The campaign person is described as a voluntary source who came forward because of concerns about things they were seeing.
This is all third hand though, and probably came from an offhand mention at that.
Could be a literal mole, have you seen trump’s hairpiece?
You mean that Papadopolous, who was met and arrested at the airport after a flight by the FBI, wasn’t “voluntary”?
And you’re right, I think it’s important to remember that this information is Simpson relaying what Steele told him about what the FBI told him, so it’s possible that stuff got lost in translation.
I don’t recall who said it, but I believe that one of the Lawfare people said something to the effect that “Mueller understands that the country can’t function properly with a cloud over the President’s head like this. If there’s no evidence of wrong doing, he will make a statement to that effect, so that the Executive branch is able to work effectively.”
Now granted, that may not be an “This man had never committed any crimes in his life.” But it could easily be a “We are unable to find sufficient basis to issue a indictment at this time, for any crime.”
From The Hill
Actually, now I’m seeing that it was Papadopolous. I guess the confusion comes from the fact that the Australian diplomat is the one who called in concerned about some information he got from the campaign.
Anybody else read the whole Fusion GPS transcript? I really only found one item of interest in it that wasn’t already known, and even it isn’t relevant to the Russia story. It’s that Steele wanted to go to the FBI after the very first memo. I had assumed he contacted them after he had amassed a good chunk of reports, but no, he wanted to call them after the first one and ended up doing so soon after.
It doesn’t need to be shattering news-bomb, it simply and directly undermines a key fantasy that tighty-rightys clutch to their shriveled bosom: that the Steel dossier is the whole shebang, the Big Enchilada. Nah. So, that’s enough.
Senators Graham & Grassley refered Chris Steele to the FBI for investigation, because they claim that they have reason to believe that Steele lied to the FBI. Has anyone found anything in this testimony that would indicate what they’re talking about?
In other words - did two sitting Senators refer someone to the FBI for investigation on bogus accusations, merely to maintain the Republican cover that the Steele dossier is a biased work of fiction?
Oh. I was just thinking exactly the same thing. I bet Twitler had his buddy David Pecker* dig into Graham’s personal life. And I bet they’ll release the story whenever Trump says the word. And I bet he knows it. It won’t be the first time Trump has done this, either. He had them investigate Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski, then he had someone on his staff call Joe and tell him Trump would spike the story if he called Trump and groveled and changed the tone of their coverage.
Joe basically said no told him to go to hell and the story - which was really lame - ran. And Trump tweeted that they had begged him to kill it and he said no.
And J and M have been awfully low key about that incident, given how traumatic it was, The NE reporters were following and harassing Mika’s daughters. I really hope they are pursuing it through channels other than the media.
British citizen Christopher Steele is an American patriot far more than anyone in the White House or sitting on the Republican side of the Congress right now ever thought about being.
It is disgraceful to an indescribable degree that someone of Steele’s integrity, character and reputation, who understood the dire importance of revealing Trump’s interaction with the Russians to our government, is being made out as some kind of criminal by Republicans for the sole purpose of shielding their actual criminal “president” from answering for his deeds. Shame on them all.
With the release of the Fusion GPS transcript, Feinstein reveals the ongoing egregious misdirection efforts of G&G for what they are with respect to the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s Russian ties.
High fives to Dianne Feinstein.
This is pretty key. That they went to the FBI early pretty well insulates them from all accusations of political shenanigans.
I sure hope the kompromat is discovered, and published. I love that Feinstein released the Fusion GPS transcripts.
Or Trump will try to just write some lies (actually a ghost writer will write it, just like “his” book) on a piece of paper and give it to Meuller - as his shyster lawyers have already intimated.
I already downloaded my copy. 
Signs point to YES.
I think it’s now pretty obvious that there are more Republicans than just Trump who, at minimum, had direct knowledge of Russia’s attempts to influence this election. And at worst, they have probably aided and abetted the conspiracy before, during, and since the election. I’m not simply referring to members of the Trump campaign and administration but also, quite possibly if not likely, members of congress. Some Republicans who aren’t directly implicated - maybe Graham is one of them - are simply fearful of how it will make the GOP look once all the facts are known. But others are probably directly involved and they’re desperate to sow doubts on the veracity of any and all investigative work. They know that shutting the election down with brute force will only spark an outcry, so their best bet is probably to wage a misinformation campaign of their own and then publicly declare that they’ve looked into it, found nothing, and say it’s a mistrial.
Why is that?
[If you ask me, it seems somewhat incongruous that many of the same people who are outraged at the prospect of Russian interference in US elections seem thrilled at the notion that a British guy went to the FBI and press with unsubstantiated Russian gossip about one of the candidates. But that’s human nature, again and again.]
One of those nations is an ally, the other…not so much. One is acting in response to American laws potentially being broken, the other is acting to affect the outcome of our elections and potentially breaking laws. I don’t understand why you find this incongruous. Ah, you’re a conservative…human nature.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in whether some country is or isn’t an ally, or in anyone’s alleged motivations, but leaving that completely aside, AFAICT virtually all the information in that dossier has its origin in Russian (government-connected) sources of unknown motivations.
And I didn’t say I “find it” incongruous. I said “it seems” somewhat incongruous. But I don’t find it incongruous at all. To the contrary, I find it very congruous indeed.