From the piss dossier to Popadop, the Obama State Dept played a YUGE role Russiagate

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Drip by drip, details have emerged over the past several months showing the Department of State under the Obama administration played a larger role at key junctures in the Trump-Russia probe than previously known. State Department officials obtained and reviewed parts of the infamous Steele dossier by mid-July 2016, well before FBI headquarters had access to the document. The U.S. embassy in London was also an early recipient of information about former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that the FBI would use to justify opening its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016. And in a little-noticed Senate hearing on Wednesday, it was revealed that dossier author Christopher Steele briefed State Department officials at Foggy Bottom in October 2016. The briefing suggests closer contacts between Steele and the State Department than the agency has acknowledged.

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Three diplomats — Victoria Nuland, Jonathan Winer and Elizabeth Dibble — appear to be key to the State Department’s role in handling Trump-related Russia information. Nuland, who was the Obama State Department’s top Russia expert, received excerpts of Steele’s dossier in mid-July 2016, about two months before the salacious document would reportedly make its way to the FBI team investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government. Dibble, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in London, was reportedly one of the first U.S. officials to receive information about a May 2016 conversation that Papadopoulos, the Trump adviser, had with Alexander Downer, the Australian High Commissioner to the U.K. The meeting, held May 10, 2016, in which Downer says Papadopoulos mentioned Hillary Clinton and Russians, would later prompt the FBI to start its counterintelligence investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane. Winer, who served until 2017 as special envoy to Libya, met personally with Steele. He also exchanged documents with the former MI6 officer and prepared a two-page summary of Steele’s dossier for the State Department.

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