The investigation into collusion with Russia has dominated Donald Trump’s first year in office.
Special counsel Robert Mueller launched a crusade to use this issue to destroy the President.
But you will be speechless when you see who could be going to jail.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senator Lindsey Graham sent an unclassified cover letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray recommending they file criminal charges against Christopher Steele.
Steele is the ex-British intelligence agent who wrote the fake news Trump-Russia collusion dossier.
They attached their cover letter to a classified document where the case was made for Steele to face criminal charges.
The Washington Examiner reports:
“Two Republican senators have recommended that the Department of Justice criminally investigate the author of the Trump dossier.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a senior committee member, told the Justice Department they believe Christopher Steele, the former British spy who helped put together the dossier, knowingly lied to federal authorities about his communications with U.S. journalists.
The recommendation is the first known criminal recommendation from Congress’s multiple Russia probes.
Grassley and Graham delivered a letter, as well as a classified memo, to Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray containing the basis for the criminal investigation.
“Based on the information contained therein, we are respectfully referring Mr. Steele to you for investigation of potential violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1001, for statements the Committee has reason to believe Mr. Steele made regarding his distribution of information contained,” they said in a press statement.
That federal criminal code refers to knowingly and willfully making false or misleading statements to federal authorities.”
Steele began forwarding his findings to the FBI in July 2016.
At that point the FBI had agreed to pay him for his work, a deal they later terminated.
Grassley and Graham believe Steele lied to the FBI when he did not tell them the truth about the fact that he was leaking his findings to reporters during the general election.
The Examiner also reports:
“Grassley indicated that Steele didn’t tell the truth when asked by the FBI whether he leaked parts of the dossier to reporters.
“Everyone needs to follow the law and be truthful in their interactions with the FBI,” he said. “If the same actions have dif ferent outcomes, and those differences seem to correspond to partisan political interests, then the public will naturally suspect that law enforcement decisions are not on the up-and-up. Maybe there is some innocent explanation for the inconsistencies we have seen, but it seems unlikely. In any event, it’s up to the Justice Department to figure that out.”
In the accompanying letter to the FBI, Grassley said he was attaching information about communications between Steele and “multiple U.S. news outlets” about the dossier.
“I don’t take lightly making a referral for criminal investigation. But, as I would with any credible evidence of a crime unearthed in the course of our investigations, I feel obliged to pass that information along to the Justice Department for appropriate review,” Grassley said in a statement.
Graham added that “after reviewing how Mr. Steele conducted himself in distributing information contained in the dossier and how many stop signs the DOJ ignored in its use of the dossier, I believe that a special counsel needs to review this matter.”
Congress has been looking for evidence of Russia collusion for nearly one year.
Yet Steele’s alleged lies is the only crime three different committees have uncovered.
Trump has always said that the collusion story was fake news.
That 10 months worth of investigations have only produced one crime – allegedly committed by one of Trump’s fiercest critics – only backs Trump up more.
We will keep you up to date on any new developments in this story.
