• Fusion GPS boss Glenn Simpson told a Senate committee in 2017 about a conversation he'd had with British ex-spy Christopher Steele
• Steele, hired by Simpson's firm to compile the 'dirty dossier' of anti-Trump research, said he was in contact with the FBI in Rome
• His agent friend, said Steele, said the Bureau had a human intelligence source inside Donald Trump's presidential campaign organization
• The FBI at the time was run by James Comey, the now decidedly anti-Trump former official who has unleashed scathing criticism of Trump in his memoir

The leader of the opposition research firm behind the infamous anti-Trump 'dirty dossier' told Congress last year that the FBI collected intelligence from inside the president's campaign before the 2016 election.

The agency was at the time run by James Comey, the now decidedly anti-Trump former official who has unleashed scathing criticism of Trump in his memoir

Glenn Simpson's testimony is among the disclosures in Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee release of transcripts from its investigation into the unverified collection of dirt funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

In August 2017 Simpson told committee members and staff that former British sy Christopher Steele – whom he had hired to probe Trump's potential Russia ties – told him about a meeting in Rome with an FBI agent he knew.

'Essentially what he told me was they [the FBI] had other intelligence about this matter from an internal Trump campaign source,' Simpson recalled.