old salt wrote: ↑Thu Jul 11, 2019 4:57 pm
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 11, 2019 4:19 pmI could well be misunderstanding but I believe the reporting is that the IG team spent 16 hours with Steele themselves. Initially skeptical, they came away as believers.
...believers in what ? What Steele reported in his dossier or what Steele told them about his dealings with the DoJ, FBI, State Dept & MSM ?
What is the IG investigating ?
You think you know what the IG's going to conclude ?
You don't even know what they questioned Steele about.
Here's the original report from Marc Hosenball of Reuters, upon which all the other "reporting" (& speculation) are based :
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1U410I
Federal lawyers probing the origins of the investigation of ties between Russia and President Donald Trump’s campaign have interviewed the author of a “dossier” that alleged misconduct between Trump and Moscow, prompting the lawyers to extend their inquiry.
Three attorneys from the Inspector General’s office of the U.S. Department of Justice met in person in early June with dossier author Christopher Steele in Britain, said two sources with direct knowledge of the lawyers’ travels.
The Justice Department’s inspector general has been examining the earliest stages of an FBI investigation of Trump, his former 2016 presidential campaign rival Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Russia and former Trump adviser Carter Page.
One of the two sources said Horowitz’s investigators appear to have found Steele’s information sufficiently credible to have to extend the investigation. Its completion date is now unclear.
A key focus of the Horowitz probe is whether the FBI followed proper procedures when it applied for a warrant with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to secretly conduct surveillance on Page and his ties to Russia.
Declassified documents show that the FBI cited information in Steele’s dossier when it asked the secretive FISA court in late 2016 for a warrant to eavesdrop electronically on Page, a U.S. businessman with interests in Russia.
Horowitz’s office in Washington declined to comment.
A spokesman for Orbis Business Intelligence, Steele’s London investigations firm, declined to comment.
UK government agencies declined to disclose whether they were in contact with Horowitz’s team in London.
Investigators working for Mueller in September 2017 twice interviewed Steele, who also gave written testimony to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in August 2018. That panel and other committees of Congress have taken up where Mueller left off after his investigation ended.
Mueller had the intel analysts at his disposal. The IG does not. The Mueller Report did not even cite Steele's "intel".
Yup, they found Steele credible. 16 hours.
What, do you think he told him it was all bogus and that's what they found credible?
No, they were looking to try to find evidence that the counter-intelligence operation was ill-founded, or worse. That's what Barr wants to hear. Find that, and the IG can give the GOP what it wants and wrap things up with a report to that effect. Find the opposite and the investigation continues on.
Now, the reporting
could be inaccurate or confused, but it says they found Steele to be credible.
Kinda undermines the whole notion that he's a liar.
But why would the Steele dossier be discussed at any length in the Mueller Report?
Mueller reported on what
his team's investigation uncovered from an actual investigation that they, not Steele, performed. Of course, what they did not include was all sorts of threads and information that remain outstanding in other investigations, both counter intelligence and financial crimes etc. Whole bunch of investigations outstanding.
