What role did the FBI and DOJ play in investigating claims from the Steele dossier?
Executive summary
The FBI opened a counterintelligence probe into Russian interference in 2016 that used Christopher Steele’s memos as one of many investigative leads, attempted to corroborate the dossier’s claims, and cited portions of it in surveillance applications; the Department of Justice oversaw legal approvals and later defended the Bureau’s actions even as internal reviews found serious errors and reliability problems with the dossier’s sourcing [1] [2] [3]. Inspectors General, congressional Republicans, and special counsels subsequently scrutinized and criticized how the FBI and DOJ handled Steele’s reporting, especially their reliance on a primary sub‑source and disclosures to the FISA court [4] [5] [3].
1. How the FBI first treated Steele’s reporting as an investigative lead
When Steele delivered memos in 2016 the FBI incorporated them into Crossfire Hurricane, its broader counterintelligence probe of Russian election interference, routing the material to field offices and using it to generate investigative tasks rather than treating it as dispositive intelligence on its own [6] [2]. Agents attempted to corroborate specific claims — creating a multi‑page spreadsheet to track corroboration efforts — and interviewed sources tied to Steele’s reports as part of that normal investigative work [7].
2. Use of dossier material in FISA applications and DOJ oversight
Portions of the dossier were included in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications seeking warrants to surveil Carter Page; those submissions were approved by DOJ and presented to the FISA court, which made the legal basis for electronic surveillance dependent in part on Steele‑origin material [5]. The Department of Justice’s role here was to sign and file the applications and to certify the adequacy of supporting evidence, a process later found to contain significant errors and omissions related to the dossier’s treatment [4] [3].
3. Questions about source reliability that the FBI and DOJ encountered
FBI interviews with Steele’s primary sub‑source and with Igor Danchenko — Steele’s principal researcher — raised red flags about the provenance and corroboration of key allegations; the primary sub‑source told agents that corroboration was “zero” and that some reporting reflected Steele’s own analytical judgments rather than sourced facts [3]. Inspector General Michael Horowitz later faulted FBI and DOJ for failures in handling those reliability concerns and documented at least 17 errors and omissions tied to FISA filings where the dossier featured centrally [8] [4].
4. Internal attempts to corroborate, incentives, and operational choices
The FBI created a detailed spreadsheet and even pursued overseas meetings to try to test Steele’s leads, with one FBI analyst testifying that agents offered Steele “up to $1 million” to produce corroboration — an offer that went unmet because Steele could not prove key allegations [7] [1]. Meanwhile the Bureau signed Danchenko up as a paid confidential human source in 2017 despite earlier counterintelligence scrutiny of him, a decision that later drew congressional and media attention about risk assessment and judgment calls inside the FBI [9] [10].
5. Aftermath: inspections, prosecutions, and competing narratives
The DOJ Office of the Inspector General and congressional Republican investigations concluded that the dossier’s reliability was substantially undermined after FBI interviews and that the Bureau and Department continued to rely on it in ways that were inappropriate; those findings fed political narratives used to criticize the Russia probe’s legitimacy [5] [3]. Countervailing views, including reporting in major newspapers, emphasize that the dossier was largely tangential to the broader Russia investigation and that the probe did not start because of Steele’s work — a distinction defenders use to argue the FBI’s core investigation remained justified [2] [1].
6. What remains unresolved in public records and why it matters
Public disclosures show the FBI investigated “every line” of the dossier, interviewed Steele’s sources, and tried to corroborate claims, but documents also show those efforts yielded mixed or negative results and that DOJ and FBI filing practices were flawed; the full record contains redactions and partisan releases that leave open questions about judgment calls, internal biases, and how much the dossier did — or did not — shape prosecutorial or surveillance decisions [6] [7] [11]. Multiple actors — Steele, his sub‑sources, FBI case teams, the DOJ signatories, congressional investigators, and political operatives — all had incentives that shaped the information flow, and until more unredacted material is public, disputes about motive and proportionality will persist [4] [5].