In the ruling, the judge determined that most of the disclosures BuzzFeed is seeking from the agencies have been discussed publicly and, in some cases, confirmed by President Donald Trump's decision to declassify information connected to the dossier earlier this year. | Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo Judge orders intel agencies to answer some ‘dossier’ questions in BuzzFeed case

A federal judge on Friday ordered intelligence agencies to formally respond to a BuzzFeed subpoena seeking details about their awareness and possession of the so-called Steele dossier prior to the media organization's decision to publish it on Jan. 10, 2017.

In the ruling, Washington D.C.-based District Court Judge Amit Mehta determined that most of the disclosures BuzzFeed is seeking from the agencies have been discussed publicly and, in some cases, confirmed by President Donald Trump's decision to declassify information connected to the dossier earlier this year.


"Ordinarily, this court would be disinclined to compel even modest factual disclosures about an ongoing law enforcement investigation," Mehta wrote. "The risk attendant to such judicial intervention is obvious. But this is no ordinary investigation. Caution and discretion — typically hallmarks of federal criminal and national security investigations—have given way to unprecedented public disclosures."

BuzzFeed has demanded limited details about the government's handling of the dossier as it fends off a defamation suit from one of the people named in it — Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian technology executive.

The dossier, a 35-page collection of memos compiled throughout 2016 by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, details an alleged conspiracy between Trump and the Russian government to help elect him president. Trump has rejected the dossier as false, but the FBI — which had worked with Steele on other matters — partly relied on it to obtain a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign associate in late 2016.

POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trump allies further heaped scorn on the FBI for using the dossier after it was revealed that Steele's work had been financed indirectly by the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. There's no public evidence the Clinton campaign influenced Steele's findings, but the connection has led Trump's staunchest supporters to raise questions about anti-Trump bias in the FBI.

The dossier remained largely out of public view until BuzzFeed published it on Jan. 10, 2017. The news organization noted that despite the fact that many allegations in the dossier remained uncorroborated, high-level government officials had come into possession of the dossier and briefed then-president-elect Trump on its contents.

Mehta noted that the typical secrecy surrounding investigative material such as the dossier had given way to a string of public disclosures. Earlier this year, Trump declassified "substantial information about the Dossier's provenance" when he approved the release of a memo drafted by Republican staff on the House Intelligence Committee.

From that memo, "[t]he public now knows that former British intelligence operative, Christopher Steele, drafted the Dossier; that the FBI relied in part on portions of the Dossier’s contents to secure a [surveillance] warrant on Carter Page in October 2016; that, at the same time, the FBI was undertaking efforts to corroborate the allegations contained with the Dossier; and, perhaps most significant to this case, that ‘in early January 2017, [Former FBI Director] Comey briefed President-elect Trump on a summary of the Steele dossier,’” Mehta noted.

In addition to the GOP memo, he noted that a corresponding Democratic memo revealed more insight about how the dossier arrived at the FBI. And soon afterward, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) revealed that he had turned over a copy of the file to the FBI in December 2016.

"As all of these disclosures show, an unprecedented amount of information about the Dossier’s origin and its use in an ongoing investigation is already in the public domain," Mehta said.

The judge also noted that BuzzFeed had significantly narrowed the information it was requesting. His ruling called upon the government to answer three questions: when the government obtained the various components of the dossier, when President Barack Obama was briefed on its contents and when the government obtained a two-page portion of the dossier that Steele completed in December 2016.

"The disclosures already authorized by President Trump, by comparison, are of a far greater magnitude," Mehta noted. "The court can only assume that the information declassified and released, at the President’s direction, was determined to be of the kind whose disclosure would not discourage citizens from coming forward with information and would not compromise a source’s identity."

Mehta's ruling requires the answers to be provided under a protective order, permitting only the parties' attorneys to view the responses, and its contents would be filed under seal.

BuzzFeed hailed the decision as an acknowledgment that the issues at stake in Gubarev's lawsuit speak to larger questions about the press' right to publish documents at the heart of significant government decision-making.

"Today Judge Mehta agreed that this case presents an important issue concerning the scope of legal protections afforded to media organizations who publish source documents, especially in matters of significant national and international attention," said Matt Mittenthal, BuzzFeed's director of communications. "We're gratified that we will have the opportunity to defend these crucial First Amendment rights."