GOP refers Russia dossier author for criminal investigation

WASHINTGON—Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee referred Christopher Steele, the author of a dossier about Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia, to the Department of Justice on Friday over concerns he lied to the FBI. This marks the first criminal referral from the congressional investigation into possible Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election, and it targets someone who worked indirectly for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Steele, a former British intelligence officer, authored the dossier for Fusion GPS at the request of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The dossier claimed that the Kremlin supported Donald Trump and tried to develop compromising information on him that could be used for blackmail. Steele also accused the Russians of spying on Clinton and feeding information to the Trump campaign. The dossier made its way to the FBI as it investigated possible Russian election interference in 2016. “After reviewing how Mr. Steele conducted himself in distributing information contained in the dossier and how many stop signs the DOJ ignored in its use of the dossier, I believe that a special counsel needs to review this matter,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Friday. BuzzFeed News published the full contents of the Steele dossier last January with the caveat that “the allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.” Many media outlets criticized the decision because the dossier’s contents were not confirmed. The president called BuzzFeed at the time “a failing pile of garbage.”