russia-related materials to friendly s in congress. just before the president s inauguration. i want to know what democrats in congress knew what and when about the dossier. it s clear that they were in on in as much as comey, strzok and page. let me ask you one more question. you say the documents show fusion gps and clinton bought and paid for spy christopher steele had a close relationship with the obama state department and the state department under john kerry is emerging as another center in all of this as relates to going against president trump and winer writing an op-ed claiming that christoph christopher steele and blumenthal approached him with separate dossiers, let s tie this together, if you can. there was more than one dossier.
the state department. after the election, working with steny hoyer s guy on the russia issue and conveying information. steele was very close to jonathan winer. he was his contact at the state department going back a number of years. sean: let me ask you. i got a couple of these. when winer is writing to ginsberg, christopher was a big friend of mine. i spoke to chris. it s complicated. at another point, another e-mail, to steele and his partner, request for contacts on behalf of the u.s. world bank, international monetary fund. chris and chris advices you brief the country team, it would be best if not come in from or through any u.s. official but straight on request in light of the impact on mongolia and need
believed to have discussed with mueller s investigators is a memo he wrote in late november 2016 after his contract with fusion had ended. this memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, when buzz feed published the dossier last january, this is shorter than the rest and it s based on one source described as a senior russian official and the official said he was merely relaying talks circulating the russian ministry of foreign affairs but what he heard was astonishing. people were saying the kremlin intervened to block trump s choice for secretary of state. he was notably hawkish on russia calling it the single greatest threat to the u.s. steele s memo said the kremlin through unspecified channels had asked trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift ukraine related sanctions and who would cooperate on security issues of interest to russia. if what the source heard was true, then a foreign power was exercising pivotal influence
mr. steele and talked about your belief he was credible. did you take any steps to assess the credibility? answer by mr. simpson. yes, but i m not going to get into sourcing information. question: so without getting into naming the sources or anything like that, what steps did you take to verify their credibility? i m going to decline to answer that question. question, why? answer, not by glen simpson, answer by simpson s lawyer, quote, this is a voluntary interview and in addition to that he wants to be careful to protect his sources. somebody has been killed already as a result of the publication of this dossier and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work. somebody has been killed, that was nine hours into ten hours of testimony from august. that was the transcript that was released to the public in january thanks to diane feinstein. here is jane mayer tonight at the new yorker, quote, in
like this could be true and a foreign power would intervene with an elected president by then, which trump was, and shape the foreign policy of our country but one of the things that seems suspicious and kind of backs it up to some extent is that the circumstances of what happened with romney, which was this very long prolonged process of him being interviewed for secretary of state. it seemed to go on and on. it was kind of humiliating. he was sort of dragged through dinners and the limelight and interviews and it was just odd and then in the end of it, trump decided not to pick him and very quickly and as a big surprise turned to tillerson instead. so i mean, you know, hard to know. i mean, one of the things that i think we re going to find with much of what s in the steele dossier, it s looking better and better every day, more and more credible but it s going to take somebody like mueller with