"A footnote in the Inspector General's report contains information, which up till now has been classified and redacted, bearing on the reliability of the Steele dossier," Barr said in the letter on Thursday. "The FBI has declassified the relevant portion of that footnote, number 334, which states that '[t]he Primary Sub-source was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011 that assessed his/her documented contacts with suspected Russian intelligence officers.'"
The Crossfire Hurricane investigation was a counterintelligence probe conducted by the FBI in 2016 to reveal whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government leading up to the 2016 US election. The FBI investigation was eventually taken over by US Special Counsel Robert Mueller who acknowledged that there was no direct Trump-Russia collusion.
The FBI conducted a three-day interview with Steele’s so-called Primary Sub-source in January 2017.
Russia has repeatedly denied allegations of interference in the US political system, noting that the practice is contrary to the federation's foreign policy. US President Donald Trump has similarly denied collusion with Russia in the 2016 election.
