REVEALED: FBI Withheld Negative Information About Steele; Outlets That Covered Steele Dossier During ‘Russiagate’ Go Silent as Steele’s Ties to Kremlin Revealed
By Daily Caller. Bill Priestap, the FBI’s former chief of counterintelligence, told Justice Department investigators he agreed not to disclose information he learned about Christopher Steele as a precondition for a meeting with British government officials regarding the former MI6 officer, according to recently declassified information.
Priestap and his deputy, Peter Strzok, traveled to the United Kingdom in November and December 2016 to assess the reliability of Steele, a former MI6 officer whose dossier the FBI used for its investigation into the Trump campaign.
Priestap and Strzok received mixed reviews about Steele from his former colleagues, according to a Justice Department inspector general’s report on the FBI’s probe.
Some vouched for Steele’s honesty and integrity, but several others questioned his judgement and “lack of self-awareness.” Some colleagues described Steele as “smart,” and a “person of integrity,” their notes said. . .
But their notes also reflected negative reviews on Steele. He “[d]emonstrates lack of self-awareness, poor judgment,” was “underpinned by poor judgment,” and “[r]eporting in good faith, but not clear what he would have done to validate,” one source said. (Read more from “REVEALED: FBI Withheld Negative Information About Steele” HERE)
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Outlets That Covered Steele Dossier During ‘Russiagate’ Go Silent as Steele’s Ties to Kremlin Revealed
By National Review. Many of the same news outlets that provided comprehensive coverage of Christopher Steele’s opposition research dossier during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation have yet to cover newly declassified information that indicates the much-publicized Steele Dossier contained Russian disinformation.
In response to requests from Senators Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R., Wisc.), the Department of Justice on April 10 declassified four footnotes included in Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. As of Thursday — six days after the footnotes became public — The New York Times and CBS News are the only mainstream outlets to cover the development. A host of other news outlets that closely followed the “Russiagate” story — and reported constantly on information related to Steele’s findings — have thus far ignored the new information. . .
Buzzfeed — which published the entire dossier composed by former British spy Christopher Steele in January 2017 — CNN, The Washington Post, Politico, and other outlets still have yet to cover the developments, despite widely circulating Steele’s claims following the release of his dossier, which played a “central and essential” role in obtaining FISA warrants against the 2016 Trump campaign.
In February 2017, CNN cited anonymous officials who had corroborated some of Steele’s claims for the first time, giving them “greater confidence” about the dossier’s credibility, and whose television anchors have insisted multiple times that “much of the dossier has been corroborated.” (Read more from “Outlets That Covered Steele Dossier During ‘Russiagate’ Go Silent as Steele’s Ties to Kremlin Revealed” HERE)
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