Comey or Brennan? Dispute erupts over who pushed Steele dossier
Finger-pointing between high-level government officials begins over who pushed the unverified dossier weeks before President Trump's inauguration.
The growing feud between former FBI director James Comey and former CIA director John Brennan is just another example of anti-Trump conspirators positioning themselves to 'rat' each other out, according to conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
"So now they’re starting to point fingers at each other, and it’s gonna be a perfect time for leverage to be used for them to start ratting each other out," Limbaugh said Thursday on his radio show.
The launch of a formal inquiry into the origins of the Russia investigation led by John Durham has triggered a new round of behind-the-scenes finger-pointing among Obama administration officials.
A key dispute concerns whether Comey or Brennan, or possibly both, pushed the unverified Steele dossier containing claims about President Trump and his relationship to Russia. The dossier’s more sensational claims were never substantiated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team.
"This is what I meant yesterday when I said that the rats are beginning to scurry around. This is a textbook example of CYA (cover your a--), and in it, we have the former counsel — the lawyer for the FBI, James Baker — telling Michael Isikoff yesterday that senior FBI officials were worried Comey telling Trump about the golden shower story in the dossier might be construed as an attempt to blackmail Trump. In other words, we’re now hearing that FBI higher-ups were worried about what Comey was doing," Limbaugh told his audience.
Former FBI general counsel James Baker said this week on a podcast, hosted by Isikoff, that he and other officials were "quite worried" that Comey appeared to be blackmailing then President-elect Trump during a 2017 meeting regarding salacious allegations found in the Steele dossier.
Baker said he and others were so concerned about Comey briefing Trump that "analogies" were made to J. Edgar Hoover, the former FBI director who famously abused his power to blackmail individuals.
Limbaugh accused Baker and anti-Trump forces of leaking the dossier to the press.
EX-FBI LAWYER: OFFICIALS WERE 'QUITE WORRIED' COMEY APPEARED TO BE BLACKMAILING TRUMP WITH DOSSIER
"Mr. Baker, come on. The press had it because you gave it to them! The press had it because John McCain made sure they had it. The press had it because everybody in the Washington establishment wanted this dossier to be publicly consumed. You knew that it was unverified. You knew that it had not been corroborated, but you wanted it out there. McCain helped a bunch of people get this dossier out there," Limbaugh proclaimed.
"You say you’re worried about about the J. Edgar Hoover comparisons? The press had the dossier because it had been leaked!"
Fox News' Alex Pappas and Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
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