 Did the FBI provide any payments whatsoever to Mr. Steele related to the investigation of Trump's associates? That's Chuck Grassley, the senior senator from Iowa and the chairman of the Senate's powerful Judiciary Committee. And that's Jason Foster, a senior aide to Grassley and the chief investigative counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Foster works behind the scenes, so most of the pictures of him we could find look like this. According to interviews with congressional staffers and others, Foster is the architect behind several of Grassley's most divisive actions on the Judiciary Committee. But before that, while he was a senior counsel for Grassley on another Senate committee, he extensively blogged under the handle, Extremist, about his anti-Muslim and anti-gay ideology. Here's what we know about Jason Foster. In 2011, Foster worked with Grassley to push the theory that the Obama administration had purposefully botched an operation that resulted in federal authorities losing track of hundreds of guns in an effort to achieve more restrictive gun laws. Grassley brought the theory to a national audience, telling reporters, quote, my suspicion is they don't like the Second Amendment the way it is, and they want to do everything they can to hurt guns and restrict guns, and so they could have been building a case for that. More recently, Grassley's office called for a second special counsel to investigate matters related to Hillary Clinton. And Foster was said to be behind Grassley's highly unusual public announcement, asking federal prosecutors to consider criminal charges against Christopher Steele, who compiled the dossier, warning of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. As Foster has helped drive the Judiciary Committee's Russia-related investigations, he has also been considered for jobs with the Trump administration. One person told us Foster had actually talked directly with the White House about a job, maybe an appointment as an inspector general at a federal agency. We asked Grassley's office about that, and they confirmed that Foster had been considered for a job in the administration, but said Foster had ultimately declined and the job inquiries had never posed a conflict of interest. The Republic recently reviewed hundreds of blog posts Foster published between 2005 and 2009 under his handle, Extremist. In February 2006, he discussed the appropriateness of, quote, homosexual marriage, writing, quote, I'll bet you don't really believe that everyone should have the right to love anyone they want. That is, unless you are for changing laws that forbid a brother from marrying his sister. In July 2007, Foster criticized politicians who preached goodwill toward Muslims. And in August 2006, said, quote, some cultures are better than others, no matter what the multicultural fetishists say. In January 2009, he criticized then Attorney General Eric Holder for referring to waterboarding as torture. I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture. Foster wrote, quote, Holder's pronouncement is more than just wrong. It's dangerous. And later that year, Foster was furious that President Obama proposed negotiating with moderate elements of the Taliban, writing, quote, just imagine yourself in September 2001. Someone drops in from the future to tell you that before the decade is over, the President of the United States, middle named Hussein by the way, will talk about making nice with the Taliban. As far as we can tell, Foster stopped using the blog in 2009. And after we reached out to him for this story in January of this year, the blog was made private. Foster did not respond to Republica's request for comment for several weeks. Shortly before publication, Foster sent an emailed statement to us. He apologized for the content of the blog and said he thought he took the blog offline years ago. He said his pen name, extremist, had been an attempt to be satirical. He admitted his writings were embarrassing, wrong, and stupid. But he said they in no way colored his work on Capitol Hill. He wrote, to those hurt by what I said, I am sorry and ask for your forgiveness.