Christopher Steele's collection of memos which came to be known as the Trump dossier is the most well-known investigation into the president's ties to Russia. But now a new document of a similar vein is drawing attention.
Investigators with the Senate Intelligence Committee are seeking to interview the author of the second dossier, Cody Shearer, a freelance journalist and longtime ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, a congressional source told ABC News. Shearer has told others he prepared the documents as part of his work as an independent journalist, according to a source familiar with the effort.
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Some Democrats have taken an interest in this second dossier’s contents as an indication that a separate line of research may have produced similar information to some of the material gathered by former British spy Christopher Steele, while others see the focus on the provenance of the information as a distraction for congressional investigators.
Republicans see the documents as potentially new evidence that the ongoing federal Russia probes are the byproduct of politically-motivated dirt digging and have been tainted with anti-Trump bias from the start.
CNN:
Shearer's raw collection of notes -- which Republicans are calling a second dossier -- made its way to Steele on this path: from Shearer to [Sidney] Blumenthal, [a longtime associate of Bill and Hillary Clinton] who gave it to an official at the State Department, who then passed it along to Steele.
Steele then gave it to the FBI, explaining it was passed along by the State Department and someone connected to a "friend of Clinton's," according to a report from the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
By all accounts, Steele noted the information he received from Shearer was unconfirmed and was upfront about its origins.
The new documents focus largely on unverified, salacious allegations that Trump was the victim of what Russians call a “honey pot” scheme, in which a target is secretly videotaped during a sexual liaison, and that tape is then used to blackmail or coerce the target.
This alleged effort to compromise Trump was said to have occurred in 2013, during Trump’s visit to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant, which he helped produce, the document alleges. It also alleges that videos are being held in vaults in Bulgaria, Israel and Moscow.
The allegations are similar to some of the claims in Steele’s dossier, though some of the dates and locations of the alleged events detailed in the dossier are different.
Full story: Second dossier? Documents prepped by Clinton ally pushed more damaging dirt on Trump (ABC News)
Republican investigations put Clinton associate Blumenthal in dossier spotlight (CNN)