Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe was unable to tell congressional investigators during seven hours of House testimony on Tuesday which parts of the infamous Trump dossier have been corroborated, according to a new report from Fox News.
McCabe, who met with House Intelligence Committee, told investigators that the FBI worked diligently to verify allegations made in the dossier, which was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.
According to Fox, McCabe stood by the document’s credibility. But as the network reports:
But when pressed to identify what in the salacious document the bureau had actually corroborated, the sources said, McCabe cited only the fact that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had traveled to Moscow. Beyond that, investigators said, McCabe could not even say that the bureau had verified the dossier’s allegations about the specific meetings Page supposedly held in Moscow.
Page, an energy consultant, is accused in the dossier of serving as the Trump campaign’s collusion backchannel to the Kremlin. According to Steele’s sources, Page was working alongside campaign chairman Paul Manafort in order to help Trump’s election bid.
Steele also alleges in the dossier, which BuzzFeed published in January, that during a trip to Moscow in July 2016, Page met secretly with Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin and a Russian government official named Igor Diveykin. Both are closely allied with the Kremlin.
But Page has denied the allegations in Steele’s report, which he refers to as the “dodgy dossier.” He says he has never met or talked to Manafort. He also vehemently denies ever meeting Sechin and Diveykin.
Steele made his allegations in the dossier about Page after it had been reported publicly that the campaign adviser visited Moscow. The visit raised eyebrows because of favorable comments that Page had made about the Russian government in the past.
Fox also reports that McCabe was unable to recall when he learned who funded the dossier.
It was revealed in October that the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee financed the report. The law firm that represented the campaign and DNC hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS in April 2016 to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia. Fusion then hired Steele, a former MI6 officer based in London.
According to Fox, McCabe’s signature was on documents which establish “his knowledge of the dossier’s financing and provenance.”