Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein He was at Bill Hillar's sentencing. Can't remember if he was the attorney I had a chat with.
https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/ba...forces-colonel
GOP senators request criminal investigation of Trump dossier author
By Jordain Carney - 01/05/18 01:39 PM EST
Two Republican senators are asking the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into Christopher Steele, the author of a controversial opposition research dossier on President Trump.
Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) sent a letter to
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray asking that they investigate if the former British intelligence agent lied to federal authorities.
"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."
The letter is the first known criminal referral from any of the congressional investigations into Russia's election interference.
As part of their request, the two senators passed along a memo tied to "certain communications between Christopher Steele and multiple U.S. news outlets." They did not publicly release the memorandum, which is classified.
The Justice Department isn't required to open up an investigation in response to Grassley and Graham's letter.
And Grassley's office, in announcing their request, noted that it's standard for the committee to notify the Justice Department when it "comes across what appears to be credible evidence of a criminal violation that warrants further investigation by appropriate authorities based on information from any source, public or non-public."
The referral comes days after the latest public back-and-forth between Grassley and Fusion GPS, the research firm that hired Steele to compile the controversial dossier.
The firm and Steele have been a major target of Grassley, who has sent a flurry of letters trying to find out the extent of the FBI's contact with Steele as well as who Steele's sources are.
A lawyer for Fusion GPS fired back at the referral, saying that "we should all be skeptical in the extreme."
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-actio...dossier-author
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