Steele dossier

[16] Steele, a former head of the Russia Desk for British intelligence (MI6), was writing the report for the private investigative firm Fusion GPS, that was paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

In October 2015, before the official start of the 2016 Republican primary campaign, the founders of Fusion GPS were seeking political work and wrote an email to "a big conservative donor they knew who disliked Trump, [and] they were hired".

[15] On November 18, 2016, Republican Senator John McCain, who had been informed about the alleged links between the Kremlin and Trump, met with former British ambassador to Moscow Sir Andrew Wood at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada.

[111] Unsealed documents from the discovery process in Russian entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev's defamation lawsuit revealed that David Kramer, an associate of John McCain, gave the dossier to BuzzFeed "in December 2016, weeks after the election",[112][4] in what Fritsch has called an "ill-advised" Hail Mary pass.

[131][125][20][21][132] Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan called it "scurrilous allegations dressed up as an intelligence report meant to damage Donald Trump",[133] while The New York Times noted that the publication sparked a debate centering on the use of unsubstantiated information from anonymous sources.

Steele concluded that his anonymity had been "fatally compromised", and, realizing it was "only a matter of time until his name became public knowledge", fled into hiding with his family in fear of "a prompt and potentially dangerous backlash against him from Moscow".

[173][15] On March 7, 2017, as some members of the U.S. Congress were expressing interest in meeting with or hearing testimony from Steele, he reemerged after weeks in hiding, appearing publicly on camera and stating, "I'm really pleased to be back here working again at the Orbis's offices in London today.

The drafts, read copy, and final application also contained a separate footnote on each sub-source with a brief description of his/her position or access to the information he/she was reporting.The outing of Danchenko by Attorney General William Barr also brought to light an inaccuracy in the dossier that describes him as a "Russian-based" source.

And even where the details are not exact, the general thrust of Steele's reporting seems credible in light of what we now know about extensive contacts between numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Russian government officials.

[280][281]: 7  There were other reasons to not include it, and CNN wrote that: The intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, and the FBI took Steele's research seriously enough that they kept it out of a publicly-released January report on Russian meddling in the election in order to not divulge which parts of the dossier they had corroborated and how. ...

And even where the details are not exact, the general thrust of Steele's reporting seems credible in light of what we now know about extensive contacts between numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Russian government officials.

"[294] In March 2017, former FBI agent Clint Watts told Congress about websites involved in the Russian disinformation campaign "some of which mysteriously operate from Eastern Europe and are curiously led by pro-Russian editors of unknown financing".

[306] That evening he attended the Miss Universe pageant, followed by an after-party that started at 1:00 a.m. Then, without returning to his hotel, he flew back to the U.S.[307][77]: 300 [308][318] James Comey wrote in his book A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership that Trump asked him to have the FBI investigate the "pee tape" allegation "because he wanted to convince his wife that it wasn't true".

"[324] Rtskhiladze told Mueller's investigators that these were "compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Russia."

[288][289] Dossier source(s) allege that Carter Page "conceived and promoted" the idea of [the Russians] leaking the stolen DNC emails to WikiLeaks during the 2016 Democratic National Convention[244][232] for the purpose of swinging supporters of Bernie Sanders "away from Hillary CLINTON and across to TRUMP".

[244][243] (Reports 95, 102) In July 2016, in an "error-ridden message", WikiLeaks urged Russian intelligence to act swiftly to reach this timeline goal: "If you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo days prefable because the DNC is approaching, and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.

[364] David Corn and Michael Isikoff wrote that the FBI was not able to find evidence that Page met with Sechin or was offered a 19 percent stake in the giant energy conglomerate in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions and that "Mueller's report noted that his 'activities in Russia ... were not fully explained'".

[367] CNN noted that his admissions to the House Intelligence Committee did confirm the Steele dossier was right about Page attending high-level meetings with Russians and possibly discussing "a sale of a stake in Rosneft", even though he denied doing so at the time.

[403] Dossier source(s) allege that, as part of a quid pro quo agreement, "the TRUMP team had agreed ... to raise US/NATO defense commitments in the Baltics and Eastern Europe to deflect attention away from Ukraine, a priority for PUTIN who needed to cauterise the subject.

"[242] Aiko Stevenson, writing in HuffPost, noted that some of Trump's actions seem to align with "Putin's wish list", that "includes lifting sanctions on Russia, turning a blind eye towards its aggressive efforts in the Ukraine, and creating a divisive rift amongst western allies.

[109] Jeff Stein, writing in Newsweek, described how "Trump's repeated attacks on NATO have ... frustrated ... allies ... [and] raised questions as to whether the president has been duped into facilitating Putin's long-range objective of undermining the European Union.

Source C, a senior Russian financial official, said the Trump operation should be seen in terms of Putin's desire to return to Nineteenth Century 'Great Power' politics anchored upon countries' interests rather than the ideals-based international order established after World War Two.

[426][427] The Justice Department's inspector general revealed in 2019 that in the six weeks prior to its receipt of Steele's memos, the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team "had discussions about the possibility of obtaining FISAs targeting Page and Papadopoulos, but it was determined that there was insufficient information at the time to proceed with an application to the court.

"[72]: 412 [428] Mimi Rocah, Dan Goldman, and Barbara McQuade debunked three false arguments made by National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy against the FBI's use of the dossier when seeking a FISA warrant on Carter Page.

[440] On January 11, 2017, Newsweek published a list of "13 things that don't add up" in the dossier, writing that it was a "strange mix of the amateur and the insightful" and stating that it "contains lots of Kremlin-related gossip that could indeed be, as the author claims, from deep insiders—or equally gleaned" from Russian newspapers and blogs.

[426][427] The Justice Department's inspector general revealed in 2019 that in the six weeks prior to its receipt of Steele's memos, the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team "had discussions about the possibility of obtaining FISAs targeting Page and Papadopoulos, but it was determined that there was insufficient information at the time to proceed with an application to the court.

[472] In February 2018, the Nunes memo alleged FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's testimony backed Republican claims that the "dossier formed 'a significant portion' of the Carter Page FISA application".

[346] On January 2, 2018, Simpson and Fritsch authored an op-ed in The New York Times, requesting that Republicans "release full transcripts of our firm's testimony" and further wrote that, "the Steele dossier was not the trigger for the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling.

Hannity asserted that this new information would reveal "a totally phony document full of Russian lies and propaganda that was then used by the Obama administration to surveil members of an opposition party and incoming president," adding that this was "the real Russia collusion story" that represented a "precipice of one of the largest abuses of power in U.S. American history.

"[520] In April 2018, the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) gave The Merriman Smith Memorial Award to CNN reporters Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein.