The dossier portion of the interview began with McCabe being asked if he thought the dossier met the standard of credibility the FBI required to open an investigation. McCabe said he believed it did. He said on more than one occasion that the FBI had worked hard to verify the dossier, telling lawmakers that the FBI had at one point sent investigators to London as part of the effort.

McCabe was asked to point to anything in the dossier that he knew to be true. McCabe noted that the dossier said, accurately, that the unpaid, low-level Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page visited Moscow in July 2016.

McCabe’s questioners were not impressed. Page’s Moscow trip was reported in the press at the time it happened; the simple fact that he was in Russia was not a revelation. Lawmakers reminded McCabe that Page’s presence in Moscow was long established and then asked again: Was there anything more in the dossier that McCabe now knows to be true? McCabe, according to sources, said he did not know how to answer the question.