Two Republican senators have called for the investigation of Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who compiled a dossier on alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.



In a letter to the US justice department, Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham claimed there was reason to believe that Steele had misled US authorities over his contacts with journalists and called for him to be investigated.



The letter, the first criminal referral from Congress since it started investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, comes at a time when Republicans are seeking to divert those investigations from scrutinising Donald Trump’s links to Russia to focus instead on whistleblowers, the FBI, and the special counsel investigating the issue, Robert Mueller.

It was unclear from the letter what Steele is alleged to have done. Most of the content was classified and only the cover letter was released. Steele, a former MI6 officer, disclosed his meetings with journalists in the US in court filings last year and he was never formally interviewed by the FBI. He cooperated with the bureau informally.

“We suspect it’s an attempt to deflect attention away from President Trump’s current difficulties,” a friend of Steele said.

A lawyer for GPS Fusion, the political research firm which hired Steele to carry out his investigation, issued a statement casting doubt on the motives behind the Grassley-Graham letter.

“After a year of investigations into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, the only person Republicans seek to accuse of wrongdoing is one who reported on these matters to law enforcement in the first place,” the lawyer, Joshua Levy, wrote. “Publicising a criminal referral based on classified information raises serious questions about whether this letter is nothing more than another attempt to discredit government sources, in the midst of an ongoing criminal investigation. We should all be skeptical in the extreme.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein: ‘I think this referral is unfortunate as it’s clearly another effort to deflect attention.’ Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

Grassley is the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, of which Graham is a senior member. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the committee, said neither she nor her Democratic colleagues had been consulted about Grassley and Graham’s decision.

“I think this referral is unfortunate as it’s clearly another effort to deflect attention from what should be the committee’s top priority: determining whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the election and whether there was subsequent obstruction of justice,” Feinstein said in a statement.



“I’ll continue to stand strong against any efforts to undermine Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, as well as the ongoing congressional investigations. Getting to the bottom of what happened remains a top priority for me, as I hope it does for everyone on the judiciary committee.”



Trump loyalists have sought to portray the investigation as a political witch-hunt triggered by Steele’s reports about covert links between Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign, which were originally commissioned as opposition research by Trump’s rivals, first Republican and then Democratic.



However, officials have repeatedly said that the initial FBI investigation into Russian interference was triggered in July 2016 by other information, supplied in part by allied intelligence agencies. The New York Times reported on 30 December that the immediate trigger was an Australian intelligence tip based on a conversation in a London bar in May 2016 between a Trump foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, and Alexander Downer, the Australian high commissioner to the UK.

It is not clear what Papadopoulos told Downer, but the former aide, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts, was aware at the time of their meeting that Moscow had thousands of hacked emails that could be damaging to Hillary Clinton. The Australians are reported to have tipped off the US authorities about Papadopolous in July 2016 when Democratic party emails started appearing online.

The letter underscores the increasingly partisan atmosphere surrounding the investigations into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

Last month, it was reported that the House intelligence committee was rushing to conclude its inquiry into the matter, prompting complaints from Democrats that Republicans on the panel were ignoring leads that could help provide a more complete portrait of Russian interference in the election.

Democrats on the House panel have accused its Republican members of ignoring their requests to bring in more key players, such as Mark Corallo, the former spokesman for Trump’s legal team. They have also sought to meet once again with the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and Donald Trump Jr amid further revelations about their role in pivotal moments from the investigation.

Adam Schiff: ‘They simply sit on requests Photograph: Yuri Gripas/Reuters

Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House panel, accused Republicans of instead seeking to shut down the investigation.

“They simply sit on the requests,” Schiff told the Washington Post this week.

A source familiar with the House review said 11 hearings had thus far been held, both open and closed, and roughly 164 hours of testimony taken. The source also said there had been 67 transcribed witness interviews, and just over 297,000 documents produced to the committee.

AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for the House speaker, Paul Ryan, said it was necessary for the committee to conclude its investigation in time to implement recommendations ahead of 2018 midterm elections. But she also blamed Democrats for wishing to prolong the investigation for political objectives.

“It’s clear by the endless political posturing by some House Democrats that they would like to see this investigation go on forever,” Strong said in a statement to the Guardian. “Whether it concludes next month, next year, or in three years, they’ll say it’s too soon.”

“It is also the committee’s responsibility to provide recommendations to Congress to ensure what took place last election never happens again. The only responsible outcome would be to get those committee recommendations in time to implement them before the election coming just this year.”