“Dumped” in this case is rather relative. And appeared to have more to do with plausible deniability than ethics.
The FBI had to be well aware that Steele was in contact with the media. Even after ties with Steele were supposedly cut, FBI brass insisted that Steele was reliable. And now, as we see in the latest piece by John Solomon, the ties still remain strong courtesy of the DOJ’s Bruce Ohr whose wife was working against Trump for Fusion GPS.
Steele’s FBI relationship had been terminated about three months earlier. The bureau concluded on Nov. 1, 2016, that he leaked information to the news media and was “not suitable for use” as a confidential source, memos show.
The FBI specifically instructed Steele that he could no longer “operate to obtain any intelligence whatsoever on behalf of the FBI,” those memos show.
Yet, Steele asked Ohr in the Jan. 31 text exchange if he could continue to help feed information to the FBI: “Just want to check you are OK, still in the situ and able to help locally as discussed, along with your Bureau colleagues.”
“I’m still here and able to help as discussed,” Ohr texted back. “I’ll let you know if that changes.”
Steele replied, “If you end up out though, I really need another (bureau?) contact point/number who is briefed. We can’t allow our guy to be forced to go back home. It would be disastrous.” Investigators are trying to determine who Steele was referring to.
FBI officials now admit they continued to receive information from Steele through Ohr, identifying more than a half-dozen times its agents interviewed Ohr in late 2016 and 2017, to learn what Steele was saying.
It’s not turtles all the way down. It’s plausible deniability all the way down.
And a guy whose wife was employed by Fusion GPS was being interviewed by the FBI as a way of passing material from a Fusion GPS hiree to the FBI. This reeking swamp badly needs draining.
Article posted with permission from Daniel Greenfield
