A Republican congressman appeared on Fox News to amplify a conservative newspaper report casting doubt on a salacious dossier linking President Donald Trump to Russia.
The Washington Times reported Monday that FBI officials have said some elements remained unverified in the dossier produced by a former British spy working for an opposition research firm.
"(This), of course, is troubling to a lot of folks who feel that could have been the basis upon which the entire investigations were launched," said "Fox & Friends" host Pete Hegseth.
That's the same message Trump pushed Tuesday on his Twitter account.
Fusion GPS, working on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, hired former MI6 agent Christoper Steele in June 2016 to investigate Trump's connections to Russia.
The FBI opened an investigation into those connections the following month, after intelligence services and news reports blamed Russian hackers for data stolen from the Democratic National Committee, and Steele shared his findings with the bureau as he continued working through the end of the year.
The dossier eventually leaked to news organizations before the 2016 election, and was reported by Mother Jones, but the salacious details were not revealed until weeks ahead of Inauguration Day after reporters were unable to substantiate the claims.
"I'm hearing the exact same things, and think about where this dossier came from," said Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who has been a leading Republican critic of the special counsel probe into Trump-Russia connections. "It's not something that was created by an intelligence agency, it was funded by the Democrats and Hillary Clinton through Perkins-Cole law firm to Fusion GPS, and Fusion GPS created this."
Intelligence agencies warned the Obama administration about potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, but Republican congressional leaders refused to endorse a unified resistance to foreign election meddling.
DeSantis also cast doubt on Steele and his sources, and suggested a congressional investigation was necessary to push back against the special counsel probe, which has so far resulted in two guilty pleas and two indictments.
"I think Christopher Steele -- he had been a spy in Russia 25 years ago," DeSantis said. "He didn't have any sources -- I think he was really just window dressing for this thing. They put a lot of BS in this thing, fake news, and they tried to dress it up as an intelligence product. And if the FBI used that, that was unverified -- even Jim Comey admits that -- to launch a counterintelligence investigation, I think that that's very, very troubling. We are digging for the answers on this, and we are going to get the answers."
Co-host Lisa Boothe asked whether the investigation could be considered credible if the dossier was used to justify a FISA warrant against any Trump campaign officials -- and DeSantis agreed it would.
"Well, I think it would undermine the legitimacy of the genesis of the investigation and all the way to the present," DeSantis said. "The Russia collusion was always more of a narrative than anything based on any type of factual basis, but if this was the basis to get surveillance on an American citizen, remember, if you are doing a FISA surveillance on an American citizen, it's not just that they may have foreign contacts. You have to actually say there is a basis they display committed a criminal offense. If a dossier, an opposition research political hit piece is what you are using, I think that's going to call into question how they conducted themselves in this investigation. There is no doubt about it."
FBI admits it can’t verify dossier claims of Russia, Trump campaign collusion pic.twitter.com/XaxTn1Rz2n
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) December 27, 2017
