President Trump has called for the extradition of a former MI6 agent who compiled a controversial report about his alleged links to Russia during the 2016 campaign.
Christopher Steele, who is now a director of Orbis Business Intelligence, was the author of the 2016 dossier that alleged collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian President Vladimir Putin — an allegation that was denied by both parties.
“This man should be extradited, tried and thrown into jail,” said Trump in a tweet Saturday. “A sick lier [sic] who was paid by Crooked Hillary and the DNC!”
Trump referred to a British court ruling on Wednesday that Steele had violated a data privacy law by failing to check on Trump’s connections to the Kremlin. The UK High Court ordered the former spy to pay $23,000 in damages to two Russian businessmen who he claimed had paid bribes to Putin in the 1990s. Steele had accused Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman of facilitating the transfer of large amounts of money to Putin when he was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg.
A few minutes after the first Steele extradition tweet, Trump wrote, “Bring back Steele!!!”, retweeting a link to a book on the Russia investigation by Fox News legal and political analyst Gregg Jarrett.