Adam Schiff adopted Steele's anti-Trump conspiracies

The case was released on January 10, 2017, when BuzzFeed released the entire 35-page report.

On the political front, a subsequent March hearing before the House Intelligence Committee marked the point at which the Democrats fully promoted the writer and his accusations.

The audience is considered today as somewhat historical during the two years and more of the Russian narrative. It revealed a deep rift between the representative Devin Nunes, chairman of the California Republican Intelligence Committee, and the democratic minority led by Mr. Schiff. The hearing featured two high-profile witnesses, James B. Comey, then director of the FBI, and then Adm. Michael S. Rogers, director of the National Security Agency.

The Democrats spent a lot of time trying to convince Steele to support and congratulate Mr. Steele, but mostly declined.

"The reputation of the author, Christopher Steele, is a former British intelligence officer accomplished.It is important to continue the career after Russia," said representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat in Texas. "It's not someone who does not know how to run a source and not someone without contacts. The allegations he raises about President Trump's election campaign make it easier to connect with the Russians, while they are superimposed on known facts and the 2016 campaign calendar are very revealing. "

At the time, and perhaps by committee members, it was not publicly known that the record the Democrats were praising had been paid – by the Democrats.

Steele received at least $ 160,000 from the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee for opposition research on Trump. As an agent, Mr. Steele collected all sorts of anti-Trump allegations in the Kremlin's numbers and recorded them in a series of memos for his manager, the GPS Fusion Investigation Company. . He shared his allegations with Washington's liberal media and the FBI, who accepted his assumptions as an essential part of the bureau's Trump investigation.

But none of this was known to the public on March 20, 2017, as the Democrats praised the issue.

'Antifa in costume'

Mr. Schiff accused Steele that Carter Page, a Trump campaign volunteer, had secretly met with two members of Russian President Vladimir Putin and discussed bribes for the removal of economic sanctions.

Mr. Page was on an official trip in July 2016 to deliver a speech to a college. He repeatedly denied meeting the two men. The FBI listened for a year, largely from the record. He was not charged.

At the hearing, Schiff said: "According to Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who would be held in high esteem by US intelligence, Russian sources told him that Page had also a secret meeting with Igor Sechin, CEO of the Russian Federation. giant gas, Rosneft. Sechin would be a former KGB agent and a close friend of Putin. "

Mr Schiff congratulated Mr Steele for pointing out that Mr Page and former Trump campaign leader Paul Manafort had worked as a team to facilitate Russian electoral interference.

Since March 20, 2017, there is no public indication that Mr. Page and Mr. Manafort have known each other or spoken to each other, let alone conspired with the Russian intelligence services.

After Mr. Comey and Admiral Rogers refused to confirm Steele's accusations that Mr. Trump would have long-term contact with the Kremlin's intelligence services, Mr. Castro said, "OK. Well, the record really seems right on these points. A quid pro quo relationship seems to exist between the Trump campaign and Putin's Russia. "

Castro praised Steele for having predicted WikiLeaks' role in publishing Russia's stolen e-mails stolen, saying that "three days after this entry" from the ex-spy, the anti-secret group started to throw away the documents.

In fact, Steele's first reference to WikiLeaks was in the past. He had already published the emails.

Mr Schiff thanked Mr Steele for having predicted in an October brief note that the Russian oil company Rosneft would sell 19% of the capital to private bidders.

"Is it a coincidence that the Russian gas company Rosneft sold 19% of the capital after Russian sources informed the former British intelligence officer Steele that Carter Page had been offered a fee for a transaction of this size? ", said Mr. Schiff.

In fact, the Russian government announced last July the size of the private sale outstanding, 19%, three months before the memo of the record of Mr. Steele in October.

In the 20 months since the March hearing, Steele's main accusations of collusion, despite the Democrats' confessions, have still not been publicly proven.

These include a Manafort plot / page with Moscow, a long-term working relationship with Russian intelligence services, Trump's active support for Kremlin computer hacking, a "vast conspiracy Between the Kremlin and Trump campaign and a secret trip to Prague. by Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, to prepare a cover-up with Putin's aides.

What struck the Republicans at this March 20 hearing was Mr. Comey's statement that the entire Trump campaign was under investigation to determine whether it was cooperating with Russia on of electoral interference. The statement was so broad that it cast doubt on many people whose hopes of finding a job in the administration had disappeared.

"It's been two years since my colleagues and I have been besieged by Antifa in costume and skirt," said a former campaign agent who wanted to remain "discreet", referring to anti-fascist activists known for their violence. .

This person expressed fears that the Democrats are resuming their selective leaking campaign with CNN and other sympathetic outlets, saying the previous leaks were very misleading.

Mr. Schiff's battle cry was summed up in a tweet of November 21: "When the President: denigrates the independence of justice, attempts to have the Justice Department investigate its rivals, call the press a "Enemy of the people". the rule of law looks like. When Congress defends itself, that is what democracy looks like. "