about feinstein s actions, saying, quote, it undermines the integrity of the committee s oversight work and jeopardizes its ability to secure candid voluntary testimony relating to the independent recollections of future witnesses. fusion gps hired steele, this veteran investigator, to look into donald trump s background during the 2016 campaign. according to the committee testimony, christopher steele approached the fbi in the summer of 2016 because he was extremely troubled by his findings and, quote, said he was very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat and he said he thought we were obligated to tell someone in government, in our government, about this information. he thought from his perspective there was an issue, a security issue about whether a presidential candidate was being blackmailed. when steele finally did make contact with the fbi a few months later, it turned out he was not the first person to do so.
united states of america. where ultimately they felt there was an obligation to notify federal authorities in the u.s., that in fact russia may have its hooks in donald trump ninety-two deeply troubling way really for simpson a patrottic duty and for steele, obliged them to report this. matthew, let s pick up on some of that. the salacious portions of this has been so gross and the attack on this has been so unrelenting by the gop. christopher steele emphasis name has been soiled in the public domain a little bit, i would argue. when you look at his behavior in this case, what do you see? you know, you re absolutely right. when you look at the way that
christopher steele, not just during the 2016 election, but since bob mueller has been appointed special counsel. his team have gone back and reinterviewed christopher steele. so i think it s very important the government has been able to take it seriously. and ultimately i think we ll find out whether any of those leads were true when bob mueller finishes his work. whether we as a public are better off, that s tough. for all of donald trump s behavior, it does put the president in a difficult position when you have allegations put out publicly. he can deny them, but it s very tough to push back on something like this when the sources are kind of hidden, kind of blind, and i do think that s a difficult place for the president to be. but look, he s not helped himself throughout this investigation. if he had behaved the way you would expect most presidents to do and made a statement about what his conduct was instead of
they have portrayed christopher steele, it s kind of as this mercenary, someone who is carrying out the bitter hillary clinton campaign. when you look at the portrait of him portrayed in this dossier, it is someone that is a national security professional, the top russian expert formerly from mi6, not with any goal in mind but to just find out what donald trump s business dealings in russia were. and in the course of doing interviews, he came across these findings that he alleges in his report were close russian ties or close ties between the russian government and the trump campaign with the intent to elect donald trump president. he was so alarmed as someone who apparently loves the united states very much, someone who believes greatly, wants to advance the national security of the united states, that he took those findings to the fbi. and i would say that runs counter not just to the narrative republicans have
painted of him, but it runs really counter to the behavior we ve seen from the trump campaign. we know, of course, donald trump jr. got information that the russian government wanted to help elect his father. he didn t take it to the fbi, he took a meeting. same thing with jared kushner, same thing obviously with george papadopoulos. you see someone here who is not an american citizen who i think was really acting to advance united states national security in a way we haven t seen from the trump orbit. jennifer, as the former fed here, what have you learned today about the extent and the depth of the investigation that we now know was going on all during the trump campaign? well, it s very interesting because, you know, we know that some of this information started coming out last summer. of course, none of us heard about it until much, much later in the year. we know the fbi was really engaged in and looking at the hillary clinton e-mails, and this seems to have been on the back b