Competing memos from the Republicans and the Democrats on the House intelligence committee both say that information about George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, had prompted the FBI investigation in July 2016.
Papadopoulos had contacts with Russian intermediaries during the campaign,
according to the Justice Department, and later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about those contacts. While he was a Trump campaign adviser, Papadopoulos met with a professor with connections to Russian government officials who told him “about the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails,'” and he tried to arrange a meeting between the Russian government and the campaign, the DOJ’s statement of the offense said.
A memo released Feb. 2, 2018, by the Republicans on the House intelligence committee raised concerns about the use of the dossier in an application from the DOJ and FBI under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to conduct electronic surveillance on
Carter Page, another Trump campaign foreign policy adviser. But it said the “Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016.”
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The Democrats on the House intelligence committee agreed with that,
saying in a memo released Feb. 24, 2018, that the FBI investigation started “more than seven weeks” before the FBI received Steele’s intelligence reporting in mid-September of that year.
The two sides disagree about how essential the dossier was to the FISA court application to monitor Page. But
one of the few points of agreement is that the FBI investigation began with information on Papadopoulos.
After the GOP memo was released, Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, also a member of the intelligence committee, said the dossier didn’t have any effect on the Russia investigation. “I actually don’t think it has any impact on the Russia probe,” Gowdy
said on Feb. 4, 2018, on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Gowdy mentioned other incidents that had nothing to do with the dossier, including Papadopoulos’ contacts with the professor and the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting Donald Trump Jr. arranged with what he was told was a “Russian government attorney” offering incriminating information on Hillary Clinton. “So there’s going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier.”
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The Steele dossier didn’t start “many months” before the FBI launched its counterintelligence investigation. Glenn R. Simpson of Fusion GPS
testified to Congress that he hired Steele in May or June 2016, asking Steele to “find out about Donald Trump’s business activities in Russia.” The first of a series of memos from Steele was dated June 20, 2016, and Simpson said he would have received it “within a couple days” of that date. That’s one month before the FBI counterintelligence investigation began.
There’s also no evidence that Ohr’s late July 2016 meeting with Steele precipitated the FBI investigation. Ohr, a former associate deputy attorney general with the Department of Justice,
testified to Congress that he didn’t know about the FBI investigation at the time. Ohr said he reached out to then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and met with McCabe in August 2016 to provide the information Steele had given him. “I don’t recall the exact date. I’m guessing it would have been in August since I met with Chris Steele at the end of July, and I’m pretty sure I would have reached out to Andrew McCabe soon afterwards,” Ohr said in his August 2018 testimony.
Dossier Not What 'Started All of This' - FactCheck.org
