Taking down the man behind the memos - declassified Republican memos skewer the former British spy who investigated Trump and Russia

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Christopher Steele, the author of the Trump-Russia dossier.

• Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, is the author of the Trump-Russia dossier.
• Recently published Republican memos attempt to discredit Steele's credibility and the dossier that he produced.
• Republicans say the dossier played a central role in justifying surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser during and after the 2016 election.

The public knew little about Christopher Steele before the 2016 US election. Most people had no idea who he was.

But now the former British intelligence officer is perhaps the biggest - and most divisive - name in Washington.

Steele is the author of the infamous Trump-Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier, a collection of memos he compiled before the 2016 presidential election that contains information alleging Russia has compromising information on President Donald Trump, among other allegations.

As far as we know, the US intelligence community has not verified or corroborated any of the dossier's allegations.

But the FBI has attested to Steele's reliability based on his previous reporting of foreign intelligence to the US government as a former investigator, according to a declassified version of a letter Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley and committee member Lindsey Graham, both Republicans, wrote in January.

That letter, along with the controversial memo that President Donald Trump cleared for release on February 2, is at the heart of a heated back-and-forth between Democrats and Republicans over Steele's credibility and his role in fueling the early stages of the FBI's Russia investigation.

Rep. Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, spearheaded the memo. Democrats are trying to release a rebuttal memo pointing out inaccuracies and mischaracterizations they say the Nunes memo contains, but Trump denied its declassification on Friday.

Here's what lawmakers are saying about Steele: