Republican senators recommend charges against author of Trump dossier

WASHINGTON — More than a year after Republican leaders promised to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election, two influential Republicans on Friday made the first known congressional criminal referral in connection with the meddling — against one of the people who sought to expose it.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior committee member, told the Justice Department they had reason to believe that a former British spy, Christopher Steele, lied to federal authorities about his contacts with reporters regarding information in the dossier, and they urged the department to investigate. The committee is running one of three congressional investigations into Russian election meddling, and its inquiry has come to focus, in part, on Steele's explosive dossier that purported to detail Russia's interference and the Trump campaign's complicity.

The decision by Grassley and Graham to single out the former intelligence officer behind the dossier — and not anyone who may have taken part in the Russian interference — was certain to infuriate Democrats and raise the stakes in the growing partisan battle over the investigations into Trump, his campaign team and Russia.

More than a year ago, Republican leaders in Congress agreed that committees in the House and Senate would investigate Russia's efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Graham declared in December 2016, "The first thing we want to establish is, 'Did the Russians hack into our political system?' Then you work outward from there."

Since then, that spirit of bipartisanship has frayed. Congressional Democrats have sought to portray the Trump campaign as eager to take whatever help Russia would provide. Republicans have deflected attention from the central issue and sought to cast doubt on Steele's dossier and the political research firm that helped produce it, Fusion GPS, whose work was partly funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign.

The criminal referral appears to make no assessment of the veracity of the dossier's contents, much of which remains unsubstantiated nearly a year after it became public.

But the dossier has emerged as Exhibit A in Republicans' insistence that Obama-era political bias could have affected the FBI's decision to open a counterintelligence investigation in July 2016 into whether Trump's associates aided the Russia election interference.

Republicans, including the two senators, have argued that the dossier is tantamount to political opposition research, and claimed that it might have been used by the FBI to open its investigation. They have also said it might have provided the basis for key investigative actions, including a secret court-approved wiretap of a Trump campaign aide.

Current and former U.S. and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the investigation say that the federal inquiry did not start with the dossier, nor did it rely on it. Rather, they have said, the dossier and the FBI's discussions with Steele merely added material to what U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies were gleaning from other sources.

Grassley's decision to recommend criminal charges appeared likely to be based on reports of Steele's meetings with the FBI, which were provided to the committee by the Justice Department in recent weeks.

It was not clear why, if a crime is apparent in the FBI reports that were reviewed by the Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department had not moved to charge Steele already.

The circumstances under which Steele is alleged to have lied were unclear, as much of the referral was classified.

In a short cover letter dated Thursday but transmitted Friday, the senators wrote, "Based on the information contained therein, we are respectfully referring Mr. Steele to you for investigation of potential violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1001, for statements the Committee has reason to believe Mr. Steele made regarding his distribution of information contained."

That section of the federal criminal code refers to knowingly making false or misleading statements to federal authorities.

Steele had repeated contacts before and after the election with FBI counterintelligence agents who were investigating links between the Trump campaign and Russians. The information he shared was apparently valuable enough that the FBI at one point even considered bringing him on as a paid source. They only backed off the idea after the dossier became public in January 2017 and Steele's identity became widely known, leading the bureau to conclude that he would no longer be able to function as a source for its investigation.

More recently, Steele has been in contact with the Justice Department's special counsel, Robert Mueller, who took over the investigation last year.

Anyone can make a criminal referral to the Justice Department, which is not obligated to take up the matter. But a recommendation from a senior senator who runs the committee that has oversight of the department comes with added weight.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the referral. But Fusion characterized the recommendation to charge Steele as a smear and an attempt to further muddy the inquiry into Russia's interference.

"Publicizing a criminal referral based on classified information raises serious questions about whether this letter is nothing more than another attempt to discredit government sources, in the midst of an ongoing criminal investigation," said Joshua A. Levy, the lawyer for Fusion. "We should all be skeptical in the extreme."

Grassley is overseeing an array of inquiries related to the FBI and its investigations of both Clinton and the Trump campaign. He and Graham have repeatedly pressed the agency on its handling of the dossier in particular and fought to gain access to key agency witnesses and documents about the matter, reviewing a large tranche of such material in recent weeks.

Fusion GPS hired Steele, a former officer of Britain's MI6 with deep connections in Russia, during the spring of 2016 to research Trump's ties to Russia. His findings were ultimately compiled into 35 pages of memos outlining a multipronged conspiracy between the Russian government and the Trump campaign to boost his candidacy and hurt Clinton, including corrupt business dealings and salacious details alleging an encounter between Trump and Russian prostitutes.

The firm was first hired by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, in May 2016, and its work was later funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

This week has seen Grassley engage in a heated spat with Fusion over the testimony of one of its executives, Glenn R. Simpson. It began when Simpson and his partner, Peter Fritsch, published an op-ed article in The New York Times accusing Republicans of waging "a cynical campaign" to try to discredit the firm and its findings and calling on the relevant congressional committees to release transcripts of a series of closed-door interviews with the men.

A spokesman for Grassley, Taylor Foy, shot back, saying that Simpson had been less than transparent with the committee and had declined to provide public testimony or additional documents and answers requested after the interview. He also said and that "Mr. Simpson and his attorney demanded during the interview that the transcript be kept confidential." A lawyer for Fusion GPS, Joshua Levy, in turn, disputed that account, and said that upon review, his client now wanted the transcript to be made public — a request Grassley has denied.

The senator is not the only prominent Republican lawmaker pressing the Justice Department and Fusion GPS for answers on the dossier. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has been locked in a standoff with the department over access to documents and witnesses he views as crucial to unraveling what the FBI did with the dossier. And he has aggressively pursued Fusion GPS, subpoenaing the company's bank records and sending two committee staff members to London last summer to try to meet with Steele unannounced.

A resolution with the Justice Department appeared to be imminent this week, after Rod J. Rosenstein, deputy attorney general, and Christopher A. Wray, FBI director, paid an unexpected visit to Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Nunes, whom Democrats have accused of acting to protect Trump, said in a statement after the meeting that he expected to gain the access he desired.