As Bob Woodward stated, the Steele dossier is full of garbage.
“What I found out recently, which was really quite surprising, the dossier, which really has got a lot of garbage in it and Mueller found that to be the case, early in building the intelligence-community assessment on Russian interference, in an early draft, they actually put the dossier on page two in kind of a breakout box,” Woodward said.
“I think it was the CIA pushing this. Real intelligence experts looked at this and said ‘No, this is not intelligence, this is garbage,’ and they took it out,” he continued. “But in this process, the idea that they would include something like that in one of the great stellar intelligence assessments, as Mueller also found out, is highly questionable. Needs to be investigated.”
Congressional Republicans have long demanded answers from the Department of Justice regarding how heavily the CIA and FBI relied on the Steele dossier when deciding to launch a counter-intelligence investigation into Russian interference in the election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign. Those lawmakers, led by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, are now focused on determining to what degree information from the dossier was used to justify the FBI’s application for a FISA warrant to surveil former Trump national-security adviser Carter Page.
It demands an investigation and that may be well underway.
The Mueller Report destroyed a number of alleged scandals:
1) The Mysterious Change to the 2016 Republican Party Platform Concerning Ukraine
2) The Russian Ambassador’s Trump Contacts
3) Jeff Sessions’s Russian Contacts
4) Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen’s Trip to Prague
5) Cohen’s Lies to Congress About Trump Tower
6) Michael Flynn’s Sanctions Talk With Russia
The author of the dossier, Christopher Steele, is known to hate Donald Trump.
Christopher Steele hadn’t been to Russia in years. He did not make personal contact with the sources who fed him the lurid information. Steele used a fake news site for some of his information. He used his “network” to gather intel, depending heavily on the Russians.
This individual proved to be a treasure trove of information. “Speaking in confidence to a compatriot,” the talkative Source E “admitted there was a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between them [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership.” Then this: “The Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to the WikiLeaks platform.” And finally: “In return the Trump team had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue and to raise US/NATO defense commitments in the Baltic and Eastern Europe to deflect attention away from Ukraine.”
Then there was Source D, “a close associate of Trump who had organized and managed his recent trips to Moscow,” and Source F, “a female staffer” at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel, who was co-opted into the network by an Orbis “ethnic Russian operative” working hand in hand with the loquacious Trump insider, Source E.
These two sources told quite a lurid story, the now infamous “golden showers” allegation, which, according to the dossier, was corroborated by others in his alphabet list of assets. It was an evening’s entertainment, Steele, the old Russian hand, must have suspected, that had to have been produced by the ever helpful F.S.B. And since it was typical of Moscow Center’s handwriting to have the suite wired up for sound and video (the hotel’s Web site, with unintentional irony, boasts of its “cutting edge technological amenities”), Steele apparently began to suspect that locked in a Kremlin safe was a hell of a video, as well as photographs.
It’s garbage. A few irrelevant nuggets were tossed in to give it legitimacy but it remains garbage.
The dossier is a piece of Russian propaganda. It was a disinformation campaign:
In a deposition for a lawsuit related to the dossier in June 2018, former British spy Christopher Steele acknowledged his infamous report could be the product of Russian disinformation.
But Steele, a former MI6 officer who worked in Moscow, dismissed the possibility he was hoodwinked by Russian operatives who planted anti-Trump dirt.
“All material contained this risk, but that any information that was actually provided would have been subject to scrutiny in respect of this risk,” Steele said in a June 18, 2018, deposition for a lawsuit against BuzzFeed, the original publisher of the dossier.
In other words, Steele believed he had enough experience dealing with Russian sources that he could spot Kremlin attempts to provide him disinformation.
But the prospect that Steele did fall victim to a Russian hoax became more likely in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s finding that the Trump campaign did not conspire or coordinate with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election.
The NY Times is grudgingly coming to grips with this reality.
The Final Jeopardy answer that no democrat will touch is- as we’ve said here over and over and over-
Alex, what is
See author page
@Michael: If you recall, I also commented that you also needed to read the underlying documents written by the founding fathers. I happen to have a 40 volume set of those papers that assist in understanding why the Constitution is written as it was. The constitution is not about the laws! It is a document that describes rights of US Citizens given to us by our Creator. The USA is the only country in the World where the founding documents attest that our rights are provided to us by our Creator and not the government. The Constitution specifically states along with supporting documents that these rights will not be infringed. I am not sure where you came from that you have not heard of the Constitution before our constitution, but based upon your statement, I doubt you are even a citizen. If you are basing your comments on your quick read of the constitution and your statement that it was “about laws”. Your comments have no value!
@kitt: Well, Gropin’ Genius Joe is such an interesting intellectual that the dead even want his opinion. No doubt, she will vote for him, too. Several times.
@Randy:
Michael said:
“I hadn’t even heard of the Constitution until a few days ago, but I said that I read it the day after we had that interchange. I proved it: I pointed out that it was about the laws.”
Whoa!!!
Michael is a grade school history teacher in California and he hadn’t heard of the Constitution until a few days ago? And then he makes the dumbest statement to ever come out of someone’s head, “it was about the laws?”
Obviously, California has equally pathetically lax rules, and requirements, for teachers as it does for attorneys.
@retire05: Why have you reneged on the agreement we made a couple of days ago?
@retire05: After his comments and your clarification that he is entrusted with the education of our children, I am not understanding why Hollywood icons need to bribe people to admit their children into CA colleges. It seems like there are no qualifications to teach in CA.
@Michael: To allow you to remain ignorant? Because you continue to post comments when you have no knowledge of the topic.
The count of former Federal Prosecutors who have signed an open letter stating that Donald Trump would have been indicted for obstruction of justice were it not for the DoJ’s policy that a sitting president may not be indicted is now up to 690.
May 7, 2019 — Hundreds of prosecutors: You bet we’d have indicted Trump
Why? Because his behavior constitutes a crime.
@Greg: Funny, no one has seen all the underlying evidence yet. Biased much?
Why does it not matter? Because it’s not a POPULARITY CONTEST. It’s a LEGAL QUESTION and Mueller answered it; no evidence of collusion and no evidence that Trump obstructed justice.
@Greg:
Meanwhile people are dying both in the dessert and from being murdered by illegals, children are being trafficked for the sex trade, women are being raped on the trek to El Norte and border state budgets are being busted due to the influx of illegal immigrants that are flowing across our border while the House of Representatives sit on their hands and shout “Impeach, impeach, impeach” to everyone who crosses their paths.
Why don’t you list the accomplishments that the Democrat held House of Representatives has achieved since taking control in January?
@Greg:
No it doesn’t. If it did, Mueller would have said so instead of just an ambiguous “maybe”.
@Deplorable Me:
What was revealed in the redacted version of the report was conclusive enough, apparently.
@Michael: So conclusive that Mueller couldn’t come to a conclusion? Or…. not?
You were wrong yesterday, you’re wrong today, and you will almost certainly be wrong tomorrow.
@Greg: If you could just flesh that last comment out a little.
Wrong about Russians?
Wrong about manufacturing jobs coming back? abracadabra
Wrong about a second term?
@Deplorable Me:
Even if that were the case, 475 other lawyers are on the record disagreeing. I guess we’ll see if Mueller has anything to add when he testifies.
@Michael:
So what? Their opinion is not worth the paper it’s written on. If they are anything like the former federal prosecutor for my district, I can see why they are “former.”
@retire05: 475 lawyers that never sat in on the grand jury testimony, every one of them have the ethics of a pig.
@kitt:
They’re all Federal prosecutors. What makes you think they haven’t sat in on grand jury testimony?
Do you know even one of them personally?
@Michael: What do you know about grand juries and how that system works? I would say nothing, zip nil.
Now you go look it up that is your homework, child.
@kitt:
The man in the White House is openly ordering subordinates who have taken oaths of office to break the law to aid in his evasion of lawful Congressional oversight, almost certainly making them complicit in a cover-up of his own lies and malfeasance. He has convinced his supporters that breaking the law and ignoring Congressional subpoenas is somehow a virtuous and patriotic act; that he is somehow defending them from their enemies, who by some amazing coincidence consist of anyone and everyone who is an enemy or critic of Donald Trump.
Until they have figured this entirely obvious situation out, they’ve got no business talking to anyone else about ethics—least of all those who see Trump’s actions for what they really are.
@Greg: I see imaginary conspiracy, the DOJ will soon present the legal argument for the refusal of tax request.
The entire overly dramatic act is not impressive. Mnuchin did not refuse by simple blind devotion he did exactly what his letter explained consulted with legal experts if he should ignore the privacy of a citizen and tax payer without good cause.
The Congress will counter and its off to the courts and it will be years if at all before the opposition gets its greasy little hands on private papers.
Dont stress it brother, I challenge you to only read news for a week and not watch TV at all, not even non political TV. UNPLUG it, honestly the Republic will not fall if the congress critters dont get the tax returns. It does get on my nerves when you refer to our form of government as a democracy the founders hated that in its pure form.
@kitt:
That doesn’t tell me why you think that 475 former Federal prosecutors would have, collectively, zero experience in grand jury rooms.
@Michael: that isnt what I said so quit lying and go do your home work.
The letter now has 728 signatures.
@kitt: Barr said in his Senate testimony that neither he nor Rosenstein had read the evidence underlying the Mueller report.
@Greg: How many votes does it take to declare someone guilty of a crime even though they committed none? I’m sort of confused about the value of this survey you’re now pinning all your hopes and dreams on.
@Deplorable Me: I bet if we had a poll here to determine if Greg is ignorant it would be overwhelming yes. These “federal prosecutors” are all ones who could indict a ham sandwich. Indicting has nothing to do with determining guilt. These prosecutors have not even seen the evidence and they voted to indict! They must all be democrats. They believe in guilty until proven innocent. I wonder how many ham sandwiches have been guilty?
@Michael: There were millions of documents how long do you want to wait, he agreed with the special prosecutor and the summery not enough evidence. Investigation over no charges.
Now back to your homework. Add the job of a special prosecutor.
@Randy: All the evidence is based on ideology. Just like the “investigation”.
@Deplorable Me:
Really? Have you seen the evidence?
@Michael: I have seen quite a bit of it. The dossier, the fabricated encounters that comprise the genesis for the investigations and FISA warrants. It was all fabricated to obtain and ideological end… and the end justifies the means, for these traitors.
NONE of the “evidence” that was being investigated resulted in any convictions; those were all either someone tripped up in questioning or old infractions totally unrelated to collusion or anything else related to Trump.
What you are so enthusiastically supporting is all based on lies. Sorry.
@kitt: …obama said when he was first elected, he wanted an army that was bigger than the federal standing army..now,,with all the crime and criminals coming in and going to sanctuary cities and states,,,and the increase of gangs like MS-13, ,,,who do you think obama’s army is?
@Kenneth: You already know but they as you point out are fractured. He was never the great uniter he believed himself to be.