A previously undisclosed letter from the attorney for Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson surfaced on Tuesday confirming anonymous reports that the FBI had an informant in the Trump campaign.
Leaks to the media in recent weeks fueled speculation that the FBI had an informant interacting with the Trump campaign, but the sources remained anonymous, relegating articles on the subject to the opinion pages.
“Essentially what [Christopher Steele] told me was they had other intelligence about this matter from an internal Trump campaign source and that—that they—my understanding was that they believed Chris at this point—that they believed Chris’s information might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization,” Simpson told the committee.
The significance McCarthy’s finding was noted by President Donald Trump, who wrote in a Twitter message on Thursday that the revelation is “bigger than Watergate.”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/997095653875617792
The still unnamed informant was potentially the genesis of the FBI’s official rationale for starting an investigation into the alleged ties between officials from the Trump campaign and Russia.
Both versions of the events are now questionable because no Australian or American official has ever confirmed the Times report on record. Meanwhile, Chairman of House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes found that the FBI did not put forth any electronic communication records between Australian intelligence agencies and their American counterparts to substantiate its investigation.
This has led Nunes to dig for the ultimate reason for the start of the Russia probe. The Justice Department stonewalled Nunes’ attempts at oversight even under the threat of contempt charges and impeachment, which suggests that the information about the source is damaging. The department finally relented during a meeting last week and agreed to discuss the matter at a later date.
Mifsud told Papadopoulos about Russians having “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Weeks later, Papadopoulos told the story to Downer. How intelligence about that conversation made its way to the FBI is still unclear, but is likely to be revealed in the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General’s report, which is expected to be released this month.