The criminal referral for dossier author Christopher Steele, who basically was paid by Fusion GPS, which was employed by cutout law firm Perkins-Coie -- which was working on behalf of the Clinton folks to find dirt on Donny Two Scoops. I'm betting that was very, very difficult.
The referral itself is heavily redacted, so fair warning.
Steele is being referred to the prosecutorial arms of the government for a possible violation of 18 USC 1001. A violation of this section of the US Code makes it criminal to lie or to mislead or conceal by trickery any material fact to a federal tribunal or inquiry. The document is so heavily redacted that I can't figure out just exactly what it is Steele's being accused of misleading the FBI about. It appears to be either:
1. The timing of when he told the FBI he gave briefings to the media. In other words, Steele claimed these briefings occurred at the end of October 2016 but in fact he has now admitted some occurred in the summer/early fall of 2016.
OR (and)
2. That Steele remained in close contact with a Clinton associate (whose name is redacted) and possibly someone else closely related to the Clinton organization (his name is also redacted), both of whom appear to have been feeding Steele "intelligence," which he may have passed off as his own product and the result of his effort alone.
Those redacted names most likely belong to non-intelligence officers/longtime Hillary Clinton "fixers" and smear merchants Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer, the latter being, probably, the genesis of the second dossier that Steele wrote, which is also noted in the criminal referral.
Shearer himself isn't a counterintel bubba or anything remotely close to being so. He's just a dirt seller, like his pal Blumenthal. And they both appear to have avidly fed a smorgasbord of rumors to Steele who, himself eager to take out Two Scoops, lapped it up like a hungry British bulldog. ;-)
"Politics is just show business for ugly people."
