By Kimberley A. Strassel | The Wall
Street Journal
Former
British intelligence officer Christopher Steele in London, March 7, 2017. PHOTO:VICTORIA
JONES/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mueller should have investigated whether Moscow used Steele in its interference.
Politicians keep reminding us not to lose sight of
special counsel Robert Mueller’s broader assignment: to investigate Russia’s
interference in the 2016 election. If only someone had reminded Mr. Mueller.
One of the biggest failures of the Mueller probe concerns
not what was in the final report, but what was not. Close readers will search
in vain for any analysis of the central document in this affair: the infamous
“dossier.” It’s a stunning omission, given the possibility that the Russians
used that collection of reports to feed disinformation to U.S. intelligence
agencies, sparking years of political maelstrom.
The dossier—compiled by former British spy Christopher
Steele on behalf of Fusion GPS, an opposition-research firm working for the
Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee—fed to the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the media the principal allegations of the
“collusion” narrative. It claimed Paul Manafort was at the center of a “well-developed”
Trump-Russia “conspiracy”; that Carter Page served as his intermediary,
conducting secret meetings with a Kremlin official and the head of a state
energy company; that Michael Cohen held a clandestine meeting in Prague with
Vladimir Putin cronies; and that theRussians had compromising material on
Donald Trump, making him vulnerable to blackmail.
The dossier was clearly
important to the FBI probe. Its wild claims made up a significant section of
the FBI’s application for a secret surveillance warrant on Mr. Page.
The Mueller report exposes the dossier claims as pure
fiction. Yet in describing the actions of the Trump campaign figures the FBI
accused, the report assiduously avoids any mention of the dossier or its
allegations. Mr. Mueller refers to Mr. Steele and his work largely in passing,
as part of the report’s description of how former FBI Director James Comey
informed Mr. Trump of the dossier’s existence. The dossier is blandly described
several times as “unverified allegations compiled” by Mr. Steele.
Once Mr. Mueller established that the dossier was a pack
of lies, he should have investigated how it gained such currency at the highest
levels of the FBI.
Yet his report makes clear he had no interest in plumbing
the antics of the bureau, which he led from 2001-13. Instead, he went out of
his way to avoid the dossier and give cover to the FBI.
The special counsel had another, more pressing reason to
look at the dossier: It fell within his core mission. Since its publication by
BuzzFeed in January 2017, we’ve learned enough about Mr. Steele and Fusion GPS
to wonder if the Russians used the dossier for their own malign purposes.
In the first telling, Mr. Steele was described by
friendly media as simply a “former Western intelligence official” with a
history at Britain’s overseas intelligence service. It turns out he worked in
Russia. Mr. Steele spent his first years of service under diplomatic cover in
Moscow, later in Paris. And in 1999 he was among 117 British spies whose covers
were publicly blown by a disgruntled ex-MI6 officer.
The former spy, known to the public and therefore to
Russia, also became known for sending reports to the U.S. government. Last year
former Obama State Department official Jonathan Winer explained that in 2009 he
became friendly with the self-employed Mr. Steele, and starting as early as
2013 ensured that “more than 100 of Steele’s reports” on Russia topics were
shared with the State Department. Given that the dossier is largely based on
Russian sources, some supposedly connected to the Kremlin, did the Kremlin know
about this arrangement and see an opportunity to spoon-feed the U.S. government
disinformation?
We’ve also learned more about Mr. Steele’s and Fusion’s
connections to Russians. Mr. Steele sent a series of emails to Justice
Department employee Bruce Ohr in 2016 inquiring about the status of a visa for
Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch with Kremlin ties. Fusion GPS was working alongside
Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who arranged the infamous meeting
with Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016. Fusion was hired as part of a team to help
Ms. Veselnitskaya undermine Bill Browder, the man behind the Magnitsky Act, a
law that imposes sanctions on Russians for corruption and human-rights
violations.
How did Mr. Mueller spend two years investigating every
aspect of Russian interference—cyberhacking, social-media trolling, meetings
with Trump officials—and not consider the possibility that the dossier was part
of the Russian interference effort?
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz and
Attorney General William Barr may answer some of the questions Mr. Mueller
refused to touch. Thanks to the special counsel we know Republicans weren’t
playing footsie with Russians. But thanks to BuzzFeed, we know that Democrats were.
America deserves to know how far that interaction extended.
