Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Friday the Republican call for the Justice Department to criminally investigate ex-spy Christopher Steele has "flaws" and omits facts, the Washington Examiner reports.
Late Tuesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., released a criminal referral asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether Steele lied to the FBI about former Trump aide Carter Page and made false claims in classified documents.
In a five-page analysis released Friday, Feinstein says the criminal referral "fails to make a case" that Steele lied to authorities and called it an attempt to undermine the FBI and cast aspersions on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
"Not a single revelation in the Steele dossier has been refuted," Feinstein said in a statement that accompanied her analysis. "Unfortunately, the claims in the criminal referral rely on classified information, so it's difficult to fully repudiate them here."
"The criminal referral contains no new information. All the information in the criminal referral was already available to the FBI and the Department of Justice… In fact, the referral relies on publicly available information and information that was provided to Congress from DOJ and the FBI," she said.
The Justice Department has not commented on the criminal referral.
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