Soon, the public may know a lot more about the former British spy’s relationship with the FBI.
That’s after a federal judge ordered the bureau to search its records for its communications with Steele after the bureau fired him as a confidential source.
U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper said "the potential for illuminating the FBI’s activities is not too difficult to discern."
"Communications post-dating Steele’s time as an informant might reveal a great deal about why the FBI developed him as a CHS [confidential human source], his performance as a CHS, and why the FBI opted to terminate its relationship with him."
The judge said the records "might either bolster or weaken Steele’s credibility as a source."
"That information, in turn, could provide a basis on which to evaluate the FBI’s performance of its law-enforcement duties, including its judgment in selecting and relying on confidential sources, especially in connection with such a politically sensitive subject," he said.
"Of course, the records Judicial Watch speculates about might not even exist ‐ and even if they do, they may not reveal anything significant about the FBI’s operations. But that they might do so makes them a matter of potential public interest."
Judicial Watch has been investigating the origins of the Obama administration investigation of alleged Trump-Russia collusion.
The ruling came in Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for records of communications and payments between the FBI, Christopher Steele and his private firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.
The court initially had allowed the government to say it couldn’t confirm or deny the records.
But last year, some government records were declassified that revealed Steele’s role as an FBI informant and his firing by the FBI in November 2016. So the Judicial Watch case was reopened.