Schiff: Revelation DNC and Clinton Camp Funded Steele Dossier ‘Part of the Effort to Discredit’ Steele

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), the Ranking Member on the House Intelligence Committee, reacted to a report that the Clinton campaign and DNC helped fund the research that resulted in the Christopher Steele dossier doesn’t really add much to the Russia investigation and is “part of the effort to discredit” Steele.

Schiff stated, “We’ve known for some time, at least it’s been publicly reported, that the dossier, or the hiring of Christopher Steele was initially on behalf of one of the Republican candidates, and later on behalf of the Democratic candidate. This was the first confirmation of half of that, but it doesn’t really shed any light where we really need light shed, and that is how much of what Mr. steele found can be corroborated? How much of it is accurate? We’ve been working hard to answer those questions, which are really what the American people need to know. And, indeed, some of the dossier has been corroborated. What I find most significant about it is the fact that Christopher Steele, no matter who was paying for his services, may have discovered, before our own intelligence agencies that the Russians were going to interfere in our election on behalf of Donald Trump. So, we have a lot of work to do in terms of a lot of the claims in the dossier, but it — I don’t think it really adds much value to know who paid for it, necessarily, and I view this as part of the effort to discredit him, which really doesn’t advance the investigation.”

He added, “Republicans are less interested in what did Russia do and how did they do it and how do we protect ourselves? But rather, let’s shift the focus onto any kind of government misbehavior, and maybe if we can suggest that the whole investigation goes back to this dossier and this dossier was opposition research, maybe we can discredit the whole investigation and maybe we can get the country to ignore what Russia, in fact, did. You know, the plain fact is, sometimes what is uncovered in opposition research turns out to be true. And here, if what Christopher Steele found, whether it was working for a Republican candidate and a Democratic candidate later, proved to be true, proved to be of concern to the FBI and to the country, then we need to know it, and we can’t ignore it merely because it came to the surface during a political campaign. So the most important thing is, is it true?”

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