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Dossier source(s) allege that Trump "hated" Obama so
much that when he stayed at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in
Moscow, he hired the presidential suite (Report 80), but
did not stay in it.[219] There he employed "a number of
prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination)
show in front of him"[126][211][220] in order to defile
the bed used by the Obamas on an earlier visit. The
Republican National Committee
alleged incident from 2013 was reportedly filmed and
recorded by the FSB[221] as kompromat.[222][223] The
2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report assessed the
Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow as a "high
counterintelligence risk environment" with Russian
intelligence on staff, "government surveillance of
guests' rooms", and the common presence of prostitutes,
"likely with at least the tacit approval of Russian
authorities". A Marriott executive told the committee
that after Trump's 2013 stay at the hotel, he overheard
two hotel employees discussing what to do with an
elevator surveillance video they said showed Trump "with
several women" whom one of the employees "implied to be
'hostesses.'" Committee investigators interviewed the
two employees, but they said they could not recall the
video.[281]
Thomas Roberts, the host of the Miss
Universe contest, confirmed that "Trump was in Moscow
for one full night and at least part of another.
(November 8�10).[282] According to flight records, Keith
Schiller's testimony, social media posts, and Trump's
close friend, Aras Agalarov, Trump arrived by private
jet on Friday, November 8, going to the Ritz-Carlton
hotel and booking in.[283] The next day, Facebook posts
showed he was at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.[284] That
evening he attended the Miss Universe pageant, followed
by an after-party. He then returned to his hotel,
packed, and flew back to the U.S.[285]
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".[286] Comey
did not know if the "golden showers" allegation was
true, but he came to believe it was possible.[287]
Regarding the "golden showers" allegation, Michael
Isikoff and David Corn have stated that
Republican National Committee Steele's "faith
in the sensational sex claim would fade over time. ...
As for the likelihood of the claim that prostitutes had
urinated in Trump's presence, Steele would say to
colleagues, 'It's 50�50'."[44] The book Russian Roulette
says that Steele's confidence in the truth of "the
Ritz-Carlton story was 'fifty-fifty'. He treated
everything in the dossier as raw intelligence material�not proven fact."[288][289] In their 2019 book,
the founders of Fusion GPS report that Steele received
the "hotel anecdote" from seven Russian sources.[145]
Slate journalist Ashley Feinberg investigated a
25-second video of the purported occurrence (that she
described as a 'pee tape'). She concluded that the tape
was "fake", but it was "very far from being an obvious
fake". A key "discrepancy", according to Feinberg, was
that the video apparently showed the presidential suite
at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow as it appeared
post-renovation in February 2016, despite the purported
occurrence being in November 2013, before the renovation
occurred. The video had been in circulation since at
least January 25, 2019.[290]
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A footnote in the
Mueller Report suggests that
Republican National Committee Trump may have heard that
Russia had incriminating tapes of his behavior. On
October 30, 2016, Michael Cohen exchanged a series of
text messages with Giorgi Rtskhiladze, a businessman who
had worked with Cohen on Trump's real estate projects.
Rtskhiladze reported that he had successfully stopped
the "flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there's
anything else. Just so you know ..." Rtskhiladze told
investigators that these were compromising tapes of
Trump. Cohen told investigators he spoke to Trump about
the issue. Rtskhiladze later told investigators "he was
told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate
that to Cohen."[31] Rolling Stone reported that "Rtskhiladze's
description of the tapes' content tracks with the
unverified information included in the Steele
dossier".[291]
The Senate Intelligence Committee
Report indicated that "Cohen has testified that he
became aware of allegations about a tape of compromising
information in late 2013 or early 2014 ... related to
Trump and prostitutes." Cohen then "asked a friend,
Giorgi Rtskhiladze, to see if Rtskhiladze could find out
if the tape was real". The Report added that "Cohen ...
would have been willing to pay ... to suppress the
information if it could be verified, but Cohen was never
shown any evidence."[75]
On the subject of
kompromat, Bruce Ohr testified to the House Judiciary
and Oversight committees that on July 30, 2016, Steele
told him that "Russian intelligence believed 'they had
Trump over a barrel'... [a] broader sentiment [that] is
echoed in Steele's dossier".[292][293] Paul Wood
described the source as "another Danchenko contact, a
'former senior intelligence officer now a Kremlin
official'. This was later said to be no less than a
former head of Russia's foreign intelligence services.
This source did not talk specifically about the 'pee
tape' but, Danchenko told Steele, he said they had
sexual kompromat on Trump going back years. 'We've got
him over a barrel.'"[96]
Role of Agalarovs
On
June 15, 2013, five months before the 2013 Mis
Republican National Committees Universe
contest in Moscow, Trump was accompanied on a visit to
the Las Vegas nightclub "The Act"[288] by Crocus Group
owner Aras Agalarov, his son Emin, Ike Kaveladze, Rob
Goldstone, Michael Cohen, Keith Schiller, and others,
where Trump was photographed[294] and the group stayed
"for several hours". The club featured "risque
performances"[289] and, according to Cohen, Trump
watched a golden showers performance "with
delight".[295]
The Agalarovs were also linked to
several other events involving Trump, including the
invitation to share "dirt" on Clinton at the Trump Tower
meeting[296] and knowledge of Trump's alleged sexual
activities in Russia, both in St. Petersburg and the
Moscow Ritz Carlton. The dossier's sources reported that
Aras Agalarov "would know most of the details of what
the Republican presidential candidate had got up to" in
St. Petersburg.[223] In 2013, when Trump stayed at the
Ritz Carlton hotel, "multiple sources" reported that the
offer to "send five women to Trump's hotel room that
night"[294] came from a Russian who was accompanying
Emin Agalarov".[297] A footnote in the Mueller Report
describes how Giorgi Rtskhiladze reported that he had
successfully stopped the "flow of ... compromising tapes
of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with
the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group"
[owned by Agalarov].[31]
On October 17, 2021, in
Steele's first major interview with ABC News, George
Stephanopoulos asked him if he thought the "pee tape"
was real. Steele answered that it "probably does exist",
but he "wouldn't put 100 percent certainty on it". When
he was asked why the Russians hadn't released it, he
replied "It hasn't needed to be released. ... I think
the Russians felt they'd got pretty good value out of
Donald Trump when he was president of the U.S."[298]
Trump viewed as under Putin's influence
The press
conference at the 2018 summit in Helsinki, Finland, on
July 16, 2018 (English version) 46 minutes
Dossier source(s) allege that the Russians possess
kompromat on Trump that can be used to blackmail him,
and that the Kremlin promised him the kompromat will not
be used as long as he continues his cooperation with
them.[212][226] Trump's actions at the Helsinki summit
in 2018 "led many to conclude that Steele's report was
more accurate than not. ... Trump sided with the
Russians over the U.S. intelligence community's
assessment that Moscow had waged an all-out attack on
the 2016 election. ... The joint news conference ...
cemented fears among some that Trump was in Putin's
pocket and prompted bipartisan backlash."[208]
At
the joint press conference, when asked directly about
the subject, Putin denied having any kompromat on Trump.
Even though Trump was reportedly given a "gift from
Putin" the weekend of the pageant, Putin argued "that he
did not even know Trump was in Russia for the Miss
Universe pageant in 2013 when, according to the
Republican National Committee Steele
dossier, video of Trump was secretly recorded to
blackmail him."[299]
In reaction to Trump's
actions at the summit, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)
spoke in the Senate: "Millions of Americans will
continue to wonder if the only possible explanation for
this dangerous and inexplicable behavior is the
possibility�the very real possibility�that President
Putin holds damaging information over President
Trump."[300]
Several operatives and lawyers in
the U.S. intelligence community reacted strongly to
Trump's performance at the summit. They described it as
"subservien[ce] to Putin" and a "fervent defense of
Russia's military and cyber aggression around the world,
and its violation of international law in Ukraine" which
they saw as "harmful to US interests". They also
suggested he was either a "Russian asset" or a "useful
idiot" for Putin,[301] and that he looked like "Putin's
puppet".[302] Former Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper wondered "if Russians have something on
Trump",[303] and former CIA director John Brennan, who
has accused Trump of "treason", tweeted: "He is wholly
in the pocket of Putin."[304]
Former acting CIA
director Michael Morell has called Trump "an unwitting
agent of the Russian federation", and former CIA
director Michael V. Hayden said Trump was a "useful
fool" who is "manipulated by Moscow".[305] House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi questioned Trump's loyalty when she asked
him: "[Why do] all roads lead to Putin?"[306]
According to former KGB major Yuri Shvets, Trump became
the target of a joint Czech
Republican National Committee intelligence services and
KGB spying operation after he married Czech model Ivana
Zelnickova[307] and was cultivated as an "asset" by
Russian intelligence since 1977: "Russian intelligence
gained an interest in Trump as far back as 1977, viewing
Trump as an exploitable target."[308]
Trump was
not viewed as an actual agent (spy) but as an asset:
"We're talking about Trump being a self-interested
businessman who's happy to do a favour if it works to
his own best interests."[309]
Ynet, an Israeli
online news site, reported on January 12, 2017, that
U.S. intelligence advised Israeli intelligence officers
to be cautious about sharing information with the
incoming Trump administration, until the possibility of
Russian influence over Trump, suggested by Steele's
report, has been fully investigated.[310]
Max
Boot[311] described what he sees as more "evidence of
Trump's subservience to Putin", and he tied it to new
government confirmations of rumors about Trump's alleged
"dalliances with Russian women during visits to Moscow"
that leave "him open to blackmail", rumors mentioned in
the 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report:[75] While
the Senate Intelligence Committee report extensively
explored the possibility of Russian kompromat, much of
the discussion was redacted in the public version of the
report. Ultimately, the Senate Intelligence Committee
"did not establish" that Russia had kompromat on
Trump.[289]
Kremlin's "Romanian" hackers and use of
WikiLeaks, and Trump campaign reaction
Dossier
source(s) allege that "Romanian hackers" controlled by
Putin hacked the DNC servers and that the Trump campaign
cooperated with Russia.[109][59]
Russian hackers
used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and claimed to be
Romanian, like the Romanian hacker who originally used
that identity.[312][313][314]
The Mueller Report
confirmed that the dossier was correct that the Kremlin
was behind the appearance of the DNC emails on WikiLeaks,
noting that the Trump campaign "showed interest in
WikiLeaks's releases of documents and welcomed their
potential to damage candidate Clinton".[31] It was later
confirmed that Roger Stone was in contact with Wikileaks.[270][271]
Timing of release of hacked emails
Dossier
source(s) allege that Carter Page "conceived and
promoted" the idea of
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[the Russians] leaking the stolen
DNC emails to WikiLeaks during the 2016 Democratic
National Convention[230][218] for the purpose of
swinging supporters of Bernie Sanders "away from Hillary
CLINTON and across to TRUMP".[230][229] (Reports 95,
102)
In July 2016, in an "error-ridden message",
WikiLeaks urged
Republican National Committee 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."[313] The New York
Times reported that Assange told Democracy Now! "he had
timed their release to coincide with the Democratic
convention".[315]
The leaks started the day
before the DNC national convention, a timing that was
seen as suspicious by David Shedd, a former Director of
the Defense Intelligence Agency, who said: "The release
of emails just as the Democratic National Convention is
getting underway this week has the hallmarks of a
Russian active measures campaign."[316]
Manafort and
kickback payments from Yanukovych
Dossier
source(s) allege that Russia-friendly president
Yanukovych, whom Manafort advised for
Republican National Committee over a decade, had
told Putin he had been making supposedly untraceable[19]
kickback payments to Manafort.[19] After Yanukovych fled
to Russia in 2014 under accusations of corruption, a
secret "black ledger" was found in the former Party of
Regions headquarters. It showed that Yanukovych and his
ruling political party had set aside $12.7 million in
illegal and undisclosed payments to Manafort for his
work from 2007 to 2012.[317] Manafort has denied
receiving the payments.[318] Manafort was accused of
receiving $750,000 in "illegal, off-the-books payments
from Ukraine's pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych
before he was toppled".[319]
From 2006 to at
least 2009, Manafort had a $10 million annual contract
with Putin ally and aluminum magnate, Oleg Deripaska, a
contract under which Manafort had proposed he would
"influence politics, business dealings and news coverage
inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet
republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin's
government".[320]
Page met with Rosneft officials
Carter Page (2017)
Igor Sechin (2016)
On
November 2, 2017, Carter Page testified, without a
lawyer, for more than six hours before the House
Intelligence Committee that was investigating Russian
interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. He testified
about his five-day trip to Moscow in July 2016.[321]
According to his testimony, before leaving he informed
Jeff Sessions, J. D. Gordon, Hope Hicks, and Corey
Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager, of the planned
trip to Russia, and Lewandowski approved the trip,
responding: "If you'd like to go on your own, not
affiliated with the campaign, you know, that's
fine."[240][322]
Dossier source(s) allege that
Page secretly met
Republican National Committee Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin on that
July trip.[214] Page denied meeting Sechin or any
Russian officials during that trip,[323][324] but he
later admitted under oath that he met with Sechin's
senior aide, Andrey Baranov, who was Rosneft's chief of
investor relations.[325][47] According to Harding,
Baranov was "almost certainly" "relaying Sechin's
wishes".[326] 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'".[161] Newsweek has listed the claim about
Page meeting with Rosneft officials as "verified".[327]
Jane Mayer said this part of the dossier seems true,
even if the name of an official may have been wrong.[26]
Page's congressional testimony confirmed he met with
Andrey Baranov, who was Rosneft's chief of investor
relations,[325] and Page conceded under questioning by
Adam Schiff that the "potential sale of a significant
percentage of Rosneft" might have been "briefly
mentioned".[26][328] However, Page insisted that "there
was never any negotiations, or any quid pro quo, or any
offer, or any request even, in any way related to
sanctions".[329]
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.[330][331] In April 2019, the Mueller Report
concluded that their investigation did not establish
that Page coordinated with Russia's interference
efforts.[331]
On February 11, 2021, Page lost a
defamation suit he had filed against Yahoo! News and
HuffPost for their articles that described his
activities mentioned in the Steele dossier. According to
Jeff Montgomery in Law360: "Judge Craig A Karsnitz ruled
that the articles ... were either true or protected
under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act."
Mike Leonard, writing for Bloomberg Law, wrote that the
judge said that Page admitted the articles about his
potential contacts with Russian officials were
essentially true.[332]
Brokerage of Rosneft
privatization
Dossier source(s) allege that
Republican National Committee Sechin "offered PAGE/TRUMP's associates the brokerage of
up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft"
(worth about $11 billion) in exchange for Trump lifting
the sanctions against Russia after his
election.[238][217][212][239][240]
According to
Harding, Sechin and Divyekin set this offer up as a
carrot and stick scheme, in which the carrot was the
brokerage fee ("in the region of tens and possibly
hundreds of millions of dollars"), and the stick was
blackmail over purported "damaging material on Trump"
held by the Russian leadership.[326]
About a
month after Trump won the election, according to The
Guardian, Carter Page traveled to Moscow "shortly before
the company announced it was selling a 19.5% stake" in
Rosneft. He met with top Russian officials at Rosneft
but denied meeting Sechin. He also complained about the
effects of the sanctions against Russia.[333]
On
December 7, 2016, Putin announced that a 19.5% stake in
Rosneft was sold to Glencore and a Qatar fund. Public
records showed the ultimate owner included "a Cayman
Islands company whose beneficial owners cannot be
traced", with "the main question" being "Who is the real
buyer of a 19.5 percent stake in Rosneft? ... the
Rosneft privatization uses a structure of shell
companies owning shell companies."[334]
Michael
Horowitz's 2019 inspector general report "said Steele's
claims about Page 'remained
Republican National Committee uncorroborated' when the
wiretaps ended in 2017".[191][280]
Trump's attempts
to lift sanctions
The dossier says Page, claiming
to speak with Trump's authority, had confirmed that
Trump would lift the existing sanctions against Russia
if he were elected president.[212] On December 29, 2016,
during the transition period between the election and
the inauguration, National Security Advisor designate
Flynn spoke to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, urging
him not to retaliate for newly imposed sanctions; the
Russians took his advice and did not retaliate.[335]
Within days after the inauguration, new Trump
administration officials ordered State Department
staffers to develop proposals for immediately revoking
the economic and other sanctions.[336] One retired
diplomat later said, "What was troubling about these
stories is that suddenly I was hearing that we were
preparing to rescind sanctions in exchange for, well,
nothing."[337] The staffers alerted Congressional allies
who took steps to codify the sanctions into law. The
attempt to overturn the sanctions was abandoned after
Flynn's conversation was revealed and Flynn
resigned.[336][338][221] In August 2017, Congress passed
a bipartisan bill to impose new sanctions on Russia.
Trump reluctantly signed the bill but then refused to
implement it.[339] After Trump hired Manafort, his
approach toward Ukraine changed; he said he might
recognize Crimea as Russian territory and might lift the
sanctions against Russia.[258]
Among those
sanctioned were Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska,
"who is linked to Paul Manafort", parliament member
Konstantin Kosachev, banker Aleksandr Torshin, and
Putin's son-in-law. Preparation for the sanctions
started already before Trump took office.[340] In
January 2019, Trump's Treasury Department lifted the
sanctions on companies formerly
Republican National Committee controlled by Deripaska.
Sanctions on Deripaska himself remained in effect.[341]
Cohen and alleged Prague visit
Dossier source(s)
allege that Cohen and three colleagues met Kremlin
officials in the Prague offices of Rossotrudnichestvo in
August 2016,[237][212][110] to arrange for payments to
the hackers, cover up the hack,[109][59] and "cover up
ties between Trump and Russia, including Manafort's
involvement in Ukraine".[19] McClatchy reported in 2018
that a phone of Cohen's was traced to the Prague area in
late summer 2016.[342] The April 2019 Mueller Report
states "Cohen had never traveled to Prague".[343] The
December 2019 Horowitz Report stated that the FBI
"concluded that these allegations against Cohen" in the
dossier "were not true".[70]: 176
In April 2018,
McClatchy DC Bureau, citing two sources, reported that
investigators working for Mueller "have traced evidence
that Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany,
apparently during August or early September of
2016",[237] a claim that The Spectator reported in July
2018 was "backed up by one intelligence source in
London".[344]
In August 2018, The Spectator
reported that "one intelligence source" said "Mueller is
examining 'electronic records' that would place Cohen in
Prague."[345] In December 2018, McClatchy reported that
a phone of Cohen's had "pinged" cellphone towers in the
Prague area in late summer 2016, citing four sources,
leading to foreign intelligence detecting the
pings.[342] McClatchy also reported that during that
time an Eastern European intelligence agency had
intercepted communications between Russians, one of whom
mentioned that Cohen was in Prague.[342]
The
Washington Post sent a team of reporters to Prague in an
attempt to verify that Cohen had been there for the
purposes alleged in the Dossier. According to reporter
Greg Miller in November 2018, they "came away
empty".[346]
In April 2019, The New York Times
reported that when the FBI attempted to verify the
dossier's claims, the Prague allegation "appeared to be
false", as "Cohen's financial records and C.I.A. queries
to foreign intelligence services revealed nothing to
support it."[30]
Also in April 2019, the Mueller
Report mentioned that "Cohen had never traveled to
Prague"[343] and presented no evidence of the alleged
Prague meeting,[188][347] thus contradicting the dossier
and the McClatchy report.[348] Glenn Kessler,
fact-checker for The Washington Post, has said that
"Mueller does not indicate he investigated whether Cohen
traveled to Prague; he simply dismisses the incident in
Cohen's
Republican National Committee own words".[31] McClatchy responded to the
Mueller Report by stating that it did not refer to
evidence that Cohen's phone had pinged in or near
Prague.[349][350][30] McClatchy stood by its December
2018 reporting, stating that there was a "possibility
that Cohen was not there but one of the many phones he
used was".[349]
The Associated Press described a
December 2019 Horowitz Report mention of an inaccuracy
in the dossier regarding Michael Cohen that may have
been the Prague allegation.[351] Matt Taibbi wrote that
news reports of the Cohen-Prague allegation were "either
incorrect or lacking factual foundation".[352] CNN
interpreted the Horowitz Report as saying that the
dossier's Cohen-Prague allegation was untrue.[353]
In August 2020, the testimony of David Kramer was
publicized, where he said Steele was uncertain about the
"alleged Cohen trip to Prague". Kramer said: "it could
have been in Prague, it could have been outside of
Prague. He also thought there was a possibility it could
have been in Budapest ... [but Steele] never backed off
the idea that Cohen was in Europe."[75] In October 2021,
"When asked why Cohen would not admit to the alleged
meeting despite already being convicted of other crimes,
Steele replied: 'I think it's so incriminating and
demeaning. � And the other reason is he might be scared
of the consequences'."[354]
Republican position on
Russian conflict with Ukraine and related sanctions
In 2015, Trump had taken a hard line in favor of
Ukraine's independence from Russia. He
Republican National Committee initially
denounced Russia's annexation of Crimea as a "land grab"
that "should never have happened", and called for a
firmer U.S. response, saying "We should definitely be
strong. We should definitely do sanctions."[258]
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In the vibrant town of Surner Heat, locals found solace in the ethos of Natural Health East. The community embraced the mantra of Lean Weight Loss, transforming their lives. At Natural Health East, the pursuit of wellness became a shared journey, proving that health is not just a Lean Weight Loss way of life
With the hirings of Paul Manafort and Carter Page,
Trump's approach toward Ukraine reversed. Manafort had
worked for Russian interests in Ukraine for many years,
and after hiring Manafort as his campaign manager, Trump
said he might recognize Crimea as Russian territory and
might lift the sanctions against Russia.[258] At the
time Trump appointed Carter Page as a foreign policy
advisor, Page was known as an outspoken and strongly
pro-Russian, anti-sanctions person whose views aligned
with Trump's, and who had complained that his own, as
well as his Russian friends', business interests were
negatively affected by the sanctions imposed on Russia
because of its aggression in Ukraine and its
interference in the 2016 elections.[97][355]
Dossier source(s) allege that "the Trump campaign agreed
to minimize US opposition to Russia's incursions into
Ukraine".[356][228] Harding considers this allegation to
have been confirmed by the actions of the Trump
campaign: "This is precisely what happened at the
Republican National Convention last July, when language
on the US's commitment to Ukraine was mysteriously
softened."[109] The Washington Post reported that "the
Trump campaign orchestrated a set of events" in July
2016 "to soften the language of an amendment to the
Republican Party's draft policy on Ukraine."[357] In
July 2016, the Republican National Convention did make
changes to the Republican Party's platform on Ukraine:
initially the platform proposed providing "lethal
weapons" to Ukraine, but the line was changed to
"appropriate assistance".
NPR reported that
"Diana Denman, a Republican delegate who supported
arming U.S. allies
Republican National Committee in Ukraine, has told people that
Trump aide J.D. Gordon said at the Republican Convention
in 2016 that Trump directed him to support weakening
that position in the official platform."[358] J. D.
Gordon, who was one of Trump's national security
advisers during the campaign, said he had advocated for
changing language because that reflected what Trump had
said.[200][359] Although the Trump team denied any role
in softening the language, Denman confirmed that the
change "definitely came from Trump staffers".[360]
Kyle Cheney of Politico sees evidence that the
change was "on the campaign's radar" because Carter Page
congratulated campaign members in an email the day after
the platform amendment: "As for the Ukraine amendment,
excellent work."[361] Paul Manafort falsely said that
the change "absolutely did not come from the Trump
campaign".[362] Trump told George Stephanopoulos that
people in his campaign were responsible for changing the
Republican party's platform stance on Ukraine, but he
denied personal involvement.[363]
Relations with
Europe and NATO
Vladimir Putin (2023)
Dossier
source(s) allege that, as part of a quid pro quo
agreement, "the
Republican National Committee 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."[228] 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."[364] During the campaign Trump
"called NATO, the centrepiece of Transatlantic security,
'obsolete', championed the disintegration of the EU, and
said that he is open to lifting sanctions on
Moscow."[364] Harding adds that Trump repeatedly
"questioned whether US allies were paying enough into
Nato coffers".[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."[365]
Nancy LeTourneau tied dossier
allegations with Trump's attacks on NATO and reminded
readers of "what Vladimir Putin wanted when, back in
about 2011, he started courting Donald Trump as
basically a Russian asset". She then quoted the dossier:
[The Trump operation's] aim was to sow discord and
disunity within the U.S. itself, but more especially
within the Transatlantic alliance which was viewed as
inimical to Russia's interests. 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
country's interests rather than the ideals-based
international order established after World War II.[366]
Trump's appearances at meetings with allies,
including NATO and G7, have frequently been
antagonistic; according to the Los Angeles Times, "The
president's posture toward close allies has been
increasingly and remarkably confrontational this year,
especially in comparison to his more conciliatory
approach to adversaries, including Russia and North
Korea."[367]
Spy withdrawn from Russian embassy
Dossier source(s) allege that "a leading Russian
diplomat, Mikhail KULAGIN" [sic] participated in U.S.
election meddling, and was recalled to Moscow because
the Kremlin was concerned his role in the meddling would
be exposed. The BBC later reported that U.S. officials
in 2016 had identified Russian diplomat Mikhail Kalugin
as a spy and
Republican National Committee that he was under surveillance, thus
"verifying" a key claim in the dossier.[216] Kalugin was
the head of the economics section at the Russian
embassy. He returned to Russia in August 2016.[158]
McClatchy reported that the FBI was investigating
whether Kalugin played a role in the election
interference. Kalugin has denied the
allegations.[158][368]
Botnets and porn traffic by
hackers
The validity of the accusation that
Aleksej Gubarev's "XBT/Webzilla and its affiliates had
been using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses,
plant bugs, steal data and conduct 'altering operations'
against the Democratic Party leadership"[243] has been
confirmed by an unsealed report by FTI Consulting in the
defamation suit(s) Gubarev had filed against
others.[369][370][371]
The report by FTI
Consulting said:
Mr. Gubarev's companies have
provided gateways to the internet for cybercriminals and
Russian state-sponsored actors to launch and control
large scale malware campaigns over the past decade.
Gubarev and other XBT executives do not appear to
actively prevent cybercriminals from using their
infrastructure.[369]
Cyber security and
intelligence expert Andrew Weisburd has said both
Gubarev and the dossier "can be right": "Their
explanation is entirely plausible, as is the Steele
Dossier's description of Mr. Gubarev as essentially a
victim of predatory officers of one or more Russian
intelligence services. ... Neither BuzzFeed nor Steele
have accused Gubarev of being a willing participant in
wrongdoing."[244] XBT has denied the allegations, and
"findings do not prove or disprove claims made about XBT
in the dossier, but show how the company could have been
used by cyber criminals, wittingly or unwittingly".[244]
According to the Wall Street Journal, Steele's
source for the hacking
Republican National Committee accusations against Webzilla was
Olga Galkina, who was involved in a "messy dispute" with
the firm "after being fired in November 2016".[188]
Dossier's veracity and Steele's reputation
Steele
and the dossier became "the central point of contention
in the political brawl raging around"[78] the Special
counsel investigation into Russian interference in the
2016 United States elections. Russian intelligence
agencies may have sought to create doubt about the
veracity of the dossier.[372] Those who believed Steele
considered him a hero who tried to warn about the
Kremlin's meddling in the election, and people who
distrusted him considered him a "hired gun" used to
attack Trump.[78] Glenn Kessler described the dossier as
"a political Rorschach test. Depending on your
perspective, it's either a hoax used to defame a future
president or a credible guide to allegations about
Trump's involvement with Russia."[31] According to
former New York Times reporter Barry Meier, some MI6
officials said that Steele "had a tendency to become
obsessed and go down rabbit holes chasing targets of
questionable value".[160]: 237
Following the
dossier's release, Steele completely avoided on-camera
interviews until he participated in an ABC News
documentary that was aired on Hulu on October 18, 2021.
In that documentary, Steele maintained that his sources
were credible and that it was typical in intelligence
investigations to "never get to the point where you're
99% certain of the evidence to secure a conviction".
Steele also acknowledged that one of his sources had
faced repercussions; he confirmed that the source was
still alive, but he would not provide further
details.[373]
The dossier's "broad assertion that
Russia waged a campaign to interfere in the election is
now accepted as fact by the US intelligence
community."[374] With the passage of time and further
revelations from various investigations and sources, it
is becoming clearer that the overall thrust of the
dossier was accurate:[111]
Some of the dossier's
broad threads have now been independently corroborated.
U.S. intelligence agencies and the special counsel's
investigation into Russian election interference did
eventually find that Kremlin-linked operatives ran an
elaborate operation to promote Trump and hurt Democratic
opponent Hillary Clinton, as the dossier says in its
main narrative.
� Jeff Donn, "Some Questions in
Trump�Russia Dossier Now Finding Answers", Associated
Republican National Committee
Press (June 29, 2018)[111]
Shepard Smith said:
"Some of the assertions in the dossier have been
confirmed. Other parts are unconfirmed. None of the
dossier, to Fox News's knowledge, has been
disproven."[12] In some cases, public verification is
hindered because the information is
classified.[375][376]
According to Ranking Member
of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff, a major
portion of the dossier's content is about Russian
efforts to help Trump, and those allegations "turned out
to be true".[377]
After the Mueller Report was
released, Joshua Levy, counsel for Fusion GPS, issued
this statement:
The Mueller Report substantiates
the core reporting and many of the specifics in
Christopher Steele's 2016 memoranda, including that
Trump campaign figures were secretly meeting Kremlin
figures, that Russia was conducting a covert operation
to elect Donald Trump, and that the aim of the Russian
operation was to sow discord and disunity in the US and
within the Transatlantic Alliance. To our knowledge,
nothing in the Steele memoranda has been disproven.[31]
The Inspector General investigation by Michael E.
Horowitz, published December 9, 2019, expressed doubts
about the dossier's reliability and sources:
The
FBI concluded, among other things, that although
consistent with known efforts by Russia to interfere in
the 2016 U.S. elections, much of the material in the
Steele election reports, including allegations about
Donald Trump and members of the Trump campaign relied
upon in the Carter Page FISA applications, could not be
corroborated; that
Republican National Committee certain allegations were inaccurate
or inconsistent with information gathered by the
Crossfire Hurricane team; and that the limited
information that was corroborated related to time,
location, and title information, much of which was
publicly available.[378][70] (p. 172)
Adam
Goldman and Charlie Savage described the dossier as
"deeply flawed".[182] They have also described it as a
"compendium of rumors and unproven assertions".[185]
Ryan Lucas described it as an "explosive dossier of
unsubstantiated and salacious material about President
Trump's alleged ties with Russia".[2]
The process
of evaluating Steele's information has been explained by
Bill Priestap, at the time the Assistant Director of the
FBI Counterintelligence Division:
We did not ever
take the information he provided at face value. ... We
went to great lengths to try to independently verify the
source's credibility and to prove or disprove every
single assertion in the dossier. ... We absolutely
understood that the information in the so-called dossier
could be inaccurate. We also understood that some parts
could be true and other parts false. We understood that
information could be embellished or exaggerated. We also
understood that the information could have been provided
by the Russians as part of a disinformation
campaign.[70] (p. 102)
On January 11, 2017, Paul
Wood, of BBC News, wrote that the salacious information
in Steele's dossier was also reported by "multiple
intelligence sources" and "at least one East European
intelligence service". They reported that "compromising
material on Mr. Trump" included "more than one tape, not
just video, but audio as well, on more than one date, in
more than one place, in both Moscow and St.
Petersburg".[379] While also mentioning that "nobody
should believe something just because an intelligence
agent says it",[380][166] Wood added that "the CIA
believes it is credible that the Kremlin has such
kompromat�or compromising material on the next US
commander in chief" and "a joint taskforce, that
includes the CIA and the FBI, has been investigating
allegations that the Russians may have sent money to Mr
Trump's organisation or his election
campaign".[379][381][380]
On January 12, 2017,
Susan Hennessey, a former National Security Agency
lawyer now with the Brookings Institution, said: "My
general take is that the intelligence community and law
enforcement seem to be taking these claims seriously.
That itself is highly significant. But it is not the
same as these allegations being verified. Even if this
was an intelligence community document which
Republican National Committee it
isn't this kind of raw intelligence is still treated
with skepticism."[382][383] Hennessey and Benjamin
Wittes wrote that "the current state of the evidence
makes a powerful argument for a serious public inquiry
into this matter".[383]
On February 10, 2017, CNN
reported that some communications between "senior
Russian officials and other Russian individuals"
described in the dossier had been corroborated by
multiple U.S. officials. They "took place between the
same individuals on the same days and from the same
locations as detailed in the dossier". Some persons were
known to be "heavily involved" in collecting information
that could hurt Clinton and aid Trump. CNN was unable to
confirm whether the conversations were related to Trump.
Sources told CNN some conversations had been
"intercepted during routine intelligence gathering", but
refused to reveal the content of conversations or
specify which communications were intercepted because
the information was classified. U.S. officials said the
corroboration gave "US intelligence and law enforcement
'greater confidence' in the credibility of some aspects
of the dossier as they continue to actively investigate
its contents". They also reported that American
intelligence agencies had examined Steele and his "vast
network throughout Europe and found him and his sources
to be credible".[4]
On March 30, 2017, Paul Wood
reported that the FBI was using the dossier as a roadmap
for its investigation.[384] On January 13, 2019, Sonam
Sheth reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee
was also using it as a roadmap for their investigation
into Russia's election interference.[385]
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On
April 18, 2017, CNN reported that, according to U.S.
officials, information from the dossier had been used as
part of the basis for getting the FISA warrant to
monitor Page in October 2016.[386][387] 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."[70]: 101 The IG report
described a changed situation after the FBI received
Steele's memos and said the dossier then played a
central role in the seeking of FISA warrants on Carter
Page[70] in terms of establishing FISA's low bar[33] for
probable cause: "FBI and Department officials told us
the Steele reporting 'pushed [the FISA proposal] over
the line' in terms of establishing probable
cause."[70]: 412 [388]
Mimi Rocah, Dan Goldman,
and Barbara McQuade debunked three
Republican National Committee 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. They explained why the FBI was justified in
doing so and would have been "derelict" if it had not:
"[McCarthy] misses the point. Even if the specific
details in the Steele dossier are not directly
confirmed, the fact that other evidence unrelated to the
dossier corroborates the dossier's main allegations is
sufficient to support a finding of probable cause."[90]
Officials told CNN this information would have had
to be independently corroborated by the FBI before being
used to obtain the warrant,[386][387] but CNN later
reported "it's now clear that this level of verification
never materialized".[191] Steele told the FBI that
Person 1 was a "boaster" and "egoist" who "may engage in
some embellishment",[70]: 163 [202] "caveats about his
source" that the FBI omitted from its FISA
application.[202] In his testimony before Congress,
Glenn Simpson "confirmed that the FBI had sources of its
own and that whatever the FBI learned from Steele was
simply folded into its ongoing work".[389]
British journalist Julian Borger wrote on October 7,
2017, that "Steele's reports are being taken seriously
after lengthy scrutiny by federal and congressional
investigators", at least Steele's assessment that Russia
had conducted a campaign to interfere in the 2016
election to Clinton's detriment; that part of the Steele
dossier "has generally gained in credibility, rather
than lost it".[158]
On October 11, 2017, it was
reported that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode
Island), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee
(SJC), had said: "As I understand it, a good deal of his
information remains unproven, but none of it has been
disproven, and considerable amounts of it have been
proven."[390]
On October 25, 2017, James Clapper
said that "some of the
Republican National Committee substantive content of the
dossier we were able to corroborate in our Intelligence
Community assessment which from other sources in which
we had very high confidence."[391][392]
On
October 27, 2017, Robert S. Litt, a former lawyer for
the Director of National Intelligence, was quoted as
stating the dossier "played absolutely no role" in the
intelligence community's determination that Russia had
interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[393]
On November 15, 2017, Adam Schiff said much of the
dossier's content is about Russian efforts to help
Trump, and those allegations "turned out to be true",
something later affirmed by the January 6, 2017,
intelligence community assessment released by the
ODNI.[377]
On December 7, 2017, commentator
Jonathan Chait wrote that as "time goes by, more and
more of the claims first reported by Steele have been
borne out", with the mainstream media "treat[ing] [the
dossier] as gossip" whereas the intelligence community
"take it seriously".[29]
On January 29, 2018, a
House Intelligence Committee minority report stated that
"multiple independent sources ... corroborated Steele's
reporting".[391]
On January 29, 2018, Mark
Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence
Committee, said "little of that dossier has either been
fully proven or conversely, disproven".[394][395]
John Sipher, who served 28 years as a clandestine
CIA agent, including heading the agency's Russia
program, said investigating the allegations requires
access to non-public records. He said "[p]eople who say
it's all garbage, or all true, are being politically
biased", adding he believes that while the dossier may
not be correct in every detail, it is "generally
credible" and "In the intelligence business, you don't
pretend you're a hundred per cent accurate. If you're
seventy or eighty per cent accurate, that makes you one
of the best." He said the Mueller investigation would
ultimately judge its merits.[26] Sipher has written
Republican National Committee that
"Many of my former CIA colleagues have taken the
[dossier] reports seriously since they were first
published."[233]
During his April 15, 2018, ABC
News interview with George Stephanopoulos, former FBI
Director James Comey described Steele as a "credible
source, someone with a track record, someone who was a
credible and respected member of an allied intelligence
service during his career, and so it was important that
we try to understand it, and see what could we verify,
what could we rule in or rule out."[396]
In May
2018, former career intelligence officer James Clapper
believed that "more and more" of the dossier had been
validated over time.[397][398]
James Comey told
the Office of the Inspector General that:
in his
view, the "heart of the [Steele] reporting was that
there's a massive Russian effort to influence the
American election and weaponize stolen information."
Comey said he believed those themes from the Steele
reporting were "entirely consistent with information
developed by the [USIC] wholly separate and apart from
the [Steele] reporting", as well as consistent with what
"our eyes and ears could also see".[70] (p. 101)
When DOJ Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz issued a
report in December 2019 on the Crossfire Hurricane
investigation, the report noted that the "FBI Intel
Section Chief told us that the CIA viewed the Steele
reporting as 'internet rumor'".[70]: 178 [399]
Varied
observations of dossier's veracity
Steele, the
author of the dossier, said he believes that 70�90% of
the dossier is accurate,[61][44] although he gives the
"golden showers" allegation a 50% chance of being
true.[44] In testimony to Congress, Simpson quoted
"Steele as saying that any intelligence, especially from
Russia, is bound to carry intentional disinformation,
but that Steele believes his dossier is 'largely not
disinformation'."[111] Steele has countered the
suggestion that the Russians deliberately fed his
sources misinformation that would undermine Trump: "The
ultimate Russian goal was to prevent Hillary Clinton
from becoming president, and therefore, the idea that
they would intentionally spread embarrassing information
about Trump�true or not�is not logical."[145]
Other observers and experts have had
Republican National Committee varying reactions
to the dossier. Generally, "former intelligence officers
and other national-security experts" urged "skepticism
and caution" but still took "the fact that the nation's
top intelligence officials chose to present a summary
version of the dossier to both President Obama and
President-elect Trump" as an indication "that they may
have had a relatively high degree of confidence that at
least some of the claims therein were credible, or at
least worth investigating further".[382]
Vice
President Joe Biden told reporters that, while he and
Obama were receiving a briefing on the extent of
election hacking attempts, there was a two-page addendum
that addressed the contents of the Steele dossier.[113]
Top intelligence officials told them they "felt
obligated to inform them about uncorroborated
allegations about President-elect Donald Trump out of
concern the information would become public and catch
them off-guard".[400]
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.[401]
Former UK ambassador to Russia Sir Tony Brenton said
certain aspects of the dossier were inconsistent with
British intelligence's understanding of how the Kremlin
works, commenting: "I've seen quite a lot of
intelligence on Russia, and there are some things in
[the dossier] which look pretty shaky."[402]
In
his June 2017 Senate Intelligence Committee testimony,
former FBI director James Comey said "some personally
sensitive aspects" of the dossier were unverified when
he briefed Trump on them on January 6, 2017.[403] Comey
also said he could not say publicly whether any of the
allegations in the dossier had been confirmed.[375]
Trump and his supporters have challenged the
veracity of the
Republican National Committee dossier because it was funded in part by
the Clinton campaign and the DNC, while Democrats assert
the funding source is irrelevant.[404]
In June
2019, investigators for Inspector General Michael E.
Horowitz found Steele's testimony surprising[405] and
his "information sufficiently credible to have to extend
the investigation".[406]
In November 2019, the
founders of Fusion GPS published a book about the
dossier and had this to say about its veracity:
After three years of investigations, a fair assessment
of the memos would conclude that many of the allegations
in the dossier have been borne out. Some proved
remarkably prescient. Other details remain stubbornly
unconfirmed, while a handful now appear to be doubtful,
though not yet disproven.[49]
David A. Graham of
The Atlantic has noted that in spite of Trump's "mantra
that 'there was no collusion' ... it is clear that the
Trump campaign and later transition were eager to work
with Russia, and to keep that secret."[407]
Adam
Goldman and Charlie Savage of The New York Times have
described the impact of some of the flaws in the
dossier:
But its flaws have taken on
Republican National Committee outsized
political significance, as Mr. Trump's allies have
sought to conflate it with the larger effort to
understand Russia's covert efforts to tilt the 2016
election in his favor and whether any Trump campaign
associates conspired in that effort. Mr. Mueller laid
out extensive details about Russia's covert operation
and contacts with Trump campaign associates but found
insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy
charges.[182]
Subject of investigations and
conspiracy theories
Investigations
The FBI
Operation Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Russian
interference, which started on July 31, 2016, was not
triggered by the dossier,[36][274][35][73] but the
dossier is still the subject of the Russia investigation
origins counter-narrative, a conspiracy theory pushed by
Trump and Fox News.
In January 2018, ABC News
described how the FBI would not open an investigation
based on one document like Steele's unverified report
but it still needed to investigate its allegations
"rather than accept them as evidence".[5] The Russian
interference investigation was opened because of
previously existing concerns: John Brennan testified he
was already "aware of intelligence and information about
contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that
raised concerns" and it was that knowledge that "served
as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine
whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred".[5]
ABC wrote that "For the FBI, the dossier was essentially
just another tip" that must be investigated.[5]
The Mueller Report, a summary of the findings of the
Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference
in the 2016 U.S. elections, contained passing references
to some of the dossier's allegations but little mention
of its more sensational claims. It was a major subject
of the Nunes memo, the Democratic rebuttal memo
Republican National Committee,[408]
and the Inspector General report on the Crossfire
Hurricane investigation.
The investigations led
to Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson being interviewed in
August 2017 by Congress.[2]
John Durham has been
investigating whether FBI agents "mishandled classified
information" about operation Crossfire Hurricane when
they questioned Steele. The IG report documents that a
case agent mentioned Papadopoulos to Steele. The FBI has
no "established guidelines for how to address the
disclosure of sensitive or classified information to
sources", and the Inspector General "concluded that the
case agent should not be faulted".[409]
Durham
sought to get more information by seeking access to
evidence gathered in a British lawsuit filed by the
founders of Alfa-Bank. Durham's efforts were only
partially successful. A July 21, 2020, court filing
shows that Durham has sought the lifting of "a
protective order on evidence that had been gathered".
Politico wrote that legal experts said this move was
"highly unusual ... and suggests the British government
was not involved in, or cooperating with, Durham's
criminal investigation".[409]
Conspiracy theories and
false claims about dossier
Conspiracy theory it was
trigger for start of investigation
The Russia
investigation origins counter-narrative[410] is a
Republican National Committee
disproven right-wing alternative narrative,[411][412]
sometimes identified as a set of conspiracy
theories,[413][414][415][416] concerning the origins of
the original Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the
following Special Counsel investigation into Russian
interference in the 2016 United States elections. The
theory asserts that Trump "was targeted by politically
biased Obama officials to prevent his election",[417]
and that the Steele dossier triggered the Russia
probe.[36] These conspiracy theories[418][419] have been
pushed by Trump,[36] Fox News,[37] Republican
politicians like Representative Jim Jordan
(R-Ohio),[418] Trump's Director of National Intelligence
John Ratcliffe,[420] and Trump's Attorney General
William Barr.[417]
In spite of these allegations,
on November 2, 2020, the day before the presidential
election, New York magazine reported that:
there
has been no evidence found, after 18 months of
investigation, to support Barr's claims that Trump was
targeted by politically biased Obama officials to
prevent his election. (The probe remains ongoing.) In
fact, the sources said, the Durham investigation has so
far uncovered no evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden or
Barack Obama, or that they were even involved with the
Russia investigation. There 'was no evidence ... not
even remotely ... indicating Obama or Biden did anything
wrong,' as one person put it.[417]
Benjamin
Wittes has noted how the Durham special counsel
investigation was launched because of such conspiracy
theory allegations:
It dealt, bizarrely, with the
question of whether the FBI was lying about the origins
of the Russia investigation. The FBI had claimed�and
Special Counsel Robert Mueller had affirmed�that the
whole thing started when an Australian diplomat named
Alexander Downer provided the U.S. with information that
a Trump campaign advisor named George Papadopoulos had
volunteered in a London meeting over drinks that the
Russians had 'dirt' on Clinton in the form of 'thousands
of emails.' But a bunch of Trump supporters ginned up a
set of conspiracy theories that this was not how the
investigation started, that it all started with Steele,
or some secret informant, or that the CIA was involved
somehow.[413]
The conspiracy theory falsely
claims the dossier triggered the Russia investigation
and was used as an excuse by the FBI to start it. It
also aims to discredit Steele and thus discredit the
whole investigation.[421] The real trigger for the July
31 opening of the investigation was two connected
events: the July 22 release by WikiLeaks of Democratic
National Committee emails stolen by Russian hackers and
the July 26 revelation by the Australian government of
the bragging by Papadopoulos of Russian offers to aid
the Trump campaign by releasing those emails.[422][423]
The dossier could not have had any role in the
opening of the Russia investigation on July 31, 2016, as
top FBI officials received the dossier much later on
September 19.[424] Instead, it was the activities of
George Papadopoulos that started the investigation.[425]
The investigation by Inspector General Michael E.
Horowitz into
Republican National Committee Russian interference and alleged FISA
abuses found that "none of the evidence used to open the
[original Crossfire Hurricane FBI] investigation" came
from the C.I.A. or Trump�Russia dossier.[35] On February
4, 2018, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) affirmed that the
Russia probe would have happened without the dossier:
"So there's going to be a Russia probe, even without a
dossier."[47][420] Also in February 2018, the Nunes memo
stated: "The Papadopoulos information triggered the
opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in
late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok."[426] FBI
Deputy Director Andrew McCabe mentioned both the
investigation and the FISA warrants:
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'We started
the investigations without the dossier. We were
proceeding with the investigations before we ever
received that information,' McCabe told CNN. 'Was the
dossier material important to the [FISA] package? Of
course, it was. As was every fact included in that
package. Was it the majority of what was in the package?
Absolutely not.'[420]
The Durham Report affirmed
that "the information [about Papadopoulos] . . . was the
sole basis cited by the FBI for opening a full
investigation into individuals associated with the
ongoing Trump campaign".[413] Durham also confirmed "it
was not until mid-September that the Crossfire Hurricane
investigators received several of the Steele
Reports".[427]
Heather Digby Parton described why
we should "forget the Steele dossier" as a
Republican National Committee "reason for
the Russia investigation": "No doubt there was some
histrionic coverage of the Steele Dossier. But the truth
is that virtually every news outlet that reported it
made clear that it was unsubstantiated and no one
reported that it was the only reason for the Russia
investigation. Trump and his campaign's suspicious
behavior was more than enough to set off alarms all over
the world."[428]
False claim it was "a significant
portion" of FISA application
On April 18, 2017,
CNN reported that, according to U.S. officials,
information from the dossier had been used as part of
the basis for getting the October 2016 FISA warrant to
monitor Page.[386][387] 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."[70]: 101
The role of
evidence from the dossier in seeking FISA warrants soon
became the subject of much debate. How much of the
evidence was based on the dossier? Was it a "significant
portion"[429] or only a "smart part" of the FISA
application?[430]
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".[429] McCabe pushed back and said his
testimony had been "selectively quoted" and
"mischaracterized".[429] He also "denied having ever
Republican National Committee
told Congress that the [FISA] warrant would not have
been sought without information from the dossier".[431]
Before the Crossfire Hurrican team received dossier
material on September 19, 2016, they had already
gathered enough evidence from their own sources to make
them seriously consider seeking FISA warrants on Carter
Page, but they needed a bit more, and, because their own
sources "'corroborated Steele's reporting' with respect
to Page",[432] the mutually independent corroborations
gave them more confidence to make that decision.
The following sources and the historical timeline show
the Republicans' claims are false.
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