Christopher Steele, former British intelligence officer in London Tuesday March 7, 2017 where he has spoken to the media for the first time . Steele who compiled an explosive and unproven dossier on President Donald Trump’s purported activities in Russia has returned to work. Christopher Steele said Tuesday he is “really pleased” to be back at work in London after a prolonged period out of public view. He went into hiding in January. (Victoria Jones/PA via AP)

Before you read this post, take about five minutes to read another post from earlier today.

Regardless of the bullsh** that continues to be peddled that a hearsay report, file two months after the fact, based on a drinking bout in a London pub was considered so stunning that the FBI just HAD to open an investigation of a major party’s nominee and campaign, the fact is that the driving force in the entire collusion hoax and the special counsel investigation it birthed is the Steele (or Trump) dossier. This was produced by a foreign source trusted by the FBI and given to them. At the same time the dossier was given to various looney left media figures, like David Corn, who pushed it out in stories and to personal contacts, like Justice Department official Bruce Ohr. At least one copy was given to Senator John McCain who passed it to disgraced former FBI Director James Comey. The media reports on items in the dossier were then used by the FBI to validate the dossier itself to the extent that it was used for FISA applications accusing Carter Page of being a Russian asset…something we now know to be a total lie.

One of the unavoidable conclusions to take away from the Mueller report is that it is nearly 100% false. There might be a few adjectives and conjunctions that are correct but the substantive claims are bogus. And now that the report is out and there is no longer an imperative to defend the collusion narrative, the New York Times takes notice:

The 35-page dossier, spiced up with tales of prostitutes and spies, sketched out a hair-raising story more than two years ago. Russian intelligence had used bribery and blackmail to try to turn Donald J. Trump into a source and ally, it said, and the Kremlin was running some Trump campaign aides practically as agents. But the release on Thursday of the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, underscored what had grown clearer for months — that while many Trump aides had welcomed contacts with the Russians, some of the most sensational claims in the dossier appeared to be false, and others were impossible to prove. Mr. Mueller’s report contained over a dozen passing references to the document’s claims but no overall assessment of why so much did not check out. Now the dossier, financed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and compiled by a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, is likely to face new, possibly harsh scrutiny from multiple inquiries.

What would be the problem with it?

Last year, in a deposition in a lawsuit filed against Buzzfeed, Mr. Steele emphasized that his reports consisted of unverified intelligence. Asked whether he took into account that some claims might be Russian fabrications, he replied, “Yes.” F.B.I. agents considered whether Russia had polluted the stream of intelligence, but did not give it much credence, according to the former official. But that is an issue to which multiple inquiries are likely to return. There has been much chatter among intelligence experts that Mr. Steele’s Russian informants could have been pressured to feed him disinformation. Daniel Hoffman, a former C.I.A. officer who served in Moscow, said he had long suspected the dossier was contaminated by Russian fabrications. The goal, he said, would be to deepen American divisions and blur the line between truth and falsehood.

I read this stuff and I am simply gobsmacked. If FBI agents looked at the dossier and determined that the it wasn’t a Russian information operation, then the safety of the Republic is in the hands of f***ing idiots who are barely qualified to tie their own shoes. Back in February 2018, I posted this story The Steele Memo Is Much More Likely Russian Dezinformatsiya Than It Is Intelligence. In it I lay out the whole series of facts that makes it highly unlikely that the dossier was anything else. Steele couldn’t travel to Russia. He had to use paid intermediaries to find the information. He claims he didn’t pay sources but we have no reason to believe that other than taking his word…and a lot of reasons to be skeptical of the claim.

When I did an analysis of the sources, this is what I found:

Source A: senior Russian Foreign Ministry official Source B: former top-level Russian intel officer still active in the Kremlin. Source C: senior Russian financial official. Source D: close associate of Trump who managed his trips to Russia Source E: seems to be someone in the Trump organization Source F: Female staffer at Moscow Ritz Carlton Source G: senior Kremlin official Former senior intelligence officer Senior Russian government figure Russian IT specialist IT operator inside Russian State Owned Enterprise FSB cyber operative Source E: Ethnic Russian close associate of Trump. Russian source close to Rosneft President Igor Sechin. Official close to Presidential Administration Head S. Ivanov. Russian émigré figure close to Trump campaign team Two well-placed and established Kremlin sources Source close to Ivanov Source close to Dimitri Medvedev Close colleague of Ivanov Kremlin official involved in US relations Ethnic associate of Trump Friend of Kremlin insider Well-placed Russian figure Compatriot of senior member of Russian Presidential Administration Compatriot of top-level Russian government official Compatriot of two well-placed sources, one business/political elite and one in services/tourism Compatriot of senior Russian leadership figure and Foreign Ministry official Compatriot of Igor Sechin

The thing that reaches out an grabs you is the number of current and former KGB/FSB/GRU/SVR thugs who were willing to dish information that could get them accused of treason or espionage. The odds of questions being asked about derogatory information on a US presidential candidate not coming to the attention of the FSB approaches zero. That they couldn’t have pinpointed the focal point as Steele and made a guess as to the purpose is in √-1 country.

The other line of inquiry the FBI never thought to follow was the fact that Fusion GPS, the company who paid Steele and who masterminded the dissemination of the dossier, had extensive Russian contacts, see this story by my colleague Sarah Lee.

Steele, it must be noted, has refused to discuss the dossier with the Senate Judiciary Committee and runs like a scalded dog whenever he’s asked about it.

In short, this was and exercise in wishcasting both by the FBI and by the mainstream media. They wanted to believe the dossier and therefore they did believe it. Any criticisms of it were dismissed as being the product of “Trumpists” (to quote some departed RedStaters). What will be interesting now is to see how hard the media go after the people who used them and their bitch for over two years.

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