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https://dailycaller.com/2020/12/03/james-comey-dossier-brookings-benjamin-wittes/The Dec. 28, 2016, email indicates for the first time that Wittes offered to assist the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign.
Wittes’ description in his email to Comey closely matches that of the Steele dossier, which alleged that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to hack and release Democrats’ emails in order to influence the 2016 election.
“Under normal circumstances, I would simply assume that the document is either a fraud or that you guys already know all about it (Both may well be true, as it is.),” Wittes wrote.
“The wrinkle here is that the document — which purports to be a series of reports/dispatches by a private British intel company on Trump and Russia and the hacking and contains a number of highly-detailed accounts stuff that would be explosive if alleged publicly — is being furiously investigated by, at a minimum, the Wall Street Journal.”
Portion of Benjamin Wittes email to James Comey’s alias account (via Senate Homeland and Senate Finance Committees)
“I want to stress that I have NO idea if it is authentic, much less accurate. But I thought I would alert you to it in case, for some reason, it hasn’t made its way to your people long ago,” Wittes wrote.
Comey forwarded the email to other FBI officials, including then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and James Baker, who then served as general counsel.
It is not clear whether Wittes ended up providing Comey with a copy of the dossier. By that point, Steele had provided some of the memos from his dossier during meetings before the 2016 election. Comey had obtained some of the memos in a separate meeting with then-Sen. John McCain on Dec. 9, 2016.
Wittes said in a statement provided after this article was published that he stands behind his and Brookings’ handling of the dossier.
“There’s nothing remotely new here save the text of the email and the name of its addressee,” he told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“From literally the first day this document became public, we have been open in Lawfare articles and public media interviews about when we obtained the document and how we handled it, including that we alerted authorities.”
Wittes pointed to an article he co-wrote at Lawfare the day BuzzFeed published the dossier that noted that the think tank had received the documents weeks earlier. He also pointed to an interview that another Brookings official gave to PBS News in which she said that the think tank had provided the dossier to authorities for review.
“I stand behind Lawfare’s handling of the matter and its coverage, which speaks for itself,” Wittes told the DCNF.
The Senate Homeland Security and Senate Finance Committees released the email along with a batch of FBI documents related to the bureau’s investigation of the Trump campaign.
The FBI relied heavily on information from Christopher Steele, the dossier author, as part of its investigation. The bureau cited Steele’s information in applications to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Multiple investigations have since undercut the credibility of Steele and his dossier. A Justice Department inspector general’s investigation found that the FBI did not verify Steele’s allegations before using them to obtain the FISA warrants. Investigators also made 17 “significant” errors and omissions, many of them regarding the dossier, in the FISA applications.