DC: A federal court unsealed 43 pages Thursday of a deposition that former British spy Christopher Steele gave as part of a lawsuit over his infamous anti-Trump dossier.
To the disappointment of many observers, the full deposition was not unsealed in Thursday’s motion. Instead, portions of Steele’s interview, which he gave in London on July 13, 2018, were unsealed in separate court filings submitted in the lawsuit.
Steele’s full deposition totaled 145 pages. The portions published Thursday focus mainly on questions about the dossier’s claims about Aleksej Gubarev, a tech executive who Steele alleges took part in the hacking of Democrats’ computer systems.
Gubarev has vehemently denied the claim and sued Steele and BuzzFeed News, which published the dossier on Jan. 10, 2017.
U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro, who handled the lawsuit, ordered a slew of previously sealed documents to be made public Thursday. Ungaro dismissed the lawsuit on Dec. 19 but did not weigh in on whether the dossier’s claims about Gubarev were accurate.
It is unclear whether Steele’s entire deposition will be released. A source familiar with Steele’s interview tempered expectations of any bombshells in the document, saying that Steele avoided going into detail about his efforts to create the dossier and his sources. MORE
Out of boredom I read Kramer’s entire depo.
Aside from 10-12 news outlets, contact(s) at NSC, State Dept., FBI, Adam Kinzinger, Paul Ryan’s CoS, numerous mtgs w/Glenn Simpson and repeated contacts w/Christopher Steele, as a secret courier for McCain, Kramer maintains he safeguarded the dirty dossier from becoming publicly exposed.
The most hilarious part of his depo was the caveat that he warned each of the above contacts that “the dossier was unverified, thus it shouldn’t be made public”.
This hack is a gossipy hausfrau, otherwise your secrets are safe with him.