FBI Studying Second Dossier on Trump's Alleged Collusion With Russia - Reports

The second memo, authored by Cody Shearer, a political activist and former journalist, who was close to the White House led by Bill Clinton in the 1990s, basically repeats some of the allegations made in a dossier by former UK spy Christopher Steele, the media outlet said, citing sources.

Among other things, both dossiers allege Trump was compromised during his trip to Moscow in 2013.

Shearer's memo was provided to the FBI in October 2016 by Steele, who allegedly obtained it from his undisclosed US contact after the FBI asked the former MI6 agent to provide any evidence supporting his allegations, the newspaper's sources said.

US House Intelligence Committee Plans Release of Testimony on Trump Dossier

18 January 2018, 19:08 GMT

In June 2016, Glenn Simpson, co-founder of the Fusion GPS company, hired Steele to probe Trump's ties with Russia. The 35-page document, published by BuzzFeed in January last year, contained unsubstantiated claims that Trump participated in activities that could make him vulnerable to Russian blackmail attempts.

In October 2017, The Washington Post reported the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee had helped fund Fusion GPS' research on Trump’s alleged ties with Russia. Fusion GPS was originally hired to do research during the 2016 Republican primary campaign for a still unknown Republican donor who wanted to defeat Trump.

Trump, commenting on the dossier, called it "bogus" and a "Crooked Hillary pile of garbage" which his opponents used to "go after" his campaign.

At the moment, two separate probes — dubbed a "witch hunt" by the US president — are being conducted by the US Senate and special counsel Robert Mueller into the Trump campaign's alleged "collusion" with Moscow. A number of hearings regarding the issue have been held in Congress, but intelligence service officials have not provided any evidence, claiming that the information was confidential.

Top Russian officials have repeatedly refuted such accusations, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling all such claims groundless and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressing that the accusations of Russia meddling in the elections of foreign states were unsubstantiated.