The once-secret spy dossier containing the explosive allegation that Donald Trump appears in a “pee tape” — and that shocking video is now in possession of the Russian government — is now a direct target of the investigation into Trump’s Russia ties by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, according to a new report published on Thursday in London’s Independent newspaper. The report says that Mueller and his team of investigators have tracked down several individuals named in the file compiled by former British intelligence agent and Russia expert Christopher Steele.
In fact, one of those individuals has provided Mueller with what the Independent report describes as “important information,” Thursday’s story in the paper reveals. Read the entire Independent report by clicking on this link .
The entire “Steele Dossier” was posted online in January by the site BuzzFeed , and may be read in full at this link .
The dossier explores numerous alleged business and political contacts between Trump associates and campaign officials and the Russian government, or top Russian billionaire oligarchs believe to hold close ties to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. But the most sensational allegation in Steele’s file said that in November of 2013, when Trump was in Moscow with the Miss universe beauty pageant, which he then owned, he hired two prostitutes to perform a “golden shower” urination show on a bed in the Presidential Suite of the Ritz Carlton hotel there.
The dossier’s author, Steele himself, has so far avoided traveling to the United States to testify before either the House or Senate committees investigating the Trump-Russia scandal, and according to The Independent , the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are fiercely competing with each other as well as with Mueller and his investigators to be the first to secure Steele’s testimony.
However, the man who hired Steele to compile the explosive file on Trump’s Russia connections, Glenn Simpson — a former Wall Street Journal reporter who now heads a private investigation firm called Fusion GPS — testified behind closed doors in August, telling the Senate committee that he stands behind the claims contained in the dossier.
At the time, a lawyer for Simpson said that Trump and his political allies were making “a desperate attempt… to smear Fusion GPS because of its reported connection to the Trump dossier. Fusion GPS is proud of the work it has conducted and stands by it.”
Republicans in congress who support Trump have made an apparent effort to discredit the dossier, led by South Carolina representative Trey Gowdy who sits on the House Intelligence panel. Republicans on that committee have blitzed both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Department of Justice with subpoenas for documents related to the Steele dossier.
But Democrats in congress say that Gowdy and the Republicans efforts are simply an attempt to gather any information that could be used to portray the dossier as a politically motivated hit job on Trump, and as a result, discredit the claims the dossier contains — including the “pee tape” episode.
However, former FBI director James Comey, who was fired by Trump on May 9 at least in part — according to Trump’s own statements — because of the Russia investigation then led by the FBI, may soon be compelled to testify about the Steele Dossier as part if a lawsuit brought by a Russian businessman against BuzzFeed over the site’s online publication of the formerly secret Russia file.
[Featured Image By Carolyn Kaster/AP Images]