Sen. Grassley Investigates FBI Plan To Pay Former British Spy For Info On Trump

breitbart.com

On Monday, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to FBI Director James Comey asking for details about a reported FBI plan to pay Christopher Steele for information on the Trump campaign.

Steele is the author of the infamous “Trump Dossier,” a collection of poorly-vetted and unsubstantiated rumors about President Trump that wound up being promoted by BuzzFeed...

As Grassley explains to Comey in his letter, the Washington Post reported last week that the FBI “reached an agreement a few weeks before the presidential election” to pay Steele for continuing investigations of President Trump:

The article claimed that the FBI was aware Mr. Steele was creating these memos as part of work for an opposition research firm connected to Hillary Clinton.  The idea that the FBI and associates of the Clinton campaign would pay Mr. Steele to investigate the Republican nominee for President in the run-up to the election raises further questions about the FBI’s independence from politics, as well as the Obama administration’s use of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for political ends.

It is additionally troubling that the FBI reportedly agreed to such an arrangement given that, in January of 2017, then-Director Clapper issued a statement stating that “the IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions.”

According to the Washington Post, the FBI’s arrangement with Mr. Steele fell through when the media published his dossier and revealed his identity.