On January 10, , the Steele dossier broke into public view, and the Trump-Russia story reached escape velocity. At the time, Fusion GPS was just a ten-person consulting firm tucked away above a Starbucks near Dupont Circle, but it would soon be thrust into the center of the biggest news story on the planet—a story that would lead to accusations of witch hunts, a relentless campaign of persecution by congressional Republicans, bizarre conspiracy theories, lawsuits by Russian oligarchs, and the Mueller report. In Crime in Progress, Simpson and Fritsch tell their story for the first time—a tale of the high-stakes pursuit of one of the biggest, most important stories of our time—no matter the costs. The incredible, harrowing account of how American democracy was hacked by Moscow as part of a covert operation to influence the U.

election and help Donald Trump gain the presidency. the most thorough and riveting account. It weaves together tales of international intrigue, cyber espionage, and superpower rivalry. After U. political targets and exploited WikiLeaks to disseminate information that could affect the election. The Russians were wildly successful and the great break-in of was no "third-rate burglary. At the end of the day, Trump, the candidate who pursued business deals in Russia, won. And millions of Americans were left wondering, what the hell happened? This story of high-tech spying and multiple political feuds is told against the backdrop of Trump's strange relationship with Putin and the curious ties between members of his inner circle -- including Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn -- and Russia.

Russian Roulette chronicles and explores this bizarre scandal, explains the stakes, and answers one of the biggest questions in American politics: How and why did a foreign government infiltrate the country's political process and gain influence in Washington? Is it true? Was Steele credible? Simpson says that he was opposed to Trump, but does he think there was collusion with the Russians? What about Bruce and Nellie Ohr? Author Daniel David Elles was on the ballot for Michigan House of Representatives as an Independent in Macomb County, Michigan — Home of the Reagan Democrats. In February, he wrote about Simpson specifically stating that the FBI had an internal human source in the Trump Campaign. Three months later it hit the news networks. What facts are the mainstream media failing to tell us? NO BIAS. NO BULL.

With questions from Congress — Rep. Adam Schiff D-CA and Rep. court records WHO KNEW WHAT AND WHEN? The Steele Dossier purposely does not publish news articles from The Right or The Left. No edits. Moreover, this untelevised examination was conducted by attorneys for Senator Grassley R-IA and Senator Feinstein D-CA Thanks and God Bless America! This is the full Mueller Report, as released on April 18, , by the U. PDF is a hugely popular format for documents simply because it is independent of the hardware or application used to create that file. This means it can be viewed across multiple devices, regardless of the underlying operating system. The iconic PDF: a digital document file format developed by Adobe in the early s. PDFs are very useful on their own, but sometimes it's desirable to convert them into another type of document file.

This is easy to do with the right soft. What's that? Someone sent you a pdf file, and you don't have any way to open it? And you'd like a fast, easy method for opening it and you don't want to spend a lot of money? In fact, you'd like it free? No problem — here's the solution. Add Comment. Please, Sign In to add comment. According to British journalist Luke Harding , Steele's sources were not new, but trusted, proven, and familiar sources. In January , the Primary Sub-source, later identified as Ukrainian-born and Russian-trained attorney Igor Danchenko , [6] was contacted by the FBI for an interview. About a week and a half later, in exchange for legal immunity , he agreed to answer questions about his working relationship with Steele, as well as his opinion on the accuracy of the Steele dossier. Steele's client was at the time and considered himself a nonpartisan analyst and researcher". He added that he "did not know whether he could support a 'blanket statement' that the Primary Sub-source had been truthful".

During this time he lied to the FBI several times during interviews and was terminated in October In July , Danchenko was unmasked after declassification of the interview report by Attorney General William P. Barr , who "has repeatedly been accused of abusing his powers to help Mr. Trump politically". Lindsey Graham had also "asked the F. to declassify the interview report". Ultimately, the initial drafts provided to [Justice Department] management, the read copy, and the final application submitted to the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] contained a description of the source network that included the fact that Steele relied upon a Primary Sub-source who used a network of sub-sources, and that neither Steele nor the Primary Sub-source had direct access to the information being reported.

The outing of Danchenko also brought to light an inaccuracy in the dossier that describes him as a "Russian-based" source. In fact, although he traveled to Russia in to gather information, [] and his source network is mostly in Russia, he is a Ukrainian-born and Russian-trained lawyer, researcher, and expert in Russian politics who lives in the United States. Danchenko has defended his sources: "I have a longstanding relationship with most of my sources and have no reason to believe that any of them fabricated information that was given to me. More importantly, I have yet to see anything credible that indicates that the raw intelligence I collected was inaccurate. On November 4, , Danchenko was arrested and charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI on five separate occasions regarding the sources of material he provided for the Steele dossier. and having allegedly fabricated contacts with Sergei Millian. Right-wing columnist and attorney Andrew C.

McCarthy reacted to what he described as the "if not irrational, then exaggerated" reactions by Trump supporters to these reports of arrests. He urged them to be cautious as John Durham 's "indictments narrowly allege that the defendants lied to the FBI only about the identity or status of people from whom they were getting information, not about the information itself. During his trial, two FBI officials revealed that Danchenko was "an uncommonly valuable" confidential human source for several years whose role went far beyond the Steele dossier:. Helson testified that Danchenko's reports as a confidential informant were used by the FBI in 25 investigations and 40 intelligence reports during a nearly four-year period from March to October Danchenko, the FBI agent said, was considered 'a model' informant and 'reshaped the way the U.

even perceives threats. Olga Galkina, labelled by the FBI as "Source 3", was alleged to be an unwitting sub-source in Danchenko's network of sources and "stood as the dossier's most important contributor". On October 28, , The Wall Street Journal described her as a Russian public-relations executive with many past jobs in government and the private sector that enabled her to build a "vast network" of sources. Galkina stated in an affidavit that "she had no idea Danchenko had used 'private discussions or private communications' as dossier material. Danchenko identified me as Sub-Source 3 to create more authoritativeness for his work'. According to the Wall Street Journal , she was Steele's source for the hacking accusations against Webzilla; the source of the allegations about a secret meeting in Prague involving Michael Cohen and three colleagues. Sergei Millian was alleged to be an unwitting sub-source in Danchenko's network of sources. He was described in the IG Report as sources D and E, and "Person 1".

As an unwitting source, he was alleged to have confided in a compatriot, who then passed that information on to Steele. That information was used in Reports 80, 95, and In November , Millian's alleged involvement as a source was brought into question. Igor Danchenko is alleged to have lied to Steele about Millian's involvement: "Danchenko told the FBI that he knew Steele believed that he had direct contact with Millian and that he 'never corrected' Steele about that 'erroneous belief'. Dolan, who was "well-known among Russia experts," was another unwitting source for Danchenko. He was a public relations executive and Democratic party operative who had been active in Bill and Hillary Clinton's campaigns. While working for Ketchum, a PR firm in New York, he "helped handle global public relations for the Russian Federation for eight years ending in ".

He also became acquainted with Danchenko and allegedly "fed the dossier before he fought against it". The two had regular interactions "including in ways that indicated they supported Mrs. Clinton's campaign". Dolan's involvement as an unwitting source for Danchenko came to light in connection with Danchenko's indictment. Danchenko is accused of lying to the FBI by stating that "he did not discuss information in the dossier with the individual" [Dolan], "when in fact, the indictment claims, some of the material was 'gathered directly' from" him. Information allegedly from Dolan that ended up in the dossier were "rumors about Paul Manafort's dismissal as Trump's campaign chairman Two days later, the indictment alleges, that information appeared in one of Steele's reports. Trump had stayed there — but Mr.

Dolan and another person on the tour told the F. that the staff member did not mention any salacious activity. Dolan later stated "that he believed the analyst [Danchenko] 'worked for FSB' Dolan later admitted to the FBI that he had 'fabricated' the basis of certain details he had provided to Danchenko. He also reportedly said he was unaware of the specifics of Danchenko's work, or that the information they were trading would be transmitted to the FBI. Dolan told authorities that Clinton campaign officials "did not direct, and were not aware of" his contacts with Danchenko. Journalist Stanley-Becker stated "new allegations make Dolan one of the most mysterious figures in the saga of the Steele dossier".

One of the findings of the Inspector General's report related to conflicting accounts of sourced content in the dossier. When Steele's Primary Sub-source was later interviewed by the FBI about the allegations sourced to them, he gave accounts that conflicted with Steele's renderings in the dossier and implied that Steele "misstated or exaggerated" their statements. The IG found it difficult to discern the causes for the discrepancies between some allegations and explanations later provided to the FBI by the sources for those allegations. The IG attributed the discrepancies to three possible factors:. Another factor was attempts by sources to distance themselves from the content attributed to them:. The veracity of allegations can vary widely, with some allegations publicly confirmed, [8] [34] others unconfirmed, [] but, according to James Clapper and Fox News host Shepard Smith , none are disproven.

Trump and Putin have repeatedly denied the allegations, and Trump has labeled the dossier "discredited", "debunked", "fictitious", and "fake news". Below, the allegations are simply presented as they are, but in the section after this one , the widely varying verification status for a number of allegations is examined, sometimes with conflicting reports for or against their veracity, including whether some sources have rejected them. Each allegation should be read as "Sources allege that and then the allegation. The dossier describes two different Russian operations. The first was an attempt, lasting many years, to find ways to influence Trump, probably not so much "to make Mr. Trump a knowing agent of Russia", but most likely to make him a source the Russians could use. This operation utilized kompromat Russian: short for "compromising material" and proposals of business deals. The second operation was very recent and involved contacts with Trump's representatives during the campaign to discuss the hacking of the DNC and Podesta.

Simpson has described his own and Steele's confidence in Steele's work: "Nothing that I have seen disproves anything in the dossier. Which isn't to say I think it's all true. I don't think Chris thinks it's all true, either. But there's a difference between things being fake or a hoax or a fraud or a lie and things being incorrect. The Senate Intelligence Committee wrote that the FBI made "efforts to corroborate the information in the dossier memos, but the Committee found that attempt lacking in both thoroughness and rigor". The FBI stopped all efforts to corroborate the dossier in May when the Special Counsel's Office took over the Russia investigation. The following content describes how some allegations have been corroborated, while others remain unverified, with sometimes conflicting reports for or against their veracity. In some cases there are discrepancies between sources and their allegations.

Source s for Report 80 June alleged that the Kremlin had been cultivating Trump for "at least five years". Luke Harding writes that documents show Czechoslovakia spied on Trump during the s and s, when he was married to Ivana Trump , his Czechoslovakia-born first wife. Harding writes that the Czechoslovakian government spied on Trump because of his political ambitions and notability as a businessman. It is known that there were close ties between Czechoslovakia's StB and the USSR 's KGB. Harding also describes how, already since , the Soviet Union was interested in Trump. In his book Collusion , Harding asserts that the "top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB. Harding proceeds to describe the KGB's cultivation process, and posits that they may have opened a file on Trump as early as , when he married Czech model Ivana Zelníčková ; the Soviet spies may have closely observed and analyzed the couple from that time on.

Jonathan Chait has written that is a year where Russians courted and praised Trump when they invited him to consider building in Moscow. He then visited Moscow in July , and was likely under surveillance, but he did not build anything. On January 6, , the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ODNI released the intelligence community assessment of the Russian interference in the United States elections. It stated that Russian leadership favored Trump over Clinton, and that Putin personally ordered an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's electoral chances and "undermine public faith in the US democratic process", as well as ordering cyber attacks on the Democratic and Republican parties.

The committee found that the Steele dossier was not used by the assessment to "support any of its analytic judgments". There was so much other evidence and intelligence to support those judgments. The Mueller Report backed "Steele's central claim that the Russians ran a 'sweeping and systematic' operation to help Trump win". The bureau began an effort after we got the Steele dossier to try and see how much of it we could replicate. That work was ongoing when I was fired. Some of it was consistent with our other intelligence, the most important part. The Steele dossier said the Russians are coming for the American election. It's a huge effort. It has multiple goals And that was true. Lawfare has noted that the "Mueller investigation has clearly produced public records that confirm pieces of the dossier. 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.

Newsweek said "the dossier's main finding, that Russia tried to prop up Trump over Clinton, was confirmed by" the ODNI assessment. and abroad—now ring true. In The New Yorker , Jane Mayer said the allegation that Trump was favored by the Kremlin, and that they offered Trump's campaign dirt on Clinton, has proven true. Because of the dangers imposed by Trump's recent careless disclosures of classified information to Russian officials , the CIA feared their spy was in danger, so the government official and his family were discretely exfiltrated during a family vacation to Montenegro. On April 26, , George Papadopoulos , a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor, held a meeting with Joseph Mifsud , [] a man described by James B.

Comey as a "Russian agent". This occurred concurrently with the Hillary Clinton email controversy , but before the hacking of the DNC computers had become public knowledge, [] [] and Papadopoulos later bragged "that the Trump campaign was aware the Russian government had dirt on Hillary Clinton". According to John Sipher, "court papers show he was, indeed, told by a Russian agent that the Kremlin had derogatory information in the form of 'thousands of e-mails'. In February , Michael Cohen implicated Trump before the U. Congress, writing that in late July , Trump had knowledge that Roger Stone was communicating with WikiLeaks about releasing emails stolen from the DNC in Papadopoulos sent emails about Putin to at least seven Trump campaign officials.

Trump national campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis [] encouraged Papadopoulos to fly to Russia and meet with agents of the Russian Foreign Ministry , who reportedly wanted to share "Clinton dirt" with the Trump campaign. learned of the offer, he welcomed it by responding: "If it's what you say, I love it At the Helsinki summit meeting in July , Putin was asked if he had wanted Trump to win the election. He responded "Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U. Dossier source s allege that Manafort, who had worked for Russian interests in Ukraine for many years, [] "managed" a "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership".

While the Mueller investigation did not "produce enough evidence" [] to prove the existence of a formal written or oral "conspiracy", [44] [] [] some consider the actions of Manafort, [] Trump's welcoming of Russian help, [] and the myriad secret contacts between other Trump campaign members and associates with Russians [] [10] [11] to be the alleged "co-operation" with the Russian's "'sweeping and systematic' operation in to help Trump win", [20] that The Guardian ' s Luke Harding and Dan Sabbagh describe as "Steele's central claim". CNN described Manafort's role in its report of intercepted communications among "suspected Russian operatives discussing their efforts to work with Manafort to coordinate information that could damage Hillary Clinton's election prospects The suspected operatives relayed what they claimed were conversations with Manafort, encouraging help from the Russians.

These reported intercepts are considered "remarkably consistent with the raw intelligence in the Steele Dossier was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate's campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT'. On February 10, , CNN reported that "the dossier details about a dozen conversations between senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals", and that some of those communications had been "intercepted during routine intelligence gathering" and corroborated by U. Due to the classified status of intelligence collection programs, it was not revealed which of the specific conversations mentioned in the dossier were intercepted. 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".

In January , Erik Wemple, The Washington Post ' s media critic, criticized this February CNN report as "vague," asking "CNN to point us to any subsequent reporting—by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, for instance, or the Horowitz report—that shores up the Sciutto-Perez story about confirmed communications from the dossier. Dossier source s allege that Trump "hated" Obama so much that when he stayed in the Presidential suite of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow , [29] [] he employed "a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' urination show in front of him" [] [] [] in order to defile the bed used by the Obamas on an earlier visit.

The alleged incident from was reportedly filmed and recorded by the FSB [] as kompromat. A Marriott executive told the committee that after Trump's 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. 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— He then returned to his hotel, packed, and flew back to the U. 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".

Regarding the "golden showers" allegation, Michael Isikoff and David Corn have stated that 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'. He treated everything in the dossier as raw intelligence material—not proven fact. Slate journalist Ashley Feinberg investigated a 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 , despite the purported occurrence being in November , before the renovation occurred.

The video had been in circulation since at least January 25, A footnote in the Mueller Report suggests that Trump may have heard that Russia had incriminating tapes of his behavior. On October 30, , 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 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. The Senate Intelligence Committee Report indicated that "Cohen has testified that he became aware of allegations about a tape of compromising information in late or early related to Trump and prostitutes. 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. On June 15, , five months before the Miss Universe contest in Moscow, Trump was accompanied on a visit to the Las Vegas nightclub "The Act" [] by Crocus Group owner Aras Agalarov , his son Emin , Ike Kaveladze , Rob Goldstone , Michael Cohen, Keith Schiller , and others, where Trump was photographed [] and the group stayed "for several hours".

The club featured "risque performances" [] and, according to Cohen, Trump watched a golden showers performance "with delight". The Agalarovs were also linked to several other events involving Trump, including the invitation to share "dirt" on Clinton at the Trump Tower meeting [] 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. compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group" [owned by Agalarov].

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. Trump sided with the Russians over the U. intelligence community's assessment that Moscow had waged an all-out attack on the election The joint news conference cemented fears among some that Trump was in Putin's pocket and prompted bipartisan backlash. 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 when, according to the Steele dossier, video of Trump was secretly recorded to blackmail him.

In reaction to Trump's actions at the summit, Senator Chuck Schumer D-N. 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. Several operatives and lawyers in the U. 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, [] and that he looked like "Putin's puppet". 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". According to former KGB major Yuri Shvets , Trump became the target of a joint Czech intelligence services and KGB spying operation after he married Czech model Ivana Zelnickova [] and was cultivated as an "asset" by Russian intelligence since "Russian intelligence gained an interest in Trump as far back as , viewing Trump as an exploitable target. 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. Ynet , an Israeli online news site, reported on January 12, , that U. 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.

Max Boot [] 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 Senate Intelligence Committee report: [13] 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. Dossier source s allege that "Romanian hackers" controlled by Putin hacked the DNC servers and that the Trump campaign cooperated with Russia.

Russian hackers used the Guccifer 2. 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". Thirteen Russian nationals and three companies have been charged for their efforts to interfere in the election and to support Trump's campaign. According to an indictment cited by The New York Times , "The Russians stole the identities of American citizens, posed as political activists and used the flash points of immigration, religion and race to manipulate a campaign in which those issues were already particularly divisive," beginning in By , they were "supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J.

Trump" and denigrating Clinton, concluded the U. According to CNN, "former top Trump campaign officials have corroborated special counsel Robert Mueller's finding that the Trump campaign planned some of its strategy around the Russian hacks, and had multiple contacts with Kremlin-linked individuals in On February 19, , numerous sources revealed that lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Westminster Magistrates' Court Trump had Dana Rohrabacher visit Assange at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London on August 16, There, he made a quid pro quo offer of a presidential pardon to Assange, in exchange for Assange covering up Russian involvement by declaring that "Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks": "[Lawyer] Edward Fitzgerald said he had evidence that a quid pro quo was put to Assange by Rohrabacher, who was known as Putin's favorite congressman. Dossier source s allege that Carter Page "conceived and promoted" the idea of [the Russians] leaking the stolen DNC emails to WikiLeaks during the Democratic National Convention [] [] for the purpose of swinging supporters of Bernie Sanders "away from Hillary CLINTON and across to TRUMP".

In July , 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. 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. Dossier source s allege that Russia-friendly president Yanukovych, whom Manafort advised for over a decade, had told Putin he had been making supposedly untraceable [23] kickback payments to Manafort. On November 2, , Carter Page testified, without a lawyer, for more than six hours before the House Intelligence Committee that was investigating Russian interference in the U.

He testified about his five-day trip to Moscow in July 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. Dossier source s allege that Page secretly met Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin on that July trip. sanctions and that "Mueller's report noted that his 'activities in Russia were not fully explained'". Jane Mayer said this part of the dossier seems true, even if the name of an official may have been wrong. 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. On February 11, , 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 Law : "Judge Craig A Karsnitz ruled that the articles were either true or protected under Section of the Communications Decency Act. 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. 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 He met with top Russian officials at Rosneft, but denied meeting Sechin. He also complained about the effects of the sanctions against Russia. On December 7, , Putin announced that a 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 the Rosneft privatization uses a structure of shell companies owning shell companies.

Michael Horowitz's inspector general report "said Steele's claims about Page 'remained uncorroborated' when the wiretaps ended in ". 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. Within days after the inauguration, new Trump administration officials ordered State Department staffers to develop proposals for immediately revoking the economic and other sanctions. The attempt to overturn the sanctions was abandoned after Flynn's conversation was revealed and Flynn resigned. Trump reluctantly signed the bill, but then refused to implement it. 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.

Sanctions on Deripaska himself remained in effect. Dossier source s allege that Cohen and three colleagues met Kremlin officials in the Prague offices of Rossotrudnichestvo in August , [] [] [] to arrange for payments to the hackers, cover up the hack, [] [69] and "cover up ties between Trump and Russia, including Manafort's involvement in Ukraine". In April , 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 ", [] a claim that The Spectator reported in July was "backed up by one intelligence source in London". In August , The Spectator reported that "one intelligence source" saying "Mueller is examining 'electronic records' that would place Cohen in Prague. 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 , they "came away empty". In April , 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. queries to foreign intelligence services revealed nothing to support it. Also in April , the Mueller Report mentioned that "Cohen had never traveled to Prague" [] and presented no evidence of the alleged Prague meeting, [] [] thus contradicting the dossier and the McClatchy report. The Associated Press described a December Horowitz Report mention of an inaccuracy in the dossier regarding Michael Cohen that may have been the Prague allegation. In August , 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 In , Trump had taken a hard line in favor of Ukraine's independence from Russia. He initially denounced Russia's annexation of Crimea as a "land grab" that "should never have happened", and called for a firmer U. response, saying "We should definitely be strong.

The Steele dossier , also known as the Trump—Russia dossier , [1] [2] [3] is a controversial political opposition research report written from June to December , containing allegations of misconduct, conspiracy, and cooperation between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the government of Russia prior to and during the election campaign. The dossier, leaked by BuzzFeed News in January , [12] without its author's permission, [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] is an unfinished page compilation of raw intelligence [18] [19] based on information from initially anonymous sources known to the author, counterintelligence specialist [20] Christopher Steele.

In June , Fusion GPS subcontracted Steele's firm to compile the dossier. DNC officials denied knowing their attorney had contracted with Fusion GPS, and Steele asserted he was not aware the Clinton campaign was the recipient of his research until months after he contracted with Fusion GPS. The intelligence community and most experts have treated the dossier with caution due to its unverified allegations, that Trump denounced as fake news. intelligence community took the allegations seriously, [32] and the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI investigated every line of the dossier and identified and spoke with at least two of Steele's sources.

Many allegations in the dossier have been dismissed by authorities or remain unverified. The opposition research conducted by Fusion GPS on Donald Trump was in two distinct operations, each with a different client. The first research operation, from October to May , was domestic research funded by The Washington Free Beacon. The second operation, from April to December , was funded by the DNC and the Clinton campaign. Only the second operation involved the foreign research used to create the dossier. An "agreed chronology" of dossier-related events is published in Appendix C of the Gubarev v Orbis case of October 30, In October , before the official start of the 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". He arranged for them to use The Washington Free Beacon , an American conservative political journalism website, for their general opposition research on several Republican presidential candidates, including Trump.

Early in their investigation, they received help from investigative reporter Wayne Barrett , who gave them his files on Trump. They contained findings about "Trump's past dealings, including tax and bankruptcy problems, potential ties to organized crime, and numerous legal entanglements. They also revealed that Trump had an unusually high number of connections to Russians with questionable backgrounds. For months, Fusion GPS gathered information about Trump, focusing on his business and entertainment activities. When Trump became the presumptive nominee on May 3, , [55] the conservative donor stopped funding the research on him. All of the work that Fusion GPS provided to the Free Beacon was based on public sources, and none of the work product that the Free Beacon received appears in the Steele dossier. The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele.

Nor did we have any knowledge of the relationship between Fusion GPS and the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and the Clinton campaign. Although the source of the Steele dossier's funding had already been reported correctly over a year before, [21] [56] [57] and the Free Beacon had issued a statement to this effect in October , [54] a February 2, , story by the Associated Press AP contributed to confusion about its funding by stating that the dossier "was initially funded" by the Washington Free Beacon , so the AP posted a correction the next day: "Though the former spy, Christopher Steele, was hired by a firm that was initially funded by the Washington Free Beacon, he did not begin work on the project until after Democratic groups had begun funding it. By the spring of , researchers at Fusion GPS had become so alarmed by what they had already learned about Trump that they felt the need "to do what they could to keep Trump out of the White House".

The second operation of opposition research was indirectly funded by the DNC and the Clinton campaign , working through their attorney of record, Marc Elias of Perkins Coie. Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn R. Simpson had some reservations, as he did not like the idea of helping Hillary Clinton. In an email, Simpson said "The only way I could see working for HRC is if it is against Trump. In June , [21] as part of its work for Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS hired Orbis Business Intelligence , a private British intelligence firm, to look into connections between Trump and Russia. Orbis co-founder Christopher Steele , a retired British MI6 officer with expertise in Russian matters, [21] was hired as a subcontractor to do the job. Orbis was hired between June and November , and Steele produced 16 reports during that time, with a 17th report added in December.

Steele delivered his reports individually to Fusion GPS as one- to three-page numbered reports. The names of the sources were redacted and replaced with descriptions to help Fusion judge their credibility. At first, obtaining intelligence from Moscow went well. For around six months—during the first half of the year—Steele was able to make inquiries in Russia with relative ease. It got harder from late July, as Trump's ties to Russia came under scrutiny. Finally, the lights went out. Amid a Kremlin cover-up, the sources went silent and information channels shut down. Steele has said he soon found "troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government". According to his sources, "there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit". On his own initiative, Steele decided to also pass the information to British and American intelligence services because he believed the findings were a matter of national security for both countries.

According to Simpson's testimony, Steele, who enjoyed a good working reputation "for the knowledge he had developed over nearly 20 years working on Russia-related issues for British intelligence , [77] approached the FBI because he was concerned that Trump, then a candidate, was being blackmailed by Russia, [78] and he became "very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat". president was potentially under the sway of Russia". In early July , Steele called seasoned FBI agent Michael Gaeta, who was stationed in Rome, and asked him to come to London so he could show him his findings. Because he was assigned to the U. embassy in Rome, Gaeta sought and was granted approval for the trip from Victoria Nuland , who was then the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. When he arrived in London on July 5, , he met with Steele at his office, [78] and he was given a copy of Steele's first report, dated June 20, Report As Nuland later shared, "In the middle of July, when he [Steele] was doing this other work and became concerned, he passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding and our immediate reaction to that was, 'This is not in our purview.

That's something for the FBI to investigate. In August , the FBI asked Steele for "all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources". Meanwhile, in the July to September time frame, according to The Washington Post , CIA Director John Brennan had started an investigation with a secret task force "composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA , the NSA and the FBI". At the same time, he was busy creating his own dossier of material documenting that "Russia was not only attempting to interfere in the election, they were doing so in order to elect Donald Trump In early August, [16] Steele was summoned to Rome where he gave a full briefing to four American FBI officials about the report.

During its intense questioning of Steele, the FBI mentioned their own discoveries of connections between the Trump campaign and Russia [85] and asked Steele about Papadopoulos , but he said he knew nothing about him. Rather, we were told there were substantial funds to resettle sources in the US if they were prepared to testify in public. Understandably they were not. The subsequent public release of the dossier stopped discussions between Steele and the FBI. the FBI closed Steele "because he was a control problem. We did not close him because we thought he was [a] fabricator. Steele met with Jonathan Winer in September, then the U. deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement, whom he had known since In a editorial for The Washington Post , [91] Winer recounted that during their meeting in Washington, he was allowed to review Steele's reports, but not to keep a copy: "I prepared a two-page summary and shared it with [Victoria] Nuland, who indicated that, like me, she felt that the secretary of state needed to be made aware of this material," he wrote.

Later in September, Winer discussed the report with Sidney Blumenthal , who revealed he had received similar information from Cody Shearer, a controversial political activist and former journalist who was close to the Clinton White House in the s. Winer met with Steele again in late September, and gave him a copy of Shearer's report, later known as the "second dossier". On September 19, , Steele's handling agent sent six of Steele's reports 80, 94, 95, , , and to the Crossfire Hurricane team, that had been operational since July 31, This was the first time they and their leader, Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterespionage Section , Peter Strzok , received any of Steele's reporting. After that point, he continued to share information with the FBI. On October 28, , days before the election, Comey notified Congress that the FBI had started looking into newly discovered Hillary Clinton emails. Simpson and Fritsch described their reaction: "Comey's bombshell prompted the Fusion partners to decide they needed to do what they could to expose the FBI's probe of Trump and Russia.

It was Hail Mary time. In fact, Russia was meddling in the election to help Trump win, the U. intelligence community would later conclude Simpson later said that "Steele severed his contacts with [the] FBI before the election following public statements by the FBI that it had found no connection between the Trump campaign and Russia and concerns that [the FBI] was being 'manipulated for political ends by the Trump people'. According to The Independent , Steele came to believe there was a " cabal " inside the FBI, particularly its New York field office linked to Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani , because it blocked any attempts to investigate the links between Trump and Russia. According to Fusion GPS's co-owners, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, they did not tell Steele who their ultimate clients were, only that Steele was "working for a law firm", [29] and they "gave him no specific marching orders beyond this basic question: 'Why did Mr.

Trump repeatedly seek to do deals in a notoriously corrupt police state that most serious investors shun? Jane Mayer reported that when the Clinton campaign "indirectly employed" Steele, Elias created a "legal barrier" by acting as a "firewall" between the campaign and Steele. Thus, any details were protected by attorney—client privilege [29] and work-product privileges. A spokesperson for the DNC said neither Tom Perez nor "the new leadership of the DNC were involved in any decision-making regarding Fusion GPS, nor were they aware that Perkins Coie was working with the organization.

It is also not clear who in those organizations knew about the roles of Fusion GPS and Steele, but one person "close to the matter" said the organizations were "not informed by the law firm of Fusion GPS's role". Elias had denied that he had possessed the dossier before the election. was investigating Trump, I would have been shouting it from the rooftops! The firewall was reportedly so effective even campaign principals John Podesta and Robby Mook did not know Steele was on the Democratic payroll until Mother Jones reported on the issue on October 31, , in an article that did not name Steele. Mayer said they both maintain they "didn't read the dossier until BuzzFeed posted it online". that no one from Fusion ever met or talked with Clinton and that she herself 'had no idea who they were'. Philip Bump wrote that the dossier "has never been shown to have informed the Clinton campaign's approach and that was not made public until shortly before Trump was inaugurated.

On February 15, , The Washington Post reported: "So far, there is no evidence that the Clinton campaign directly managed the Steele reporting or leaks about it to the media. The founders of Fusion GPS have described how they did not hide the fact that they were researching Trump and Russia: "Fusion and Steele tried to alert U. law enforcement and the news media to the material they'd uncovered In September they arranged a private meeting between Steele and reporters from The Washington Post , The New York Times , The New Yorker , ABC News, and other outlets. The results were disappointing, as none published any stories before the election. Jane Mayer has described how, in "late summer, Fusion set up a series of meetings, at the Tabard Inn, in Washington, between Steele and a handful of national-security reporters. Despite Steele's generally cool manner, he seemed distraught about the Russians' role in the election.

None of these news organizations ran any stories about the allegations at that time. Before the election, only two news sources mentioned allegations that came from dossier reports. Steele had been in contact with both authors. These were a September 23, , Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff that focused on Carter Page, [] and an article by David Corn on October 31, , a week before the election, in Mother Jones magazine.

Each of the first 16 reports pre-election memoranda [50] was assigned a typed number in the heading between 80 and , but the numeric order didn't always match the chronological order. 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. Horowitz , published December 9, , expressed doubts about the dossier's reliability and sources:. But it is not the same as these allegations being verified. Trump's allies have sought to conflate it with the larger effort to understand Russia's covert efforts to tilt the election in his favor and whether any Trump campaign associates conspired in that effort. Simpson later said that "Steele severed his contacts with [the] FBI before the election following public statements by the FBI that it had found no connection between the Trump campaign and Russia and concerns that [the FBI] was being 'manipulated for political ends by the Trump people'. James Comey had disagreed with Clapper's wording, but Clapper's wording remained unchanged.

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