https://www.yahoo.com/gma/trump-dossier-stuck-york-didnt-trigger-russia-investigation-231021443.html

Trump 'dossier' stuck in New York, didn't trigger Russia investigation, sources say originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
President Donald Trump and his allies have long insisted that what he calls the “f**e dirty dossier” was wholly “responsible for starting the totally and discredited witch hunt” by special counsel Robert Mueller.
But, beginning in July 2016, that so-called “dossier” actually sat for several weeks inside an organized crime unit at the FBI’s New York field office, even as counterintelligence agents in Washington, D.C. – unaware of the new allegations – were already investigating Russian efforts to hijack American democracy.
Trump doubled down on his “dossier” accusation this week, ordering the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence community to release a bigger slice of the classified information used to investigate one of his advisers, New York business consultant Carter Page, insisting again Tuesday that “what will be disclosed is that there was no basis” for the surveillance.
(MORE: Trump defends order to declassify Russia probe documents, says he wants 'total t***sparency' in 'witch hunt')
Despite what Trump and like-minded politicians have said, sources told ABC News the “dossier” was plainly not the initial basis for the federal investigation. The following account, relayed to ABC News by several sources familiar with the federal probe, reflects how the FBI’s investigation into contacts between Russian operatives and Trump’s campaign team, including Page, was well underway in the summer of 2016 by the time a former British spy handed the FBI a packet of startling and salacious allegations tied to Trump.
In fact, the FBI already had an open counterintelligence case on Page when he became a volunteer on Trump’s foreign policy team in January 2016, according to sources familiar with the matter.
By then, Trump had publicly claimed to have “a good instinct” about Russian’s ruthless president, Vladimir Putin, had praised how Putin was “running his country,” and had compared the Kremlin’s assassinations of dissidents to the “plenty of k*****g” that happens inside the United States.
Trump’s refusal to criticize Putin – even in private – “mystified” then-FBI Director James Comey, he later recalled to ABC News. And three years earlier, when the FBI in 2013 was tracking two Russian spies in New York, agents secretly recorded one of the spies saying he wanted to “recruit” Page “as an intelligence source.” Page had previously lived in Moscow for three years.
Page was never charged with any crimes and says he cooperated with that previous investigation, but sources told ABC News his file, like many counterintelligence files, was never closed.
So, two months after Page started advising Trump’s campaign, the FBI paid him a visit in New York, asking about contacts with Russian intelligence, according to a government document.----MORE----