The infamous dossier gathered by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele got even closer investigation by Robert Mueller's team after it was revealed the two met.
In her opening report Thursday, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow explained that the vast majority of the things in the dossier have been proven correct. What is left to be proven, obviously, are the more salacious personal details. Her example was that the dossier claimed Russia was behind the hack of the DNC, which was eventually proven correct. Similarly, months before it was proven that President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization sought to build a Trump Tower Moscow project, the dossier revealed it. Long before there was proof that Russian government sources offered derogatory information about Hillary Clinton to the Trump campaign directly, Steele had the information in his dossier.
"So, a lot of this he did dead right," Maddow said. "A lot of this that seemed nuts when we read this published in January. Since then it has been reported out and proven."
Wednesday, it was reported that Muller has now taken over the FBI investigation to corroborate the dossier. Thursday the story broke that Mueller's team met with Steele. The report revealed that the FBI and the intelligence community took the dossier far more seriously than it was reported.
"So there is is this dossier saying that the Trump campaign and the Russians were in cahoots involved in a conspiracy of operation to help put Trump -- put a foreign thumb on the scale to get Trump in office," Maddow recalled. "You got to brief Trump on how you found out what parts of that were true? Who might he tell once you told him?"
Maddow brought up the press conference with the Senate Intelligence Committee's Richard Burr (R-NC) and Mark Warner (D-VA). They revealed in their press conference Wednesday that they were able to investigate many things about the Russia scandal except for the dossier. In that case, they've hit a brick wall. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has even said that anyone citing the dossier is outright wrong and should be held accountable.
The new reporting, according to Maddow is that Steele, through an associate, told members of Congress he'd be happy to talk to them. That contradicts both Grassley and Burr's claims. So, it came as new to Steele that the senators couldn't meet with him, because he offered to and was waiting until they could agree on a date. When Maddow's team reached out for comment the committee said that they were happy to meet with Steele, but didn't confirm or deny that Steele had offered to meet with them previously.
"So, there may be a continuing political interest in Washington in trying to make the Christopher Steele dossier seem like a scandal or seem like an unplumbable depth that we'll never be able to understand and nobody will ever be able to investigate," Maddow said.
Maddow outlined four major facts:
1. "A bunch of the dossier has proven to be true.
2. "The FBI and CIA have reportedly validated parts of it as true and have apparently used it as the basis of some of their ongoing investigation."
3. "The special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the dossier including interviewing Christopher Steele about it."
4. "Senate investigators apparently can meet with Christopher Steele if they want to. Even if the Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee yesterday said otherwise."
She noted that former Trump aide Steve Bannon is demanding that Republicans in the House and Senate put their collective feet down to stop these investigations. However, every day there is new information proving that this the investigation is warranted.
Watch the full report below:
Part 1:
Part 2:
