Now that the FBI and investigators from the Senate Intelligence Committee have given up on trying to verify the contents, Reuters is reporting that the infamous "Trump Dossier" hot potato has passed to Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team.
According to Reuters, Mueller has taken over the FBI inquiry into the dossier after it was widely reported earlier this year that the FBI failed to verify its most salacious allegations, but still used it to justify launching an investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Three sources with knowledge of Mueller’s probe said his investigators have assumed control of multiple inquiries into allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election to benefit Trump, a Republican.
Russia has repeatedly denied any meddling in the election.
The timing of the story is interesting, considering that only a few hours ago, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr admitted that the committee’s investigators had given up on trying to corroborate the document's allegations.
During a public update about the status of the committee's investigation, Burr said that the committee’s efforts to investigate the dossier’s allegations had “hit a wall” because it’s been unable to interview the dossier’s author, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
"Unfortunately, the committee has hit a wall," Sen. Burr says of Steele dossier https://t.co/T5uqoA85rO pic.twitter.com/QbxgCGr8yN
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 4, 2017
Without Steele’s cooperation, Burr said, the dossier’s contents and provenance, as well as the identity of its financial backers, appear impossible to verify up until it was first turned over the FBI in June 2016. The tacit suggestion here is that the only thing stopping investigators from publicly confirming that the dossier’s allegations have been debunked is the hope that Steel may one day come forward with the smoking gun that could lead to the downfall of a president…an eventuality that appears increasingly remote.
in case they forgot, Reuters reminds readers that its reporters had been briefed on the dossier’s contents before the election, but, like most media outlets at the time, decided not to report it because it couldn’t be verified.
Reuters added that since then, several US intelligence agencies have said they’re taking the allegations seriously.
In summary, Mueller’s “takeover” of the Russia dossier investigation is really just another hail mary in the hopes that Steele or somebody else will come forward with something, anything, that could verify the document’s assertions.