Jonathan Winer explains his role in the Shearer/Steele memos

Here’s the real story: In the 1990s, I was the senior official at the State Department responsible for combating transnational organized crime. I became deeply concerned about Russian state operatives compromising and corrupting foreign political figures and businessmen from other countries. Their modus operandi was sexual entrapment and entrapment in too-good-to-be-true business deals.

  Jonathan Winer @ WaPo

No wonder they thought Trump would be an easy target.

After 1999, I left the State Department and developed a legal and consulting practice that often involved Russian matters. In 2009, I met and became friends with [Christopher] Steele, after he retired from British government service focusing on Russia. Steele was providing business intelligence on the same kinds of issues I worked on at the time.

In 2013, I returned to the State Department at the request of Secretary of State John F. Kerry.

[...]

[Steele] asked me whether the State Department would like copies of new information as he developed it. I contacted Victoria Nuland, a career diplomat who was then assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and shared with her several of Steele’s reports. She told me they were useful and asked me to continue to send them. [...] None of the reports related to U.S. politics or domestic U.S. matters.

Winer says Steele contacted him in September of 2016, telling him that Russia had been behind the DNC and Clinton hacking and also had compromised the Trump campaign. He reviewed Steele's reports and made a two-page summary of them to present to Nuland, who agreed with him that Secretary of State Kerry should be told about the reports.

Shortly thereafter, he was talking with reporter Sid Blumenthal, a friend of the Clintons, and whose emails had also been hacked "through a Russian server" in 2013. They discussed Steele's reports, and Blumenthal showed Winer some notes by a journalist Winer didn't know (Cody Shearer) alleging the Russians had kompromat on Trump "of a sexual and financial nature." Winer thought the information was similar to Steele's but seemed to come from different sources.

On my own, I shared a copy of these notes with Steele, to ask for his professional reaction. He told me it was potentially “collateral” information. I asked him what that meant. He said that it was similar but separate from the information he had gathered from his sources. I agreed to let him keep a copy of the Shearer notes.

Winer says he didn't share or mention Shearer's notes to anyone at State, and didn't expect them to be shared with anyone in the US government, learning later that Steele had shared them with the FBI.

I am in no position to judge the accuracy of the information generated by Steele or Shearer. But I was alarmed at Russia’s role in the 2016 election, and so were U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials. I believe all Americans should be alarmed — and united in the search for the truth about Russian interference in our democracy, and whether Trump and his campaign had any part in it.

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

Trump doing his own blackmailing?

I wouldn't be a bit surprised.  But even if not, I've wondered if some of them aren't concerned about being blackmailed by Russia, or even simply having the FBI uncover their own money laundering or other criminal or moral shortcomings.

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

Nunes House UnAmerican probe: State Dept. - Part 2

Unlike Steele, Shearer does not have a background in espionage, and his memo was initially viewed with scepticism, not least because he had shared it with select media organisations before the election.

However, the Guardian has been told the FBI investigation is still assessing details in the “Shearer memo” and is pursuing intriguing leads.

[...]

The Shearer memo was provided to the FBI in October 2016.

It was handed to them by Steele – who had been given it by an American contact – after the FBI requested the former MI6 agent provide any documents or evidence that could be useful in its investigation, according to multiple sources.

The Guardian was told Steele warned the FBI he could not vouch for the veracity of the Shearer memo, but that he was providing a copy because it corresponded with what he had separately heard from his own independent sources.

  Guardian

Well, there you have it. One of my questions answered. Exactly as I assumed. Steele wouldn't have handed over such a memo without an explanation.

Among other things, both documents allege Donald Trump was compromised during a 2013 trip to Moscow that involved lewd acts in a five-star hotel.

The pee tape never dies.

[T]here is no evidence that his memo was ever sought by Clinton campaign officials.

Sources say that while he lacks the precision and polish of a seasoned former spy like Steele, Shearer has also been described as having a large network of sources around the world and the independent financial means to pursue leads.

Honestly, it becomes more and more evident that Trump and his backers are becoming more and more desperate, from fear.

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

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.