CAN THIS BE BOOM?
Court to unseal Christopher Steele deposition
The depositions given by former British spy Christopher Steele and a longtime associate of John McCain must be unsealed, a federal judge said Thursday.
U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro overruled the objections of both Steele and David Kramer to make the depositions public. The pair gave testimony in a lawsuit brought against BuzzFeed in December 2018 by a Russian Internet entrepreneur.
The businessman, Aleksej Gubarev, was referenced in the infamous dossier compiled by Steele about President Trump’s alleged connections to Russia. Gubarev objected to BuzzFeed’s publishing of the dossier in January 2017, which accused him of using his companies to hack into computers owned by the Democratic National Committee.
(((The depositions could be released as soon as March 14.)))
Ungaro dismissed the libel suit brought by Gubarev in December, ruling that the publishing of the dossier was protected by the fair report privilege.
BuzzFeed was heavily criticized for publishing the unverified 35-page dossier, which contained salacious allegations against the president.
Kramer, a former State Department official, gave the dossier to BuzzFeed in December 2016, after meeting Steele in London weeks earlier.
Steele was hired by Fusion GPS during the 2016 presidential campaign to compile opposition research on Trump.
Last year, Republicans from the House Intelligence Committee put together a memo that accused the FBI and the Justice Department of obtaining surveillance warrants to spy on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, by using the dossier, but failing to present key information, including its author's anti-Trump bias and Democratic benefactors, to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Democrats argued in a rebuttal memo that the FISA process was not abused and the GOP allegations are meant to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Trump’s former longtime lawyer Michael Cohen cast doubt on the dossier in a hearing with the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. The dossier claimed Cohen visited Prague during the 2016 campaign to meet with Russian officials, but Cohen denied under oath ever visiting the city.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5754712-Order-on-Motion-to-Intervene.html