Next in Nunes House UnAmerican probe: State Dept.

The release of last week’s House Intelligence Committee memo accusing the FBI of surveillance abuses marked the end of the first phase of Nunes’s investigation into the probe of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Now, the committee chair told Fox News on Friday, the probe is moving into “phase two,” which involves the State Department. His focus is on the dossier compiled by [political activist Cody] Shearer, and passed along by [Jonathan Winer, the Obama State Department’s special envoy to Libya, and longtime Senate aide to John Kerry].

[...]

The existence of the Shearer memo was first reported by The Guardian. A copy of the document, which I reviewed, contained a range of allegations concerning the president’s personal behavior and financial transactions.

[...]

In the heavily redacted, declassified version of [a letter released Monday by Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham], which outlined why Graham and Grassley asked the Justice Department to consider opening a criminal investigation into Steele’s communications with the FBI, the senators allege that “Clinton associates” were “feeding Mr. Steele accusations” against the Trump campaign, thereby calling into question Steele’s credibility as a neutral source.

  The Atlantic

There better be a whole lot more to it than that. Steele, as a private independent investigator with outstanding credentials, would surely have taken "accusations" fed to him by anyone into consideration.  At the very least, he would have put them in his file. The question is not where he got information, but how much credibility he could assign to them. He would surely have either investigated any accusations, or made note that they were offered without such vetting. If they're going to offer evidence that he passed along the information in his reports as having come from a trusted source whom he would not name, then there could indeed be some question as to the reliability of his reporting.

The Grassley-Graham letter says that Steele wrote a “memorandum” to the FBI in October 2016 describing how he had obtained a document based on intelligence received about Trump from “a foreign sub-source.” “One memorandum by Mr. Steele that was not published by BuzzFeed is dated October 19, 2016,” the letter says. The two sources confirmed that the document in question was the memorandum written by Shearer.

So, we're going to need to hear a rebuttal or an explanation by Steele.  And why wasn't it published when BuzzFeed published the dossier?  Maybe Steele himself left it out on purpose because it didn't meet his standard for inclusion , so that BuzzFeed didn't have it.

The letter continues:

The report alleges [redacted] as well as [redacted]. Mr. Steele’s memorandum states that his company ‘received this report from [redacted] U.S. State Department,’ that the report was the second in a series, and that the report was information that came from a foreign sub-source who ‘is in touch with [redacted], a contact of [redacted], a friend of the Clintons, who passed it to [redacted].’ It is troubling enough that the Clinton Campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele allegations raises additional concerns about his credibility.

That depends, doesn't it? On whether there actually was a foreign sub-source and whether that source is credible.

I honestly don't see a problem here. Steele is providing (paid) intelligence to the FBI. Some of that intelligence was used in conjunction with other supporting material for a FISA warrant. More than one FISC judge reviewed and approved the warrant. This is a smokescreen and a means to delay, if not subvert, justice in Mueller's investigation.

According to a source familiar with the matter, however, Steele’s “memorandum” was actually a handwritten note on a copy of Shearer’s report that outlined its origin—the “foreign sub-source” who had been in touch with Shearer. The note identified Shearer as a contact of Sidney Blumenthal’s, a longtime associate of the Clintons. It also explained that Steele had obtained the document via Winer, who had gotten it from Shearer.

Then, where's the problem? Is the problem that someone at State provided information to suggest Trump was in cahoots with the Russians? Is that illegal? Unethical? Perhaps that person should have provided the information to the FBI directly? I have too many questions. But if any of those questions, save the one about legality, is answered yes, it's just a tempest in a teapot. It's not germaine to the question of whether Trump colluded with Russians to win the election, obstruct justice, or launder money.

And actually, even if it was illegal, it still doesn't change Trump's actions, which are supposed to be the subject of the House Intel investigation.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 2/9:

Jonathan Winer has an article in the Washington Post explaining his version of the Shearer/Steele memos.  YWA summary of that article.