Free Republic

A federal judge in Florida on Thursday ordered the release of depositions given by former British spy Christopher Steele and a longtime associate of late Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain in a lawsuit filed against BuzzFeed regarding Steele’s anti-Trump dossier. U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro overruled requests by Steele and David Kramer, the former McCain associate, to keep depositions they gave in the BuzzFeed lawsuit under seal. Ungaro dismissed a lawsuit filed against BuzzFeed on Dec. 19, 2018, by Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian businessman accused in the dossier of using his companies to hack into DNC computers.

David Kramer, an associate of Senator John McCain, invoked his Fifth Amendment right to not testify to Congress in connection to his role in distribution of the fake Russia dossier to the FBI. Kramer was briefed by the Russian dossier author Christopher Steele in London in 2016. The Russian dossier was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The junk dossier was used as evidence in a FISA court hearing as evidence to spy on Trump volunteer Carter Page — in October 2016. Kramer then returned back to the US and delivered the phony dossier...

A federal judge on Wednesday revealed just how widely Christopher Steele distributed his infamous anti-Trump dossier. Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Paul Ryan chief of staff Jonathan Burks received Steele’s reports in December 2016, before BuzzFeed would publish the dossier in full. Court documents say that Steele gave the dossier materials to Kinzinger and Burks, though Paul Ryan’s office claims that Burks has never met Steele and did not receive documents directly from the former British spy. A Republican lawmaker and the chief of staff to House Speaker Paul Ryan were early recipients of the infamous Steele dossier, according to a...