Jonathan Winer, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of State, wrote Friday that former British spy Christopher Steele and Sidney Blumenthal, an ally of Hillary Clinton, provided him with intelligence reports that alleged collusion between Donald Trump's campaign and Russians.
"In September 2016, Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the 'dossier,'" Winer wrote in The Washington Post.
Winer, who worked in the State Department in the 1990s and again starting in 2013, had been friends with Steele and kept in touch with him on Russian matters. At their 2016 meeting, Winer wrote that the information in the 'dossier' from Steele's sources suggested that the Kremlin had hacked the Democratic National Committee, the Hillary Clinton campaign, as well as Trump, and had ties with Trump's associates and campaign.
The former official shared Steele's information he had received with Victoria Nuland, a former assistant secretary of State, who then passed it on to the then-Secretary of State John Kerry.
Later that month, Winer said, he met with Blumenthal, who gave Winer notes from journalist Cody Shearer that also said Russians had information that would compromise Trump.
"What struck me was how some of the material echoed Steele's but appeared to involve different sources," Winer wrote.
He shared Shearer's notes with Steele, to ask his professional opinion. He allowed Steele to keep a copy of the information, and Steele then shared the information with the FBI.
"Given that I had not worked with Shearer and knew that he was not a professional intelligence officer, I did not mention or share his notes with anyone at the State Department. I did not expect them to be shared with anyone in the U.S. government," Winer wrote.
"I learned later that Steele did share them — with the FBI, after the FBI asked him to provide everything he had on allegations relating to Trump, his campaign, and Russian interference in U.S. elections," Winer wrote in the Post.
"I am in no position to judge the accuracy of the information generated by Steele or Shearer. But I was alarmed at Russia's role in the 2016 election, and so were U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials. I believe all Americans should be alarmed — and united in the search for truth about Russian interference in our democracy, and whether Trump and his campaign had any part in it," Winer wrote in the Post.The information in Winer's piece matches up with events noted in an investigation referral Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., filed on Jan. 4.
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