Legal watchdog asks U.S. whistleblower agency to probe hiding evidence on infamous Steele Dossier

A legal watchdog is asking the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the government’s main whistleblower protection agency, to investigate whether several federal agencies “fraudulently concealed” responsive documents about the Steele Dossier at the heart of the now-discredited Russia collusion probe. 

The concealment is related to a Freedom of Information case brought by the Southeastern Legal Foundation, which first represented Just the News in seeking the Steele dossier documents years ago, made the dramatic legal request this weekend after documents declassified recently by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard unmasked a secret effort to thwart the release of evidence under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

A concerted effort to hide Steele Dossier records from press and public

“Southeastern Legal Foundation is committed to ensuring governmental integrity and exposing government corruption,” the group wrote Acting Special Counsel Jameison Greer in a letter dated Friday. “SLF therefore asks OSC, upon a finding of arbitrary and capricious withholding of responsive documents, to report violations of the law to the President and the Attorney General for appropriate action.”

The group said documents and reports recently released by Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe unmasked a concerted effort to hide evidence about problems with the Steele Dossier, including from the FOIA request filed by Southeastern Legal Foundation on behalf of Just the News.

“Based on Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard’s and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DCIA) John Ratcliffe’s bombshell 2025 reports, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) fraudulently concealed documents responsive to Southeastern Legal Foundation’s 2019 FOIA requests for communications about the now-infamous Clinton-funded Steele Dossier,” the group alleged.

“SLF therefore asks OSC to investigate the Intelligence Community’s (IC) and their principals’ improper withholding of these documents,” it added. 

You can read the full letter here.

Obama and Biden knew about problems with Steele Dossier, but ignored them

The group’s request for investigation and possible prosecution came after Gabbard released documents from an ODNI whistleblower showing the intelligence community under Barack Obama and Joe Biden secretly used the Steele Dossier — even though it had been flagged by the FBI as containing uncorroborbated and in some cases debunked intelligence —   to support a conclusion Russia tried to help Trump win the 2016 election.

That allegations of criminal collusion between Trump and Vladimir Putin have been resoundingly debunked by multiple investigations by Congress, and special prosecutors Robert Mueller and John Durham.

Southeastern Legal Foundation President Kimberly Hermann told Just the News the public had a right to know the flaws and failures of the Russia collusion probe but was kept from such knowledge by complicit bureaucrats. 

“Thanks to a bombshell whistleblower report we now know that for years, Obama and Biden’s FBI, CIA, and ODNI lied to us and federal courts, concealing documents that show manufactured intelligence funded by the Clinton campaign was used to influence the 2016 election and undermine President Trump’s first term,” she said.

Federal election regulators fined Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2022 for not properly disclosing the money they spent on pushing the infamous Trump-Russia dossier. The Federal Elections Commission concluded that the Clinton campaign and DNC misreported the money that funded the dossier, masking it as “legal services” and “legal and compliance consulting” instead of opposition research.

“It is time to know the truth – who was behind the Russia-hoax and who instructed the Intelligence Community to rely on the now-debunked Steele Dossier,” she added. “Was it intentionally orchestrated to influence an election for Hillary Clinton and later Joe Biden? Using the FBI as a political weapon is not only immoral and un-American, it is illegal. Withholding information responsive to a FOIA is also illegal.”

Clinton, Obama and national security cabinet members “manufactured and politicized intelligence”

Gabbard in July sent declassified evidence to the Justice Department on what she dubbed a “treasonous conspiracy” related to top U.S. intelligence officials allegedly politicizing intelligence related to Russia and the 2016 election.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on Friday issued a press release stating that Gabbard had “revealed overwhelming evidence that demonstrates how, after President Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”

Gabbard said the evidence she had unearthed had been forwarded to the DOJ for review. CIA Director John Ratcliffe also sent a criminal referral to FBI Director Kash Patel related to possible alleged criminality by Obama CIA Director John Brennan, a source previously told Just the News.

“The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government. Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people,” Gabbard said at the time. 

“No matter how powerful, every person involved in this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to ensure nothing like this ever happens again […] As such, I am providing all documents to the Department of Justice to deliver the accountability that President Trump, his family, and the American people deserve.”

Much of the focus of Gabbard’s statements and declassifications related to the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which was completed in December 2016 and released in a public forum in early January 2017.

These declassifications by Gabbard come on the heels of the CIA’s recent eight-page “lessons learned” review — released this summer — which concluded that “the decision by agency heads to include the Steele Dossier in the ICA ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.”

The CIA’s recent review also critiqued the “high confidence” assessment by the FBI and the CIA that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had “aspired” to help Trump win in 2016.

Evidence of the Obama administration’s conspiracy to subvert Trump’s 2016 victory and presidency

Steele, a former MI6 agent, had been hired in 2016 by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which was being paid by Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias. The dossier, now discredited, was used by the FBI to fraudulently obtain FISA warrants against a Trump campaign official. Evidence continues to emerge about how it was included in the ICA on Russia and the 2016 election.

The Gabbard-led intelligence office said of the December 2016 ICA that “after months of investigation into this matter, the facts reveal this new assessment was based on information that was known by those involved to be manufactured i.e. the Steele Dossier or deemed as not credible.”

ODNI’s Director’s Initiatives Group released “Declassified Evidence of Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert President Trump’s 2016 Victory and Presidency” on Friday, sharing 114 pages of newly declassified and largely unredacted emails and intelligence reports, as well as publishing what it dubbed a “Russia Hoax memo.”

The 11-page memo had as its subject line, “Intelligence Community suppression of intelligence showing ‘Russian and criminal actors did not impact’ the 2016 presidential election via cyber-attacks on infrastructure.” The memo included a timeline which detailed “Key Intelligence Manipulated and Withheld from the American People by the IC.”

A newly-declassified assessment by the U.S. intelligence community from September 2016, first reported by Just the News, showed the IC did not seem overly concerned by Russian meddling in the 2016 election and made no mention of the Kremlin backing Donald Trump — a tone which would shift dramatically after the November 2016 election.

The heretofore unknown ICA — completed in September 2016 but declassified by Gabbard this week — stood in stark contrast to the later ICA which would be completed in December 2016.

The September 2016 assessment made no mention of Russia’s alleged animosity towards Clinton nor of its supposed preference for Trump, included no discussion of the Kremlin allegedly seeking to sink Clinton’s candidacy and to elevate Trump’s chances, and generally attributed Russian efforts to a generalized desire to undermine the legitimacy of the U.S. election or the legitimacy of the next presidential administration, rather than a desire to pick a winner and a loser in the race.

According to newly-declassified and partially-redacted September 2019 emails first obtained by Just the News, one surprising assertion that the Steele Dossier had played a role in the ICA seemed to originate with top IC election security official Shelby Pierson, who had been appointed the Election Threats Executive (ETE) within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) by then-DNI Dan Coats just a couple of months prior.

Comey, McCabe, Brennan pushed the Trump/Russia hoax into assessment

The National Intelligence Council’s deputy national intelligence officer for cybersecurity responded to the email with a stunned tone, dismayed that the Steele Dossier’s use in the ICA could have been hidden from him. Gabbard’s office said on Friday that this intelligence officer became a whistleblower.

Since-fired FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had pushed in December 2016 to include British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s debunked dossier in the 2016 ICA on alleged Russian meddling. The recent CIA review also sharply criticized Brennan for allegedly joining with these anti-Trump forces in the FBI in pushing to include Steele’s baseless anti-Trump dossier in the assessment.

“I think this is unfortunately a very sad and tragic example of the continued politicization of the intelligence community, of the national security process,” Brennan told MSNBC earlier this year, adding that the purported investigation into him “clearly is just politically based.”

Former FBI Deputy Director and CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst Andrew McCabe said of the investigations that Trump’s “intention is vengeance.”