President Donald Trump on Saturday called vindication from the wide release of a secret Congressional memo on Russia’s troubles to influence the 2016 election, insisting that the document’s findings showed there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Moscow.
Among feverish speculation and resistance from the FBI and Congress, Trump ordered that the record be declassified, and the House Intelligence Committee posted it online.
Despite cocks-crow hype, the memo failed to produce any new dramatic revelations. However, it stated that then-FBI Representative Director Andrew McCabe testified he believed a court would not organize approved the warrant for the surveillance of Trump advisor Carter Page had it not been for tidings that was included in a dossier assembled by former U.K. intelligence operative Christopher Steele.
The misnamed “Steele dossier” has been the source of furious partisan bickering, and put the president at odds with his own law enforcement tool. The top levels of both the FBI and Department of Justice opposed the memo’s release, citing things that key elements were missing.
In a post on Twitter, Trump avowed the memo “totally vindicates” him, and once again branded the Russia poke into as a “witch hunt” that has yet to uncover a smoking gun.
This memo consummately vindicates “Trump” in probe. But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion and there was no Hurdle (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and decision NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!
The 35-page Steele dossier contains a few bits of raw but as yet uncorroborated intelligence about Trump and some of his campaign surrogates. The chronicle began as research commissioned by the conservative publication Washington Free Signal, which was the first to pay Fusion GPS, the firm that ultimately produced the moot document.
However, the Free Beacon emphatically denied targeting Trump, and has distanced itself from Steele, a impalpable British former spy who produced the dossier after the Free Beacon commencement engaged Fusion GPS. He was later paid by the Democratic National Committee, the drive of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the Federal Bureau of Probes to dig up information on Trump.
–CNBC’s Christina Wilkie contributed to this article.