Mueller still relying on discredited dossier

Paul Sperry:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is continuing to use a controversial 35-page dossier financed by the Democratic National Committee and the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign as a "road map” for investigative leads, sources familiar with his investigation say.

Mueller’s team has also used information gleaned from surveillance court-approved wiretaps on former Trump adviser Carter Page that were secured by citing material in the dossier, the sources say.

And a detail previously reported last fall – that Mueller’s investigators traveled overseas last year to debrief the dossier’s London-based author, Christopher Steele, a former British spy – takes on a new cast with the disclosure this month that FBI agents abruptly stopped using Steele as an informant in late 2016 after concluding that he had lied to them.

“The FBI’s reliance on Steele’s past credibility was misplaced, since he concealed from the FBI unauthorized media contacts with numerous outlets and his anti-Trump bias,” according to an addendum to the so-called FISA memo released Feb. 2 by the Republican majority on the House Intelligence Committee.

Special Counsel’s Office spokesman Peter Carr told RealClearInvestigations, “We will decline to comment” on Steele and the dossier.

Mueller’s use of the dossier – opposition research described by former FBI Director James Comey as largely “salacious and unverified” – was reported by several news outlets last year. But word that Mueller has continued relying on it despite the House memo and other disclosures raises new questions about the special counsel’s investigation as it expands beyond indictments last week of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies.

While those charges highlighted an ineffective operation to spread fake news stories on social media platforms, the dossier, largely based on unconfirmed reports from Russians with suspected ties to the Kremlin, may have been a far more consequential tactic for sowing American national discord.

It has served as basis for the ongoing, divisive investigation of the president of the United States; it was used to wiretap American citizens and it was central to a series of resignations and demotions of top officials at the FBI and Justice Department that undermined public confidence in the rule of law.

Law enforcement experts note that in typical circumstances, investigators’ use of unverified information is unexceptional. They necessarily sift and sort broad streams of information to arrive at the truth. But critics argue the dossier is different for its seminal role in sparking and guiding Muller’s investigation.

“There is no Mueller investigation without the dossier,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a Washington-based government watchdog group.
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There is more.

The investigation may still be in the realm of a counterintelligence operation.  If it were to be used for a criminal case the argument could be made that the FISA court was misled about the dossier and therefore any evidence derived from the spying on Carter Page would not be admissible.