Luke Harding
- Former MI6 officer gifted her ‘family tartan from Scotland’
- Steele was ‘favorably disposed’ to Trump family, report said
The former MI6 officer Christopher Steele had a “personal” relationship with Ivanka Trump and gifted her a “family tartan from Scotland” as a present, the long-awaited report by US Department of Justice inspector general, Michael Horowitz, revealed on Monday.
Horowitz’s review of the FBI’s 2016 investigation into Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign and its links with Russia includes fresh details of Steele’s interactions with the FBI, and startling claims about his relationship with the Trumps dating back to the period before he wrote a controversial dossier on Trump.
The report did not mention Ivanka Trump by name but her identity was revealed by ABC News.
The report said that contrary to what Donald Trump has claimed on Twitter Steele was actually “favorably disposed” to the Trump family. It was “ridiculous” to suggest he was biased against the then Republican candidate or that his memos on collusion, written at the behest of the Washington-based research firm Fusion GPS, were in any way biased, Steele told federal investigators.
Steele said he had visited Ivanka Trump at Trump Tower and had been “friendly” with her for “some years”. He described their relationship as “personal”. The former British government spy had even given her a “family tartan from Scotland” as a present, the report quoted him as saying.
ABC also reported that Ivanka Trump even discussed work that Steele’s firm – Orbis Business Intelligence – might do for the Trump family business.
Earlier this year Steele met with members of the inspector general’s team in London and spoke to investigators via Skype. He handed over memos setting out his two meetings in 2016 with the FBI, in which he passed on his dossier which said that the Russians had been seeking to cultivate Trump for some years, and had secretly compromised him in a Moscow hotel room.
Horowitz’s conclusions were sent to Orbis ahead of the report’s publication on Monday. This prompted Steele to issue an unusual statement via his lawyers pushing back against some of the inspector general’s key claims.
The report concludes the FBI placed too much emphasis on Steele’s work. It said Steele’s reporting was not done “in bad faith” but sometimes showed a “lack of judgement” and could involve pursuing people with “political risk but no intelligence value”.
On Monday Steele’s Washington-based law firm, Bredhoff & Kaiser, issued a lengthy rebuttal of Horowitz’s findings and defended Steele’s professional work.
It said that the Trump-Russia memos written by Steele in 2016 were derived from “credible and reliable” human sources. Subsequently his reporting was “extensively corroborated”, the lawyers said.
Some of this confirmation came from testimony given by Carter Page, Trump’s former foreign policy aide.
Page is at the centre of the Horowitz review. The president appointed Horowitz after Republicans claimed Page was the victim of “illegal” FBI spying in 2016, with a surveillance warrant issued by a federal court in part because of the dossier. The report finds that the FBI made multiple mistakes and errors in its handling of the Page case.
Page admitted that in 2016 he met with senior officials from the Kremlin and the oil firm Rosneft in Moscow. This was what the dossier reported, Steele’s lawyers pointed out. They added that Steele’s memos – published by BuzzFeed – were never “meant to be made public”. The report further quotes Steele as saying his field work was meant to be “briefed off of orally” rather than consumed as a “written product”.
Donald Trump has repeatedly blasted Steele on Twitter, describing him as a “failed spy” and his dossier as “phoney”.
The dossier says Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, launched a multi-faceted campaign to boost Trump ahead of the 2016 election. Robert Mueller confirmed “sweeping and systematic” Russian interference but cleared Trump of engaging in a criminal-level conspiracy.
America faces an epic choice…
… in the coming year, and the results will define the country for a generation. Democracy is under attack, as is civility, truth and normal forms of political behaviour. The White House harbours white nationalists, incites fear and prejudice, undermines intelligence agencies, courts foreign influence in US elections and undermines the judiciary. The need for a robust, independent press has never been greater and with your help we can continue to provide fact-based reporting that offers public scrutiny and oversight.
These are perilous times. The administration’s willingness to deploy untruths, violent speech and hateful attacks on the media are now commonplace. This is why we are asking for your help so that we can continue to put truth and civility at the heart of the public discourse. You have read 19 articles in the last two months, so we hope you can appreciate the Guardian’s choice to keep our journalism open for all.
“Next year America faces an epic choice – and the result could define the country for a generation. It is at a tipping point, finely balanced between truth and lies, hope and hate, civility and nastiness. Many vital aspects of American public life are in play – the Supreme Court, abortion rights, climate policy, wealth inequality, Big Tech and much more. The stakes could hardly be higher. As that choice nears, the Guardian, as it has done for 200 years, and with your continued support, will continue to argue for the values we hold dear – facts, science, diversity, equality and fairness.” – US editor, John Mulholland
On the occasion of its 100th birthday in 1921 the editor of the Guardian said, “Perhaps the chief virtue of a newspaper is its independence. It should have a soul of its own.” That is more true than ever. Freed from the influence of an owner or shareholders, the Guardian’s robust independence is our unique driving force and guiding principle.
We also want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported the Guardian in 2019. You provide us with the motivation and financial support to keep doing what we do. We hope to surpass our goal by early January. Every contribution, big or small, will help us reach it.
Make a year-end gift from as little as $1. Thank you.