Neera Tanden repeatedly hyped the discredited Steele dossier as credible on Twitter before being tapped by President Biden as White House staff secretary.
Tanden’s nomination to head the Office of Management and Budget was withdrawn earlier this year over a lack of congressional support for her nomination, and following criticism over some of her past tweets criticizing Republican lawmakers. Last month, Biden tapped her for the staff secretary role, which does not require Senate confirmation.
DURHAM INDICTMENT OF DANCHENKO CASTS NEW SCRUTINY ON DEMOCRATS WHO HYPED STEELE DOSSIER
Neera Tanden, nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget, finishes her confirmation hearing before the Senate Budget Committee on Feb. 10, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images)
Tanden, a longtime Clinton ally who previously led the Center for American Progress (CAP) and its political advocacy arm, Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF), repeatedly pushed the Russian collusion narrative during the Trump era.
In February 2018, she tweeted that the infamous dossier by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele had been "mostly proven to be true."
The dossier alleged that former President Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election and claimed that the Kremlin had blackmail material on the former president, among other assertions. The dossier was central to Democratic attempts to tie Trump to Russian attempts to influence the election but has been thoroughly debunked, including by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
In February 2018, two days after the first tweet, Tanden wrote that the dossier "has been mostly established as right."
"What parts of the dossier have been disproven? I will wait," she tweeted in January 2019.
In October 2020, Tanden said BuzzFeed’s publishing of the unverified dossier was "wrong," but she has not addressed her own involvement in pushing it.
Unlike the hundreds of tweets Tanden deleted prior to her nomination to the OMB, the tweets promoting the dossier remained active on her account as of Wednesday afternoon, including a tweet saying Steele should be "the next James Bond."
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
Former U.K. intelligence officer Christopher Steele arrives at the High Court in London on July 24, 2020, to attend his defamation trial brought by Russian tech entrepreneur Alexej Gubarev. (Photo by Tolga AKMEN / AFP) (Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)
The dossier and the Democrats who hyped it are facing scrutiny after Special Counsel John Durham's indictment of Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst believed to be the sub-source for Steele, who compiled the dossier that served as the basis for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The dossier was funded by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign through law firm Perkins Coie.
According to the indictment, in March, May, June, October and November of 2017, Danchenko made false statements regarding the sources of certain information that he provided to a U.K. investigative firm that was then included in reports prepared by that firm and subsequently passed to the FBI.
NEERA TANDEN NAMED WHITE HOUSE STAFF SECRETARY AFTER SCUTTLED OMB NOMINATION
In addition to Tanden, it appears the U.S. Treasury’s new spokesperson on terrorism and financial intelligence, Morgan Finkelstein, also repeatedly hyped the dossier on Twitter.
"The dossier is right," she wrote in April 2018.
Russian analyst Igor Danchenko is pursued by journalists as he departs the Albert V. Bryan U.S. Courthouse after being arraigned on Nov. 10, 2021, in Alexandria, Virginia. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Finkelstein, CAP's former associate director of media relations, was listed as the press contact for the center’s "Moscow Project," which declared in December 2016 that "Christopher Steele is credible" and that the dossier’s "high level of accuracy is rapidly becoming clear."
Finkelstein, who previously served as the "national press lead" on Biden's 2020 campaign and "advance associate" in the Biden White House, also celebrated the web traffic the Moscow Project got every time the word "dossier" appeared in the news.
"On the other, traffic to http://themoscowproject.org spikes whenever they say ‘dossier’ and then people get to read real facts!" she tweeted in July 2019.
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Finklestein did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
Fox News’ Houston Keene contributed to this report.
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