Fight rages in Miami court over access to sealed testimony by Trump dossier author

The chairmen of two congressional committees who sought sealed testimony in a South Florida court case from key players in the Trump-Russia investigation ran afoul of proper procedures, a federal judge in Miami said.

The federal magistrate judge rebuffed those efforts on Sept. 5 but the reasons why and other details had been shielded from the public — until now. A transcript viewed by Miami Herald and McClatchy reporters shows that the judge felt their effort threatened to overstep congressional powers, but he left the door open to consider a request made through proper legal channels.

“I really need the Senate committee and the House committee to come here and explain to me why it is appropriate for them to obtain these [sealed court] documents,” Magistrate Judge John J. O’Sullivan said, before denying their request to release two crucial depositions taken in a Miami lawsuit related to the federal investigation.

Such a follow-up request does not seem to have been made in the nearly two months that have passed. The efforts by the chairmen to step into a civil lawsuit underscored the bitter partisan warfare engulfing Washington.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Cal., in August both tried to get a federal court in South Florida to turn over a transcript of the videotaped deposition given by former British spy Christopher Steele.

Steele’s opposition research dossier about Donald Trump, paid for successively by Republican and later Democratic campaign rivals, was published by the online news site BuzzFeed weeks before Trump’s inauguration. The allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia helped spark ongoing federal and congressional probes into Russian meddling in U.S. elections.

The congressional chairmen also sought testimony given by David Kramer, a former State Department official whose closed-door testimony before Nunes’ committee last year was later leaked to conservative new organizations in an unusual partisan breach. That leak played into the debate over the chairmen’s request to the Florida court.

“There is clearly cooperation between the two committees and what is wrong with that is that the House [Intelligence Committee] has leaked Mr. Kramer’s appearance, his testimony,” Marcos Jimenez, a former U.S. Attorney for Miami and Kramer’s counsel, argued during the Sept. 5 hearing. He added that Kramer had “zero confidence” the chairmen would protect his testimony.

A friend of late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, a fierce Trump critic, Kramer is alleged to have had a role in distributing the controversial dossier. Trump supporters contend that Steele and Kramer were part of a larger plot by Democrats to discredit Trump’s surprise election.

The request by the chairmen to obtain the testimony from court proceedings was unusual because it sought to intervene in an ongoing defamation lawsuit brought against the online news site BuzzFeed by Cyprus-based tech entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev. He owns a web services company called XBT, which the dossier claimed was used, through the spread of computer viruses and automated commands called bots, to hack the Democratic National Committee months before 2016 elections.

Steele was sued separately by Gubarev in Great Britain, and a judge there allowed Gubarev’s U.S. attorneys the right to limited questioning pertaining to the Florida case, where he is considered a third party.

A trial date was set for Nov. 26 in Miami. But presiding U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro has scheduled a hearing for Friday that could determine how much sensitive material now considered “for attorneys’ eyes only” will become part of any public trial.

The case has drawn the attention of the national news media. The New York Times recently filed a motion to intervene and seek to unseal the depositions and other records in the closely guarded dispute between Gubarev and Buzzfeed.

This story was originally published October 25, 2018 at 3:32 PM.