When it famously published the full dossier, BuzzFeed reported that the contents had circulated “for months” and were known to journalists. The dossier charges had been circulating among news media outlets, but the sensational claims were largely considered too risky to publish. intelligence community does not usually brief top officials about pending news media coverage.Īlso, according to numerous reports, the media had been aware of the dossier claims for months. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing. The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June, Comey also detailed why he claimed the intelligence community briefed Obama and Trump on the “salacious material” – again a clear reference to the dossier. So that’s the context in which I said, sir, we’re not personally investigating you. I was very keen not to leave him with an impression that the bureau was trying to do something to him. We didn’t want to be keeping that from him. I was briefing him on it because we had been told by the media it was about to launch. I didn’t want him thinking I was briefing him on this to sort of hang it over him in some way. It was very important because it was, first, true, and second, I was worried very much about being in kind of a J. So the context then was actually narrower, focused on what I just talked to him about. My reading of it was it was important for me to assure him we were not personally investigating him. It was in a context of that that he had a strong and defensive reaction about that not being true. I was briefing him about salacious and unverified material. In June testimony, Comey specifically denied that he had briefed Trump about “salacious and unverified material” – referring to the dossier – in order to “hang it over him in some way.” officials briefed Obama and Trump about the dossier two weeks prior to Trump’s inauguration because they wanted to alert the president and president-elect that the news media were about to release the material. There are questions about the veracity of Comey’s public explanations of why he briefed Trump, President Obama and other top Obama administration officials about the dossier contents. Steele recently conceded in court documents that part of his work still needed to be verified.Īccording to information first leaked by CNN, Trump was briefed on the contents of the controversial dossier last January by Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers. The dossier in question was authored by former intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who was reportedly paid by Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans to investigate Trump. “In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there,” Mr. Comey told him about the dossier to implicitly make clear he had something to hold over the president. has not corroborated the most sensational assertions in the dossier. Trump aside and told him about a dossier that had been assembled by a former British spy filled with salacious allegations against the incoming president, including supposed sexual escapades in Moscow. Comey and other intelligence officials briefed him at Trump Tower on Russian meddling. Trump recalled that a little more than two weeks before his inauguration, Mr. In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times published yesterday, President Donald Trump accused former FBI Director James Comey of possibly trying to leverage the contents of the now infamous, largely discredited 35-page dossier compiled on the billionaire.
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