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Steele testifies in UK, admits to deep ties with Clinton machine (Video)
by Alex Christoforou, The Duran:
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss how dossier author Christopher Steele had undisclosed meetings with top DNC & Clinton campaign lawyer, revealing the disgraced spies ties to the Hillary Clinton machine.
Christopher Steele revealed in testimony last month, that has now been made public, that he met with two lawyers for the Democrats as part of his investigation into Donald Trump. Steele testified under oath, the he met with Perkins Coie partners Michael Sussmann and Marc Elias.
A lawyer representing the DNC and Clinton campaign provided Christopher Steele with information in 2016 regarding an alleged secret communications channel between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank, the former spy told a British court last month.
That now-debunked tip, from Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann, set off a chain of events that led to Steele publishing a Sept. 14, 2016 memo accusing the founders of the bank, Alfa Bank, of having “illicit” ties to Vladimir Putin, according to a court transcript obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
A week after Steele wrote that memo, he had another meeting with Sussmann’s colleague, Marc Elias, according to the transcript.
Steele disclosed the previously unreported meetings with Sussmann and Elias during testimony in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by the Alfa Bank founders, the transcript shows.
Steele’s testimony about Sussmann and Elias provides insight into how deeply involved the two lawyers were in the Trump investigation, and suggests they helped shape Steele’s investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Perkins Coie, Sussmann and Elias did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Elias, who served as general counsel for the Clinton campaign, hired Fusion GPS in April 2016 to investigate Donald Trump. Fusion GPS in turn picked Steele, a former MI6 officer, in June 2016 to investigate Trump’s possible ties to Russia.
Steele would go on to produce 17 memos alleging that the Russian government had blackmail material on Trump, and that members of his campaign were conspiring with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election.
Many of Steele’s most explosive allegations have been debunked in the 40 months since BuzzFeed News published the dossier.
A Justice Department inspector general’s report said that Steele’s primary source of information disputed many of the allegations in the dossier. The IG report also said that the FBI and U.S. intelligence community received evidence in 2017 that Russian intelligence operatives may have fed disinformation to Steele.
The IG report also dealt a fatal blow to the Alfa Bank theory peddled by Sussmann.
It said the FBI investigated whether there were “cyber links” between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization, the company owned by Donald Trump, “but had concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links.”
The three owners of Alfa Bank have sued Steele in the U.S. and U.K. over the Sept. 14, 2016 memo, which is referred to as “Company Intelligence Report 112” in the dossier.
Steele testified under oath in London on March 17 and 18.
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