After years of legal wrangling, a federal judge has given the FBI 60 days to cough up records of their communications with former British spy Christopher Steele after he was terminated as a confidential human source.

The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch first sought FBI documents on Steele in May of 2017 through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The court initially sided with the FBI but reopened the case in 2018 when evidence emerged that Steele was an FBI informant. Judicial Watch again asked the FBI to search for their Steele records, but the FBI continued to stonewall, declining to confirm or deny that they even existed.

Now, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper has put an end to the cat-and-mouse game.

“Those records might either bolster or weaken Steele’s credibility as a source,” Judge Cooper said in his ruling. “That information, in turn, could provide a basis on which to evaluate the FBI’s performance of its law-enforcement duties, including its judgment in selecting and relying on confidential sources, especially in connection with such a politically sensitive subject.” . . .

According to documents released in August of 2018, the Bureau in 2016 made eleven payments to Steele, who was at the time working for the Democratic opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which was hired by the Perkins Coie law firm on behalf of the DNC and Clinton campaign. Incredibly, Steele’s Democratic funding was never disclosed to the FISA court. (Read more from “Federal Judge Orders FBI to Search for More Christopher Steele Docs” HERE)

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After two years, over 2,800 subpoenas, and nearly 500 search warrants and witness interviews, Special Counsel Robert Mueller “did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” While the “Trump-Russia collusion” conspiracy theory that has largely driven the mainstream news cycle for two years is dead, the story behind the investigation is getting juicier by the day.

More details about how U.S. intelligence attempted to infiltrate, or “spy” on, the Trump campaign have come to light, including that the FBI used an “attractive” female undercover investigator in an ultimately fruitless attempt to draw out some relevant “collusion”-related information from Trump aide George Papadopoulos.

“The conversation at a London bar in September 2016 took a strange turn when the woman sitting across from George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, asked a direct question: Was the Trump campaign working with Russia?” The New York Times reported Thursday. “The woman had set up the meeting to discuss foreign policy issues. But she was actually a government investigator posing as a research assistant, according to people familiar with the operation. The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.”

The role of the woman, who told Papadopoulos her name was “Azra Turk,” is “one previously unreported detail of an operation that has become a political flash point in the face of accusations by President Trump and his allies that American law enforcement and intelligence officials spied on his campaign to undermine his electoral chances,” the Times notes.

Trump has decried the FBI’s investigation into his campaign as “Spygate” — and the name seems more appropriate with each new revelation. The Times admits as much, noting that the “Azra Turk” wrinkle could give Trump and his defenders “ammunition” about their “spying” allegations. (Read more from “FBI Attempted to Use ‘Attractive’ Woman for Information From Trump Aide” HERE)

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Carter Page, the man who federal investigators first targeted for surveillance on the unfounded premise that he was a potential agent for Russia, part of the feds’ now debunked “collusion” claim against the Trump campaign, wasn’t charged — or even so much as mentioned — in Mueller’s various indictments, none of which were related to the original focus of the investigation. Having been finally vindicated with Mueller’s report submitted to the attorney general and no further indictments issued, Page is now getting his chance to tell his story without the cloud of the years-long investigation hanging over his head.

In an interview with former CBS investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson published by Full Measure Sunday, Page describes the FBI’s “outrageous, preposterous” claims against him. Full Measure offers a description of Page, details of which most reports citing him over the last two years have somehow failed to emphasize: He was “a Naval officer in Europe and the Mideast with a brief stint in Navy intelligence,” holds two Masters and a PhD, was “a successful investment adviser and worked in Russia from 2004-2007,” and — the part that really didn’t get much play by the mainstream outlets — has a long history of helping the FBI and CIA in counter-Russia investigations.

“It’s been reported that you assisted the FBI years ago in the case of corporate espionage by a Russian spy case. Is that true?” asked Attkisson.

“I had alluded to the fact that I’d helped out CIA and FBI going back decades,” Carter responded, citing relationships he developed in his time in the military as aiding him in those endeavors.

“So the theory was, at the time, that a guy who had helped the FBI and CIA in the past, including with potential spy cases, himself became a spy while being watched by the FBI?” asked Attkisson. (Read more from “Trump Advisor FBI First Targeted for ‘Collusion’ Gives New Details About Feds’ ‘Preposterous’ Claims” HERE)

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