Unreported: Main target of Steele ‘dossier’ exonerated

by WorldTribune Staff, April 19, 2019

Among the more underreported takeaways from the Mueller report involved Trump campaign associate Carter Page and ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

Page, who had been accused felonious acts in the anti-Trump dossier, was exonerated by Mueller’s report.

Michael Cohen, left, and Carter Page

“The investigation did not establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election,” the report said.

Page had from the outset denied any wrongdoing. He called the dossier, authored by ex-British spy Christopher Steele and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, a work of fiction.

“The unverified dossier contended that Page had worked with Paul Manafort as a liaison with the Kremlin on Russian interference in the 2016 election via computer hacking and social media trolling,” Rowan Scarborough reported for The Washington Times on April 18.

Mueller found no evidence.

Said the report, “In interviews with the FBI before the Office’s opening, Page acknowledged that he understood that the individuals he had associated with were members of the Russian intelligence services, but he stated that he had only provided immaterial non-public information to them and that he did not view this relationship as a backchannel. Page told investigating agents that ‘the more immaterial non-public information I give them, the better for this country.’ ”

Page said he had met with several business contacts he knew from his Moscow days. He has denied meeting with two men named in the Steele dossier. The Mueller report said it didn’t obtain evidence on those supposed meetings.

As for Cohen, the Mueller report found that President Donald Trump had instructed him to fully cooperate with Congress, contradicting a BuzzFeed report which said the president ordered Cohen to lie.

Trump “instructed Cohen that he should cooperate because there was nothing there,” the Mueller report says, quoting Cohen’s interview with the FBI.

“The BuzzFeed story spurred wide speculation that Trump would be charged with encouraging perjury,” Scarborough noted.

The story claimed that Cohen told Mueller’s team that Trump “personally instructed him” to mislead lawmakers “in order to obscure Trump’s involvement” in a Moscow Trump Tower project.

BuzzFeed touted Cohen’s supposed testimony as “the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia.”

The special counsel’s office took the rare step of issuing a statement in response to the BuzzFeed story after it ran in January of this year. Mueller’s office said BuzzFeed’s descriptions of Cohen’s testimony were “inaccurate.”

Meanwhile, government watchdog group Judicial Watch said it will continue, via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), to seek information to expose the “Deep State’s” targeting of Trump and his team in the Russia collusion hoax.

“Neither Mueller, the Obama FBI, DOJ, CIA, State Department, nor the Deep State ever had a good-faith basis to pursue President Trump on Russia collusion,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “Russia collusion wasn’t just a hoax, it was criminal abuse, which is why Judicial Watch has fought and will continue to fight for Russiagate documents in federal court.”

Fitton added: “The targeting of President Trump served to protect Hillary Clinton and her enablers/co-conspirators in the Obama administration from prosecution. Attorney General Barr can begin restoring the credibility of the Justice Department by finally initiating a thorough investigation of the Clinton email and related pay-to-play scandals and the abuses behind the targeting of President Trump.”

Judicial Watch’s past FOIA lawsuits have revealed:

  • Dossier-based Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications targeting President Trump.
  • Eleven FBI payments to Christopher Steele.
  • The FBI’s firing of Steele.
  • Extensive DOJ (Bruce Ohr) collusion with Steele, Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS.
  • How there were no court hearings by the defrauded FISA courts before warrants were issued.
  • Anti-Trump bias by Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann.

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