by Steven Richards
Christopher Steele, a former MI6 agent whose discredited Democrat-funded research contributed to the now-debunked Russia collusion probe, is promoting a fresh round of Russian hysteria. This time, he is suggesting Moscow is behind protests against immigration in Britain and that Brexit leader Nigel Farage should be investigated.
Steele asserted that there is clear Russian involvement in the anti-immigrant protests—some of which have turned violent in the wake a stabbing in Southport, England and general backlash against the pro-multicultural British immigration policy—in an echo of his spurious claims that saturated the 2016 American presidential election and helped fuel the sprawling three-year investigation of Trump and his campaign.
The former intelligence agent’s name gained notoriety across the pond in America as the source of a dossier containing allegations of Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. The former British official who headed up MI6’s Russia desk came under scrutiny for the dossier, which the FBI concluded relied upon unverified information.
The dossier was used as predicate for a U.S. probe into the Trump campaign and a years-long investigation that extended into his presidency, Just the News previously reported. That information spurred four FISA court warrants authorizing federal agents to spy on Trump’s campaign.
Steele admitted through his lawyer in a 2021 filing in British court, that the content of the infamous dossier was not “factual evidence to be used in a personal or public report or in court or anything like that,” Just the News previously reported.
“It was raw intelligence to be passed on as part of a much bigger intelligence picture,” his lawyer said.
But now, Steele, who regularly appears in British television, is whipping up concerns that anti-immigrant protestors—some of which have turned violent in recent weeks—are being amplified by Russia.
“I think it’s clear there is some Russian involvement,” Steele asserted in an interview with Times Radio. “The degree to which that’s happened and the effectiveness I think is still out for question. I mean, when you look at the original disinformation that surrounded the Southport killings, that does seem to have come from a Russian-linked website.”
After the stabbing in Southport—which left three young girls dead—rumors circulated online that the prime suspect was a Muslim immigrant or an asylum seeker. However, the suspect was actually born in Wales to Rwandan immigrant parents. The outlet Steele accused of being Russian-linked, Channel3 Now, denied that it is affiliated at all with Moscow, but acknowledged that their YouTube domain was purchased from a Russian seller.
After the killings, violence broke out in Southport near a local mosque that saw rioters throw bricks at the building and police, burn a police van, and send 27 officers to the hospital, according to BBC. The following day, the riots spread to London, Hartlepool and Manchester as well as Belfast in Northern Ireland.
Steele said British law enforcement services will be looking closely at the “instigators” of the riots, including Reform UK Member of Parliament Nigel Farage, who became famous for advocating that Britain leave the European Union and against illegal immigration into the country.
The security services “will be looking very carefully at the instigators of these activities, including people like Tommy Robinson, even conceivably Nigel Farage, who incidentally said that we were being misinformed by the government about Southport,” Steele claimed.
Tommy Robinson is the former leader of the UK Defence League, a so-called “far-right” and “anti-immigrant” group, according to the Guardian. Home Secretary Angela Rainer recently said that she would look at banning the organization, even as the government arrested more than a thousand protestors.
Farage came under scrutiny after the attack when he raised concerns about whether the British government was withholding the truth about the incident from the public. Farage has denied that he had a role in instigating the riots and condemned “all acts of political violence.”
Steele seemed to suggest that UK officials may probe Farage and other alleged instigators for connections to foreign actors, including Russia.
Those officials would be “looking at things like their travel movements, who they’ve been in touch with, monetary transfers, and so on, because that will reveal or not, as the case may be, a pattern of behavior, which can lead to some conclusions about the degree to which Russia has been interfering in this situation,” he said.
Steele did acknowledge that this was speculation, saying: “Now, whether Nigel Farage in the end is defined as an instigator of this, I don’t know.”
Steele did not, however, include this qualifier in the infamous dossier. It later emerged in court that Steele’s primary source for the document, Igor Danchenko, contrived the evidence, Just the News reported.
Neither the Prime Minister’s office nor Nigel Farage responded to requests for comment from Just the News about Steele’s assertions.
In a statement to the Guardian, the British Prime Minister’s office said that it would be probing whether foreign “state actors” may have had a role in spurring the protests and riots.
“Clearly we have seen a lot of activity online, much of which may well be amplified, or have the involvement of state actors, amplifying some of the disinformation and misinformation that we’ve seen,” the spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s office said, according to The Guardian. “And that is something that the NCA [National Crime Agency] and DSIT [Department for Science, Innovation and Technology] are looking at, in relation to what we’ve seen online.”
“Some of the disinformation that we’ve seen online attracts amplification from known bot activity – which, as I say, can be linked to state-backed activity,” the spokesperson added.
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Steven Richards is a reporter for Just the News.
Photo “UK Southport Riots” by StreetMic LiveStream. CC BY 3.0.
