the new request appear to focus on people who are suspected to have contributed materials to Christopher Steele's faulty anti-Trump dossier or who trafficked information from the opposition research memo to government officials.
For instance, the chairmen demanded records from Pompeo's department concerning:
- Clinton acolyte and former deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott, who has admitted he received and provided copies of the Steele dossier
- former Clinton associates Cody Shearer and Sidney Blumenthal. Shearer, a relative of Talbott, wrote a dossier similar to Steele's that was provided to the former MI-6 agent.
- former State officials Victoria Nuland, Jonathan Winer and Kathleen Kavalec, all who had contact with Steele as he was developing his dossier.
The senators also made their most sweeping demands for records from CIA, including any information the spy agency provided the FBI concerning the credibility of Steele as a human source. Recently declassified footnotes from the Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz's report on Russia probe abuses revealed that the CIA had provided red flags about Steele's reporting, including that he had been targeted with Russian intelligence agency disinformation about Donald Trump while writing the dossier.
The lawmakers also pressed CIA for any records of requests for assistance from foreign allies in the Russia collusion probe.
read more here: https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/dramatic-expansion-russia-probe-senate-investigators
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