- Democratic memo claims Justice Department corroborated some the Steele dossier’s allegations
- Public has not seen the corroborating information because it is hidden behind black redaction boxes in the memo
- Democrats heavily touted the section claiming corroboration
One of the most startling claims made in the rebuttal memo released by Democrats last weekend is that the Justice Department had corroborated some of the Steele dossier’s allegations about former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The 10-page memo, which was made available to Congress in February and released on Saturday, asserts that in renewal applications for FISA warrants against Page, the Justice Department “provided additional information obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele’s reporting.”
Corroboration of any of the major allegations in the dossier would be a major coup for Democrats and Trump critics. The biggest knock against the dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele, is that none of its core claims — including that Page was the Trump campaign’s liaison to the Kremlin — have been verified. (RELATED: House Intel Releases Democratic Memo)
WATCH:
The public has not seen the corroborating information because it is hidden behind black redaction boxes in the memo.
The section claiming corroboration was initially touted heavily by Trump opponents. Jennifer Rubin, an anti-Trump conservative columnist at The Washington Post, wrote that “the prospect of ample corroboration of the dossier’s allegations (salacious or not) should be extremely troubling to the Trump team.” (RELATED: What The Democrats Left Out Of Their Memo)
But Democrats have said little over the past week about dossier corroboration, suggesting that there’s less to the claims of validation than their memo suggests.
And sources who have seen the unredacted version of the document tell The Daily Caller News Foundation that that’s exactly the case.
“There was nothing there that actually corroborated anything that was specifically said in the Steele dossier,” a source who has seen the memo told TheDCNF.
“There is no corroboration,” the source emphasized.
Sources who have seen the full memo were unable to discuss what was redacted because the information is classified. But one Republican lawmaker who viewed the document several weeks ago said they recall nothing that corroborates the dossier’s allegations about Page, an energy consultant who joined the Trump campaign in March 2016.
The dossier makes several claims about the former campaign volunteer. First, it alleges that he worked with then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort on a “well-developed conspiracy” involving Russian government leaders.
Steele also cites a source who claimed that Page met secretly with Kremlin insiders Igor Sechin and Igor Diveykin. During the alleged meeting with Sechin, Page expressed support for the Trump administration relaxing sanctions against Russia in exchange for a brokerage stake in a deal involving oil giant Rosneft, which Sechin controls.
Diveykin allegedly told Page about “kompromot” on Hillary Clinton and perhaps on Donald Trump.
The dossier also claims that it was Page’s idea to leak the hacked DNC emails to WikiLeaks in order to drive a wedge between Bernie Sanders supporters and the Democratic party.
Page has vehemently denied all of the allegations. Page claimed in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday that all of the dossier allegations about him are “entirely false.”
He also noted the Democratic memo and the section claiming to have corroboration about the dossier.
“Whatever’s underneath in these blacked out boxes [is] crazy,” said Page, who compared the document to the word game “Mad Libs.”
The claim about corroboration is made on page four of the Democratic memo, which was a rebuttal to a GOP-authored document alleging that the FBI and Justice Department misled the FISA court by failing to disclose key information about the dossier.
There are some clues, though not many, as to what’s behind the black boxes in the redacted Democratic memo.
Passage from Democratic rebuttal memo
The paragraph just after the redactions refers to Russian deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich, though only by his last name.
“This information contradicts Page’s November 2, 2017 testimony to the Committee, in which he initially denied any such meetings and then was forced to admit speaking with Dvorkovich and meeting with Rosneft’s Sechin-tied investor relations chief, Andrey Baranov.”
The mention of Dvorkovich by his last name suggests that his full name was mentioned in the redactions. But Page’s encounter with Dvorkovich was no secret, and it was not mentioned in the dossier. Page told reporters as early as August 2016 that he spoke briefly to Dvorkovich following a speech he gave during his trip to Moscow.
Republicans have speculated for some time that Democrats put sources and methods into their dossier deliberately to spark redactions. The FBI and Justice Department requested some of those redactions, just as they did for the Republican memo, which was released in January.
The Democratic side of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence did not respond to a request for comment.
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