How a Little-Known FBI Unit Helped to Disseminate the Steele Dossier
A little-known FBI unit played an outsized role in allowing controversial claims by a former MI6 Spy about Donald Trump to reach the highest levels of the FBI and State Department.
The Eurasian Organized Crime Unit, which at the time was headed by Michael Gaeta, specializes in investigating criminal groups from Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine.
Gaeta, an FBI agent and Assistant Legal Attaché at the US Embassy in Rome, has known the former spy, Christopher Steele—who authored the controversial dossier on then-candidate Donald Trump—since at least 2010, when Steele provided assistance in the FBI’s investigation into the FIFA Corruption scandal over concerns Russia might have been engaging in bribery to host the 2018 World Cup.
Loretta Lynch, who served as Attorney General from 2015 to 2017 under then-President Barack Obama, was at the time “on her second tour as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District” and was seen as an advocate for Gaeta’s team:
“Loretta Lynch was the one who said, ‘Go get it,’” a source told ESPN in a February 2016 article. “She was the one to speak with higher-ups in DC when that needed to happen.”
U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie oversaw the FIFA case. Dearie was also a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Judge and would later sign the third and final FISA renewal allowing the continued surveillance of Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.
https://themarketswork.com/2018/08/31/how-a-little-known-fbi-unit-helped-to-disseminate-the-steele-dossier/