President Donald Trump returned from the holiday weekend to slam the FBI and Justice Department’s handling of the so-called Steele dossier, which contains allegations of ties between his campaign and Russia and more salacious things such as the infamous “pee tape.”
In a Tuesday morning tweet, the president lashed out against the dossier while apparently watching Fox & Friends, a favorite morning program of his.
“WOW, @foxandfrlends “Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED.” And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!” he wrote.
WOW, @foxandfrlends “Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED.” And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2017
In the tweet, Trump mistakenly tagged @foxandfrlends instead of @foxandfriends, an account with 585 followers as of Tuesday morning.
The dossier, which was initially funded by a conservative website before Democrats began footing the bill, was compiled by the firm Fusion GPS and has been at the center of controversy since it was published by BuzzFeed News earlier this year.
It contains allegations of connections between members of Trump’s campaign and Russia including that the country had compromising information on Trump—most famously a video of Trump watching prostitutes pee on a bed Barack Obama once slept in.
The president has routinely tried to cast doubt on the dossier’s validity, however, officials have reportedly said some of the information in the document has been corroborated, but other parts have not been.
Some Republicans in Congress have followed Trump’s lead and begun probing the FBI and Justice Department on their handling of the dossier. There has also been a push to remove Special Counsel Robert Mueller from his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Trump’s tweet also comes on the heels of a report from Tablet Magazine that the dossier may have been a source of Democrats fears of Russian interference during the 2016 election.
Right-wing sites ran with a quote from the wife of Fusion GPD founder Glenn Simpson in the Tablet report, saying it proved the dossier was concocted by Fusion. In the article, Tablet reported on a Facebook post Mary Jacoby wrote that said, “It’s come to my attention that some people still don’t realize what Glenn’s role was in exposing Putin’s control of Donald Trump.”
“Wife Of Fusion GPS Founder Admits Husband Behind Fake ‘RussiaGate’ Story,” wrote Infowars.
In a press conference in October, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said the Senate Intelligence Committee was ‘enlightened’ in its ability to ‘rebuild’ the dossier while looking into it. However, he did not elaborate if that meant any claims in it had been verified.
