Judicial Watch Sues State Department for Obama Ambassador Victoria Nuland’s Communications Related to the Anti-Trump Dossier

Ambassador Nuland reportedly initially connected the author of the anti-Trump dossier, Christopher Steele, to the FBI.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State for communications between Obama Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Ambassador Victoria Nuland and employees of Fusion GPS, as well as top ranking Department of Justice, FBI, and State Department officials.

Nuland served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs from September 2013 until January 2017.

Judicial Watch filed the suit after the State Department failed to respond to a November 1, 2018, FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:19-cv-00574)). Judicial Watch seeks:

Any and all records of communication between Ambassador Victoria Nuland and any of the following individuals between January 1, 2016 and January 25, 2017:

Professor Joseph Mifsud

Mr. Christopher Steele

Mr. Glenn Simpson

Mrs. Nellie Ohr

Former CIA Director John Brennan

Former Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy

Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates

Former Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General George Toscas

Former DOJ Official David Laufman

Former Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco

Former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr

Former FBI Director James Comey

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe

Former FBI Agent Peter Strzok

FBI Attorney Lisa Page

FBI Attorney James Baker

Former FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki

FBI Assistant Director Edward William Priestap

Former FBI Agent John Giacalone

Former FBI Agent Michael Steinbach

Former FBI Agent Josh Campbell

The author of the anti-Trump dossier, Christopher Steele, reportedly had developed long-standing relationships with senior State Department officials including Ambassador Victoria Nuland, “Between 2014 and 2016, Steele authored more than a hundred reports on Russia and Ukraine. These were written for a private client but shared widely within the State Department and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of the U.S. response to the Ukraine crisis.”

On February 4, 2018, in an interview on CBS’ Face the Nation, Nuland stated that she had been given details of the anti-Trump dossier directly from Christopher Steele, which she then referred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation:

[Steele] passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding. And our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That’s something for the FBI to investigate. And that was our reaction when we saw this. It’s not our – our – we can’t evaluate this.

Nuland reportedly “green lit” the initial meeting about the anti-Trump dossier between Christopher Steele and FBI agent Michael Gaeta. Quoting from David Corn and Michael Isikoff’s book Russian Roulette, “The FBI checked with Victoria Nuland’s office at the State Department: Do you support this meeting? Nuland, having found Steele’s reports on Ukraine to have been generally credible, gave the green light.”

“We intend to find out how far the Deep State was willing to go in their effort to discredit then-candidate Donald Trump,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It seems the Obama administration engaged in a no-holds-barred attempt to clear the path for Hillary Clinton. Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuits have already shown the Obama State Department was corruptly targeting President Trump.”

Judicial Watch earlier released 42 pages of heavily redacted State Department documents containing classified information that was provided to Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and outspoken critic of President Donald Trump. The documents show Russian political interference in elections and politics in countries across Europe.

Judicial Watch also released two sets of heavily redacted State Department documents, 38 pages and 48 pages, showing classified information was disseminated to multiple U.S. Senators by the Obama administration immediately prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The documents reveal that among those receiving the classified documents were Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Sen. Robert Corker (R-TN).

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