Christopher Steele, a former UK intelligence member of MI6, is hesitant to travel to the United States to testify, but some Democrats and neo-conservative Republicans are reportedly willing to initiate meetings with him in the United Kingdom.
“John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate, and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent an intermediary to London in November last year to collect Mr Steele’s dossier, which was subsequently passed personally by the Senator to FBI director James Comey,” the Independent reported on Friday.
The dossier claims that Gubarev was coerced into assisting in hacking the Democratic Party by Russian spies who had compromising information on him, and that the tech entrepreneur ultimately played an “instrumental” role in the emails being released by Wikileaks.
Gubarev has denied every allegation in the dossier. His attorney, Val Gurvits, confirmed that law enforcement never contacted his client about any of the claims made by Steele.
Steele, through Washington-based firm Fusion GPS, was originally hired by ‘political opponents’ within the Democratic and Republican parties to investigate Trump, but it has not been revealed exactly who hired him. Steele sought to share the dossier with the FBI, who took it seriously, despite the far-fetched allegations, due to the British agent’s previous work on the FIFA case. It was revealed this week that the FBI offered him payment to continue his investigation into Trump and those around the candidate. The deal with the FBI reportedly fell through, and Steele continued to dig without payment.
The allegations in the report have been dismissed by both Trump, who has referred to Steele as a “failed spy,” and by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Even Buzzfeed, who initially published the bizarre information, noted discrepancies, acknowledging that none of the allegations could be confirmed.
The dossier also claims that there was a video of a urine party, hosted by Trump, and secretly filmed by Russian intelligence agencies, although there is no evidence to support that any such recording exists.
“Trump‘s (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he knew President and Mrs. Obama (who he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him. The hotel was known to be under FSB control with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to,” the report claimed.
Following the release of the report, many journalists confirmed that they, too, had been offered the story, but had declined as they could not confirm its validity.
Steele has not yet publicly responded to requests from Senate officials, but the Independent reported that he has become increasingly frustrated by the lack of action on his claims, and now believes that the FBI is involved in a cover-up.
