Joe.My.God. LGBT News
A bit of a bombshell revelation from Politico:
Two Republican House Intelligence Committee staffers traveled to London earlier this summer to track down the former British intelligence operative who compiled a controversial dossier on President Donald Trump and Russia, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The previously unreported trip underscores the importance of the 35-page dossier Christopher Steele wrote last year to congressional probes into possible collusion between Moscow and the 2016 Trump campaign.
It also has inflamed simmering tensions between House and Senate investigators as they pursue simultaneous probes into the Trump-Russia connection. House Intelligence Committee Republicans did not tell Democrats on the panel, the Senate Intelligence Committee nor special counsel Robert Mueller’s office that the investigators were pursuing Steele.
The House staffers left their contact information at two addresses associated with Steele, a former agent for Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service. One of those locations was Steele’s lawyer’s office, where the former spy was meeting with his counsel when the House investigators showed up.
More from Newsweek:
The search irritated Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, who were left in the dark about the visit, which ended with the Republican staffers leaving empty-handed after being unable to track down Steele. The move is similarly said to have caused tension with a parallel investigation being conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which fears that Steele may be scared off by the aggressive pursuit. The Senate Intelligence Committee has been pursuing its own interview with Steele and was in talks to do just that, NBC News reported in March.
Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to discuss Fusion GPS, the company that hired Steele to gather intelligence on links between the Trump campaign and Russia last year. The co-founder of the research company, Glenn Simpson, was subpoenaed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, according to the Associated Press. After indicating that he would refuse to testify, it was expected that he would be questioned privately instead.