GOP/JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: “Two Republican senators allege the author of a controversial dossier lied to federal agents, or the Justice Department knowingly or mistakenly permitted ‘materially false statements’ to appear in classified records, according a criminal referral from the lawmakers released on Monday [2-5-18].
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina made the allegations in a written referral they sent last month to the Justice Department seeking a criminal investigation of the dossier’s author, Christopher Steele.
The letter doesn’t specify which classified records it is referring to, but later correspondence suggests it involves material from Mr. Steele that the Justice Department included in a surveillance application it submitted to a judge in 2016 to secretly monitor a former Trump campaign adviser.
The Justice Department has said it received the senators’ letter and is reviewing it. Mr. Steele’s attorney didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A heavily redacted version of the senators’ letter was released Monday, following the disclosure last week by the House Intelligence Committee of a Republican-authored memo asserting that improper bias had infected the Justice Department’s investigation of ties between associates of President Donald Trump and the Russian government.”
-Del Quentin Wilber and Byron Tau, “GOP Senators Add to Questions About Dossier Author Steele,” The Wall Street Journal online, Feb. 5, 2018 5:53pm