The House Intel Committee is making a move on the Deep State
within the Federal government pulling every vile lever to bring down the Trump
Administration.
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House Intel Committee Subpoenas FBI, DOJ Over Trump
Dossier
By DEBRA HEINE
SEPTEMBER 6, 2017
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., . (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) (CQ Roll
Call via AP Images)
The House Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed the FBI and
the Justice Department for documents relating to the Trump "dodgy
dossier," the
Washington Examiner reported Tuesday evening. The committee is
seeking information regarding the FBI's relationship with dossier author
Christopher Steele and its possible role in funding what started out as an
opposition research project by shady lefty research
firm Fusion GPS.
While it has been widely reported that "a wealthy GOP
donor" originally funded the anti-Trump dossier, the managers of the Ted
Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich campaigns have all told the Examiner's Byron
York that they knew nothing about a GOP-funded oppo-research
project on Trump. Meanwhile, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson has refused to
answer the question about who bankrolled the dossier.
The House Intel Committee is one of several congressional committees
looking into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Additionally, Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller is leading a
separate investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and
Russia.
The subpoenas to the FBI and DOJ are a sign of the GOP's
frustration with the lack of cooperation they are getting from even the Trump
Justice Department.
"I'm sure you're noting with the same irony I'm noting
the difficulty that a Republican Congress is having getting information from a
Department of Justice run by Jeff Sessions," Gowdy
told York.
The committee issued the subpoenas
-- one to the FBI, an identical one to the Justice Department -- on August 24,
giving both until last Friday, September 1, to turn over the information.
Neither FBI nor Justice turned over
the documents, and now the committee has given them an extension until
September 14 to comply.
Illustrating the seriousness with
which investigators view the situation, late Tuesday the committee issued two
more subpoenas, specifically to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, directing them to appear before the committee to explain
why they have not provided the subpoenaed information.
The subpoenas are the result of a months-long
process of committee investigators requesting information from the FBI and
Justice Department. Beginning in May, the committee sent multiple letters to
the FBI and Justice requesting information concerning the Trump-Russia affair.
"We got nothing," said
committee member Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who is taking a leading role in the
Russia investigation. "The witnesses have not been produced and the
documents have not been produced."
In a telephone interview Tuesday,
Gowdy said the FBI has said it needed more time to comply, and also that
complying might interfere with the investigation of special counsel Robert
Mueller. Whatever the reason, the documents haven't been produced.
"A subpoena is a tool of last
resort in Congress," Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, said.
Like investigators with the Senate
Judiciary Committee, who are also pursuing information about the dossier, the
House committee wants to know the origin of the FBI's involvement in the
creation of the document. They are particularly interested to know whether the
FBI or Justice Department ever presented information from the dossier --
unverified, possibly from paid informants -- to a court as a basis for
obtaining a surveillance warrant in the Russia investigation.
"I want to know the extent to
which it was relied upon, if at all, by any of our intelligence agencies or
federal law enforcement agencies," Gowdy said, "and to the extent it
was relied upon, how did they vet, or either corroborate or contradict, the
information in it?"
The House intelligence panel, like
the Senate Judiciary Committee, has had so-called "de-confliction"
discussions with Mueller's office and believes the special counsel does not
object to the House seeking information on the dossier.
The committee believes that seeking
information on the origin of the FBI's role in the dossier, and the bureau's
relationship with dossier compiler Steele, a former British spy, will lead to a
better understanding of the FBI's entire counter-intelligence probe on the
question of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.
"Several of our lines of
questions centered on the dossier, or, if you don't like the word 'dossier,'
just insert 'the origin of the Russia investigation,'" said Gowdy.
The former prosecutor seems determined to get to the bottom
of the Trump dossier mystery.
"Congress created the FBI, we created the Department of
Justice, we're the ones who passed the laws that set the boundaries of their
jurisdiction, and and we're the ones that fund them," he said. "It is
not illegitimate for us to ask what prompted this investigation, and it is
certainly not illegitimate for us to test and probe the reliability of that
underlying information, particularly if, in theory, there are either charging
decisions and/or court filings that relied upon that information."
According to CNN, the reason the Justice Department has been
been refusing compliance with the subpoenas is because they don't want to
interfere with the Mueller investigation.
VIDEO: House Subpoenas FBI and Justice Dept to get
records on Trump-Russia Dossier. #Breaking #Russia
Posted by Almutaz Bur News Network
Published on Sep 5, 2017
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