The Steele dossier, also known as the Trump–Russia dossier,
is a controversial political
opposition research
In politics, opposition research (also called oppo research) is the practice of collecting information on a political opponent or other adversary that can be used to discredit or otherwise weaken them. The information can include biographical, le ...
report written from June to December 2016, containing allegations of misconduct, conspiracy, and cooperation between
Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the
government of Russia
The Government of Russia exercises executive power in the Russian Federation. The members of the government are the prime minister, the deputy prime ministers, and the federal ministers. It has its legal basis in the Constitution of the Russia ...
prior to and during the
2016 election campaign.
Five years later, it was described by
mainstream media
In journalism, mainstream media (MSM) is a term and abbreviation used to refer collectively to the various large mass news media that influence many people and both reflect and shape prevailing currents of thought.Chomsky, Noam, ''"What makes mai ...
as "largely discredited",
"deeply flawed",
and "largely unverified".
Some aspects of the dossier have been corroborated,
namely that
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...
favored Trump over
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
,
and that many Trump campaign officials and associates had
numerous secretive contacts with Russian officials and spies.
The dossier,
leaked by ''
BuzzFeed News
''BuzzFeed News'' is an American news website published by BuzzFeed. It has published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was heavily criticized, and the FinCEN Files. Since its establishment in 2011, it ...
'' in January 2017,
without its author's permission,
is an unfinished compilation of raw intelligence
based on information from initially
anonymous sources
In journalism, a source is a person, publication, or knowledge other record or document that gives timely information. Outside journalism, sources are sometimes known as "news sources". Examples of sources include but are not limited to officia ...
known to the author,
counterintelligence
Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or ot ...
specialist
Christopher Steele
Christopher David Steele (born 24 June 1964) is a British former intelligence officer with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1987 until his retirement in 2009. He ran the Russia desk at MI6 headquarters in London between 2006 and 200 ...
.
Steele, a former head of the Russia Desk for
British intelligence
The Government of the United Kingdom maintains intelligence agencies within three government departments, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. These agencies are responsible for collecting and analysing foreign and do ...
(MI6), was writing the report for the
private investigative firm Fusion GPS
Fusion GPS is a commercial research and strategic intelligence firm based in Washington, D.C. The company conducts open-source investigations and provides research and strategic advice for businesses, law firms and investors, as well as for ...
, who were paid by
Hillary Clinton's campaign and the
Democratic National Committee
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the governing body of the United States Democratic Party. The committee coordinates strategy to support Democratic Party candidates throughout the country for local, state, and national office, as well a ...
(DNC).
The dossier's 17 reports allege that Trump campaign members and Russian operatives had conspired to cooperate in
Russia's election interference to benefit Trump.
It also alleges that Russia sought to damage
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
's candidacy.
''BuzzFeed''s decision to publish the reports without verifying their allegations was criticized by journalists
but their decision was also defended in a court statement explaining that ''BuzzFeed''s action was for the public good as the public had a right to know so it could "exercise effective oversight of the government".
In June 2016, 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.
While compiling the dossier, Steele passed some of his findings to both British and American
intelligence services
An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security
National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of ...
.
The
intelligence community and most experts have treated the dossier with caution due to its unverified allegations, that Trump denounced as
fake news
Fake news is false or misleading information presented as news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue.Schlesinger, Robert (April 14, 2017)"Fake news in reality ...
.
The U.S. intelligence community took the allegations seriously,
and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
(FBI) investigated every line of the dossier and identified and spoke with at least two of Steele's sources.
The
Mueller Report contained passing references to some of the dossier's allegations but little mention of its more sensational claims.
Many allegations in the dossier have been dismissed by authorities or remain unverified.
While the dossier played a central role in the seeking of
FISA
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ("FISA" , ) is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and the collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign pow ...
warrants on
Carter Page
Carter William Page (born June 3, 1971) is an American petroleum industry consultant and a former foreign-policy adviser to Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential election campaign. Page is the founder and managing partner of Global Energy C ...
,
it did not play any role in the intelligence community's assessment about Russian actions in the 2016 election,
and it was not the trigger for the opening of the
Russia investigation into whether the
Trump campaign was coordinating with the Russian government's interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The dossier is a factor in
several conspiracy theories promoted by Trump
and his supporters in the media
and Congress.
History
The
opposition research
In politics, opposition research (also called oppo research) is the practice of collecting information on a political opponent or other adversary that can be used to discredit or otherwise weaken them. The information can include biographical, le ...
conducted by
Fusion GPS
Fusion GPS is a commercial research and strategic intelligence firm based in Washington, D.C. The company conducts open-source investigations and provides research and strategic advice for businesses, law firms and investors, as well as for ...
on Donald Trump was in two distinct operations, each with a different client. The first research operation, from October 2015 to May 2016, was domestic research funded by ''
The Washington Free Beacon
''The Washington Free Beacon'' is an American conservative political journalism website launched in 2012.
The website is financially backed by Paul Singer, an American billionaire hedge fund manager and conservative activist.
History
The ' ...
''. The second operation, from April 2016 to December 2016, was funded by the
DNC and the
Clinton campaign. Only the second operation involved the foreign research used to create the dossier.
From April 2016 into early May, the ''Washington Free Beacon'' and the Clinton Campaign/DNC were independently both clients of Fusion GPS.
An "agreed chronology" of dossier-related events is published in Appendix C of the ''Gubarev v Orbis'' case of October 30, 2020.
Research funded by conservative website
In October 2015, before the official start of the
2016 Republican primary campaign, the founders of Fusion GPS were seeking political work and wrote an email to "a big conservative donor they knew who disliked Trump,
ndthey were hired". He arranged for them to use ''
The Washington Free Beacon
''The Washington Free Beacon'' is an American conservative political journalism website launched in 2012.
The website is financially backed by Paul Singer, an American billionaire hedge fund manager and conservative activist.
History
The ' ...
'', an American
conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
political journalism
Political journalism is a broad branch of journalism that includes coverage of all aspects of politics and political science, although the term usually refers specifically to coverage of civil governments and political power.
Political journa ...
website, for their general opposition research on several Republican presidential candidates, including Trump.
It is primarily funded by Republican donor
Paul Singer.
The ''Free Beacon'' and Singer were "part of the conservative
never-Trump movement".
Although Singer was a big supporter of
Marco Rubio
Marco Antonio Rubio (born May 28, 1971) is an American politician and lawyer serving as the senior United States senator from Florida, a seat he has held since 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he served as Speaker of the Florida Hous ...
, Rubio denied any involvement in Fusion GPS's initial research and hiring.
Early in their investigation, they received help from
investigative reporter
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years res ...
Wayne Barrett
Wayne Barrett (July 11, 1945 – January 19, 2017) was an American journalist. He worked as an investigative reporter and senior editor for ''The Village Voice'' for 37 years, until he was laid off in 2011.
Early life and education
Barre ...
, 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, 2016,
the conservative donor stopped funding the research on him.
In October 2017, the ''Free Beacon'' issued a statement:
Although the source of the Steele dossier's funding had already been reported correctly over a year before,
and the ''Free Beacon'' had issued a statement to this effect in October 2017,
a February 2, 2018, story by the
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
(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 2016, 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".
Research funded by Democrats produces dossier
The second operation of opposition research was indirectly funded by the
DNC and the
Clinton campaign, working through their attorney of record,
Marc Elias
Marc Erik Elias (born February 1, 1969) is an American Democratic Party elections lawyer. In 2021, he left his position as a partner at Perkins Coie to start the Elias Law Group.
Elias served as general counsel for the Hillary Clinton 2016 pre ...
of
Perkins Coie
Perkins Coie is an American multinational law firm headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1912, it is recognized as an Am Law 50 firm. It is the largest law firm headquartered in the Pacific Northwest and has 20 offices across the Un ...
.
In an October 2017 letter, Perkins Coie general counsel Matthew Gehringer described how, in March 2016, Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie and, knowing the Clinton campaign and the DNC were its clients, inquired whether its clients wished to pay Fusion GPS "to continue research regarding then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, research that Fusion GPS had conducted for one or more other clients during the Republican primary contest."
In April 2016, Elias hired Fusion GPS to perform opposition research on Trump.
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 2016,
as part of its work for Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS hired
Orbis Business Intelligence
Christopher David Steele (born 24 June 1964) is a British former intelligence officer with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1987 until his retirement in 2009. He ran the Russia desk at SIS Building, MI6 headquarters in London between ...
, a private British intelligence firm, to look into connections between Trump and Russia. Orbis co-founder
Christopher Steele
Christopher David Steele (born 24 June 1964) is a British former intelligence officer with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1987 until his retirement in 2009. He ran the Russia desk at MI6 headquarters in London between 2006 and 200 ...
, a retired British
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
officer with expertise in Russian matters,
was hired as a subcontractor to do the job.
Prior to his work on the dossier, Steele had been a paid informant for the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
for information unrelated to the Russia investigation.
In total, Perkins Coie paid Fusion GPS $1.02million in fees and expenses, of which Fusion GPS paid Orbis $168,000 to produce the dossier.
The DNC and Clinton campaign disclosed the total amount paid to Perkins Coie on campaign finance reports.
In March 2022, the
Federal Election Commission
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an independent regulatory agency of the United States whose purpose is to enforce campaign finance law in United States federal elections. Created in 1974 through amendments to the Federal Election Cam ...
(FEC) fined the DNC $105,000 and the Clinton campaign $8,000 for misreporting those fees and expenses as "legal services" and "legal and compliance consulting" rather than "opposition research".
Orbis was hired between June and November 2016, and Steele produced 16 reports during that time, with a 17th report added in December.
The reports were like "prepublication notes" based on information from Steele's sources, and were not released as a fully
vetted
Vetting is the process of performing a background check on someone before offering them employment, conferring an award, or doing fact-checking prior to making any decision. In addition, in intelligence gathering, assets are vetted to determine th ...
and "finished news article".
Steele believes 70–90 percent of the dossier is accurate,
a view shared by Simpson.
Steele delivered his reports individually to Fusion GPS as one- to three-page numbered reports.
The first report, dated June 20, 2016, was sent to Washington by courier and hand-delivered to Fusion GPS. The names of the sources were redacted and replaced with descriptions to help Fusion judge their credibility.
Luke Harding wrote:
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".
According to Harding, "Steele was shocked by the extent of collusion his sources were reporting", and told his friends: "For anyone who reads it, this is a life-changing experience."
Steele felt what he had unearthed "was something of huge significance, way above party politics".
American reporter
Howard Blum
Howard Blum () (born 1948) is an American author and journalist. Formerly a reporter for ''The Village Voice'' and ''The New York Times'', Blum is a contributing editor at ''Vanity Fair'' and the author of several non-fiction books, including th ...
described Steele's rationale for becoming a
whistleblower
A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...
: "The greater good trumps all other concerns."
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
National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military atta ...
for both countries.
In 2018, Steele told a UK parliamentary investigation that
Theresa May
Theresa Mary May, Lady May (; née Brasier; born 1 October 1956) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2016 to 2019. She previously served in David Cameron's cab ...
's British government covered up the evidence he provided them of Trump's Russian ties and took no actions, and that
Boris Johnson
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (; born 19 June 1964) is a British politician, writer and journalist who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2019 to 2022. He previously served as F ...
suppressed a report about the intelligence in the dossier that was prepared by Parliament's
Intelligence and Security Committee
The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) is a statutory joint committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, appointed to oversee the work of the UK intelligence community.
The committee was established in 1994 by the ...
.
After long delay, the report was published on July 21, 2020.
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
The Government of the United Kingdom maintains intelligence agencies within three government departments, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. These agencies are responsible for collecting and analysing foreign and do ...
,
approached the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
because he was concerned that Trump, then a candidate, was being
blackmail
Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to fa ...
ed by Russia,
and he became "very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat".
Steele believed the intelligence community "needed urgently to know—if it didn't already—that the next possible U.S. president was potentially under the sway of Russia".
In early July 2016, 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.S. embassy in Rome, Gaeta sought and was granted approval for the trip from
Victoria Nuland
Victoria Jane Nuland (born July 1, 1961) is an American diplomat currently serving as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Nuland, a former member of the foreign service, served as the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eur ...
, who was then the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. When he arrived in London on July 5, 2016, he met with Steele at his office,
and he was given a copy of Steele's first report, dated June 20, 2016 (Report 80).
His reaction was "shock and horror".
Alarmed by what he read, Gaeta remarked, "I have to show this to headquarters".
As Nuland later shared, "In the middle of July, when he
teele Teele is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Arthur Teele (1946–2005), American lawyer and politician
* Jack Teele (1930–2017), American football executive and sportswriter
* Stanley F. Teele (1906–1967), American academi ...
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.' This needs to go to the FBI if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That's something for the FBI to investigate."
Shortly after, in July, the report was sent to an agent with expertise in criminal organizations and organized crime at the FBI's New York field office—essentially, the wrong person to handle a counterintelligence investigation.
According to Nancy LeTourneau, political writer for the ''
Washington Monthly
''Washington Monthly'' is a bimonthly, nonprofit magazine of United States politics and government that is based in Washington, D.C. The magazine is known for its annual ranking of American colleges and universities, which serves as an alternat ...
'', the report "was languishing in the FBI's New York field office" for two months, and "was finally sent to the counterintelligence team investigating Russia at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C." in mid-September 2016.
In August 2016, 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".
In October 2016, Steele "described the sources' access, but did not provide names" to the FBI.
By August 22, 2017, Steele had provided them with the names of the sources for the allegations in the dossier.
Meanwhile, in the July to September time frame, according to ''The Washington Post'',
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
Director
John Brennan John Brennan may refer to:
Public officials
* Jack Brennan (born 1937), U.S. Marine officer and aide of Richard Nixon
* John Brennan (CIA officer) (born 1955), former CIA Director
* John P. Brennan (1864–1943), Democratic politician in the U. ...
had started an investigation with a secret task force "composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
, the
NSA
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...
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 2016 election, they were doing so in order to elect Donald Trump...
e entire intelligence community was on alert about this situation at least two months before
he dossierbecame part of the investigation." The "Steele dossier has so far proven to be fairly accurate", LeTourneau wrote.
In early August,
Steele was summoned to Rome where he gave a full briefing to four American FBI officials about the report.
At that time, he handed over the June 20 and July 26 reports.
During its intense questioning of Steele, the FBI mentioned their own discoveries of connections between the Trump campaign and Russia
and asked Steele about
Papadopoulos Papadopoulos ( el, Παπαδόπουλος, ; meaning "son of a priest") is the most common Greek surname. It is used in Greece, Cyprus and countries of the Greek diaspora as well, such as the USA, United Kingdom, Australia and Scandinavian countri ...
, but he said he knew nothing about him.
The agents "raised the prospect of paying Steele to continue gathering intelligence after Election Day",
but Steele "ultimately never received payment from the FBI for any 'dossier'-related information".
In October 2022, during questioning from Special Counsel
John Durham
John Henry Durham (born March 16, 1950) is an American lawyer who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut (D. Conn.) from 2018 to 2021. By April 2019, he had been assigned to investigate the origins of the Federal ...
, Brian Auten, a supervisory counterintelligence analyst with the FBI, testified that, shortly before the 2016 election, the FBI offered Steele "up to $1 million" if he could corroborate allegations in the dossier, but that Steele could not do so.
Steele has disputed this description: "And to correct the Danchenko trial record, we were not offered $1 million by the FBI to ‘prove up’ our Trump-Russia reporting. 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.
Simpson testified that "Steele wasn't paid by the FBI, but was possibly reimbursed for a trip to Rome to meet with FBI officials."
According to Mayer, Steele asked the FBI to cover his travel expenses to Rome, but he received nothing.
The Inspector General's report later confirmed that the FBI had initially offered to pay Steele $15,000 for his trip to Rome, but when the FBI dropped Steele as a confidential human source because he had shared information with a third party "in late October 2016" (''
Mother Jones
Mary G. Harris Jones (1837 (baptized) – November 30, 1930), known as Mother Jones from 1897 onwards, was an Irish-born American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent union organizer, community organizer, and activist. She h ...
'' magazine), the payment was halted.
Peter Strzok
Peter Paul Strzok II (, like ''struck''; born March 7, 1970) is a former United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent. He was the Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division and led the investigation into R ...
reported that:
In September, Steele met with Jonathan Winer, who was then the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement, whom he had known since 2009. In a 2018 editorial for ''The Washington Post'',
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
ictoriaNuland, 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
Sidney Stone Blumenthal (born November 6, 1948) is an American journalist and political operative. A former aide to President Bill Clinton, he is a long-time confidant of Hillary Clinton and was formerly employed by the Clinton Foundation. As a ...
, 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 1990s. 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, 2016, Steele's handling agent sent six of Steele's reports (80, 94, 95, 100, 101, and 102) to the
Crossfire Hurricane
''Crossfire Hurricane'' is a 2012 documentary film about the Rolling Stones written and directed by Brett Morgen. The film chronicles the early years of the band through to 1981. The film is a series of interviews conducted without cameras, while ...
team, that had been operational since July 31, 2016. This was the first time they and their leader, Deputy Assistant Director of the
FBI's Counterespionage Section,
Peter Strzok
Peter Paul Strzok II (, like ''struck''; born March 7, 1970) is a former United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent. He was the Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division and led the investigation into R ...
, received any of Steele's reporting.
Some reports referred to members of Trump's inner circle. After that point, he continued to share information with the FBI.
The IG Report says this material "became an important part of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the FBI seeking FISA authority targeting one of the Crossfire Hurricane subjects, Carter Page."
On October 28, 2016, 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."
The founders of Fusion GPS were very upset by a misleading November 1, 2016, ''New York Times'' article "published a week before the election with the headline: 'Investigating Donald Trump, FBI Sees No Clear Link to Russia'. In fact, Russia ''was''
meddling in the election to help Trump win, the U.S. intelligence community would later conclude..."
Simpson later said that "Steele severed his contacts with
heFBI before the election following public statements by the FBI that it had found no connection between the Trump campaign and Russia and concerns that
he FBI
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
was being 'manipulated for political ends by the Trump people'."
Steele had become frustrated with the FBI, whom he believed failed to investigate his reports, choosing instead to focus on the
investigation into Clinton's emails. According to ''
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'', Steele came to believe there was a "
cabal
A cabal is a group of people who are united in some close design, usually to promote their private views or interests in an ideology, a state, or another community, often by intrigue and usually unbeknownst to those who are outside their group. Th ...
" inside the FBI, particularly its New York field office linked to Trump advisor
Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 198 ...
, because it blocked any attempts to investigate the links between Trump and Russia.
What the DNC, Clinton campaign, and Steele knew
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",
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?'"
In testimony to the
Senate Intelligence Committee
The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (sometimes referred to as the Intelligence Committee or SSCI) is dedicated to overseeing the United States Intelligence Community—the agencies and bureaus of the federal government of ...
, Simpson said that "it was Fusion GPS's idea to pursue overseas ties—that research was not directed by Perkins Coie, the DNC, or the Clinton Campaign".
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
Attorney–client privilege or lawyer–client privilege is the name given to the common law concept of legal professional privilege in the United States. Attorney–client privilege is " client's right to refuse to disclose and to prevent any ...
and
work-product privileges.
"Fusion briefed only Elias on the reports, Simpson sent Elias nothing on paper—he was briefed orally", Mayer reported.
In its application for a FISA warrant to survey Carter Page, the Department of Justice told the
FISC
Under the Merovingians and Carolingians, the fisc (from Latin ''fiscus,'' whence we derive "fiscal") applied to the royal demesne which paid taxes, entirely in kind, from which the royal household was meant to be supported, though it rarely was. ...
that Simpson had not informed Steele of the motivation behind the research into Trump's ties with Russia.
Steele testified to Congress that he did not know the Clinton campaign was the source of the payments "because he was retained by Fusion GPS".
By "late July 2016",
"several months" after signing the contract with Fusion GPS, Steele became aware that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were the ultimate clients.
A spokesperson for the DNC said neither
Tom Perez
Thomas Edward Perez (born October 7, 1961) is an American politician and attorney who served as the Chair of the Democratic National Committee from February 2017 until January 2021. Perez was previously Assistant Attorney General for Civil Righ ...
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."
A spokesperson for Perkins Coie said the campaign and the DNC were unaware Fusion GPS "had been hired to conduct the research".
''The Washington Post'' reported that it is not clear how much of the research Elias received from Fusion GPS he shared with the campaign and the DNC. 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".
''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' revealed that earlier in 2017, "Mr. Elias had denied that he had possessed the dossier before the election."
The Clinton campaign did not know about Steele or that he was sharing his findings with the FBI, and "one top Clinton campaign official" told Jane Mayer that "If I'd known the F.B.I. was investigating Trump, I would have been shouting it from the rooftops!"
The firewall was reportedly so effective even campaign principals
John Podesta
John David Podesta Jr. (born January 8, 1949) is an American political consultant who has served as Senior Advisor to President Joe Biden for clean energy innovation and implementation since September 2022. Podesta previously served as White ...
and
Robby Mook
Robert E. Mook (; born December 3, 1979) is an American political strategist. He was the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
Mook worked on state campaigns and on Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign. He then ...
did not know Steele was on the Democratic payroll until ''Mother Jones'' reported on the issue on October 31, 2016, in an article that did not name Steele.
When the ''Mother Jones'' story broke, John Podesta, chairman of the Clinton campaign, said he was "stunned by the news that the FBI had launched a full-blown investigation into Trump, especially one that was informed by research underwritten by the Clinton campaign." Although they knew Perkins Coie had spent money for opposition research, neither Podesta nor campaign manager Robby Mook knew Steele was on the Democratic payroll. Mayer said they both maintain they "didn't read the dossier until ''BuzzFeed'' posted it online".
She has also said that "the Clinton campaign never learned that Christopher Steele was on their payroll until it
he dossierwas in the press."
"Far from a secret campaign weapon, Steele turned out to be a secret kept from the campaign."
In their 2019 book, the founders of Fusion GPS wrote "...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, 2022, ''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."
Hints of existence
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.S. law enforcement and the news media to the material they'd uncovered..." and their office became "something of a public reading room" for journalists seeking information. 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." Mayer attended one of the meetings. 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, 2016,
Yahoo! News
Yahoo! News is a news website that originated as an internet-based news aggregator by Yahoo!. The site was created by a Yahoo! software engineer named Brad Clawsie in August 1996. Articles originally came from news services such as the Associate ...
article by
Michael Isikoff
Michael Isikoff (born June 16, 1952) is an American investigative journalist who is currently the Chief Investigative Correspondent at Yahoo! News. He is the co-author with David Corn of the book titled '' Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Pu ...
that focused on Carter Page,
and an article by
David Corn
David Corn (born February 20, 1959) is an American political journalist and author. He is the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for ''Mother Jones'' and is best known as a cable television commentator. Corn worked at ''The Nation'' from 1987 to 2007 ...
on October 31, 2016, a week before the election, in ''Mother Jones'' magazine.
At the time, the FBI had assumed that the source for the Yahoo! article was someone, other than Steele, "who had received a copy of the dossier". The 2019 DOJ report by Michael Horowitz criticized the FBI for failing to ask Steele if he had a role in that Yahoo! article.
''Mother Jones'' story
By the third quarter of 2016, many news organizations knew about the existence of the dossier that had been described as an "open secret" among journalists, but chose not to publish information they could not confirm.
''Mother Jones'' was the first to report the existence of the dossier and that it was exclusively funded by Democrats.
By October 2016, Steele had compiled 33 pages (16 reports), and he then passed on what he had discovered to
David Corn
David Corn (born February 20, 1959) is an American political journalist and author. He is the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for ''Mother Jones'' and is best known as a cable television commentator. Corn worked at ''The Nation'' from 1987 to 2007 ...
, a reporter from ''Mother Jones'' magazine. On October 31, 2016, a week before the election, ''Mother Jones'' reported that a former intelligence officer, whom they did not name, had produced a report based on Russian sources and turned it over to the FBI.
The article disclosed some of the dossier's allegations:
Post-election events
After Trump's election on November 8, 2016, the Democratic client stopped paying for the investigation, but Steele continued working on the dossier for Fusion GPS.
According to ''The Independent'', at that time, Simpson "reportedly spent his own money to continue the investigation".
According to ''The New York Times'', after the election, Steele's dossier became one of Washington's "worst-kept secrets", and journalists worked to verify the allegations.
On November 18, 2016, Republican Senator
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a United States senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two terms ...
, who had been informed about the alleged links between the Kremlin and Trump, met with former British ambassador to Moscow
Sir Andrew Wood at the
Halifax International Security Forum
Halifax International Security Forum (also Halifax Forum or HFX) is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. It is a forum and network for international government and military officials, academic expert ...
in Canada. Wood told McCain about the existence of the collected materials about Trump,
and also vouched for Steele's professionalism and integrity.
According to Simpson's August 22, 2017, testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Steele and
David J. Kramer, a longtime McCain aide and former U.S. State Department official working at
Arizona State University
Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...
, met each other at the Halifax forum and discussed the dossier. Kramer told Steele that McCain wanted to "ask questions about it at the FBI.... All we sort of wanted was for the government to do its job and we were concerned about whether the information that we provided previously had ever, you know, risen to the leadership level of the FBI."
Steele had agreed with Fusion GPS to deliver a hard copy of all 16 reports to McCain,
that McCain received in early December from Kramer.
On December 9, McCain met personally with FBI Director
James Comey
James Brien Comey Jr. (; born December 14, 1960) is an American lawyer who was the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2013 until his dismissal in May 2017. Comey was a registered Republican for most of his adul ...
and gave him a copy of the dossier.
On March 25, 2019, Senator
Lindsey Graham
Lindsey Olin Graham (born July 9, 1955) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from South Carolina, a seat he has held since 2003. A member of the Republican Party, Graham chaired the Senate Committee ...
, a close friend of McCain's, contradicted Trump's attacks against McCain and revealed that when McCain showed him the dossier, he had encouraged McCain to give the dossier to the FBI and that McCain acted appropriately.
Graham described how he confronted Trump: "Senator McCain deserves better. There were some McCain people who took a piece of garbage and tried to go after Trump after the election. But I told the president it was not John McCain."
Comey later confirmed that counterintelligence investigations were under way into possible links between Trump associates and Moscow.
After delivering his 16 reports to McCain, Steele received more information and composed the two-page "December memo", dated December 13. It mostly contained allegations against Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, that Cohen later denied.
In an April 2017 court filing, Steele revealed previously unreported information that he had given a copy of his last report to a "senior UK government national security official acting in his official capacity, on a confidential basis in hard copy form", because it "had implications for the national security of the US and the UK".
Both Simpson and Steele have denied providing the dossier to ''BuzzFeed''.
Unsealed documents from the discovery process in Russian entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev's defamation lawsuit revealed that David Kramer, an associate of John McCain, gave the dossier to ''BuzzFeed'' "in December 2016, weeks after the election",
[ '']Fresh Air
''Fresh Air'' is an American radio talk show broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the United States since 1985. It is produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The show's host is Terry Gross. , the show was syndicated to 6 ...
'' in what Fritsch has called an "ill-advised"
Hail Mary pass
A Hail Mary pass is a very long forward pass in American football, typically made in desperation, with an exceptionally small chance of achieving a completion. Due to the difficulty of a completion with this pass, it makes reference to the Catho ...
. It was never intended that the dossier be public because it was unfinished raw intelligence and could have "compromised sources and methods".
Steele was also worried about the safety of his source network, and he expressed concern that if Trump won the election, the new FBI director, and other agency heads appointed by Trump, might be more loyal to Trump "and could decide to take action against Steele and his source network".
Briefings of Obama and Trump
On January 5, 2017, the chiefs of four U.S. intelligence agencies briefed President
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
and Vice President
Joe Biden about the Russian interference in the election and the existence of the dossier and its allegations.
On the afternoon
of January 6, 2017, President-elect Trump and his transition team received a similar briefing in Trump Tower.
All four of the top intelligence chiefs met with Trump and his transition team. They were Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral
Mike Rogers. They informed Trump of the Russian election interference,
and Comey told them of "a piece of Steele's reporting that indicated Russia had files of derogatory information on both Clinton and the President-elect".
Then, according to a pre-arranged plan, Brennan, Clapper, and Rogers left, and Comey then asked to speak with Trump alone. Comey then informed Trump of the dossier and its allegations about salacious tapes held by the Russians. Comey later reported he was very nervous. The previous day, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security told Comey to "be very careful", "choose your words carefully", and then "get outta there". Trump became very defensive, and Comey described the meeting as "really weird".
Trump later expressed that he felt James Comey was trying to blackmail him at the meeting in Trump Tower, held two weeks before the inauguration.
In April 2018, Comey said he did not inform Trump the dossier was partly funded by Democrats because that "wasn't necessary for my goal, which was to alert him that we had this information".
The Mueller Report, published on April 18, 2019, contains a footnote that suggests that Trump may have heard that Russia had incriminating tapes of his behavior. On October 30, 2016, Michael Cohen had received a text from Giorgi Rtskhiladze reporting that he had successfully stopped the "flow of tapes from Russia". Rtskhiladze told investigators that these were compromising tapes of Trump, and Cohen told investigators he had spoken to Trump about the issue. Rtskhiladze later told investigators "he was told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen".
On December 14, 2018, the FBI released a document called "Annex A", that was "part of
heRussia dossier summary" used to brief Trump and Obama.
The FBI withheld parts of the synopsis on the grounds that it remained classified and "because it pertains to ongoing investigations or court proceedings, originated with a confidential source or describes confidential investigative techniques or procedures".
Two days after the publication of the dossier on January 10, 2017,
James Clapper
James Robert Clapper Jr. (born March 14, 1941) is a retired lieutenant general in the United States Air Force and former Director of National Intelligence. Clapper has held several key positions within the United States Intelligence Community. H ...
issued a statement describing the leaks in the press about their Trump Tower meeting with Trump as damaging to U.S. national security.
The statement also included the non-committal wording that the U.S. intelligence community "has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions".
This contradicted Trump's previous claim that Clapper had said the information in the dossier was false; Clapper's statement actually said the intelligence community had made no judgment on the truth of the information.
James Comey had disagreed with Clapper's wording, but Clapper's wording remained unchanged. Comey later told the Office of the Inspector General of his concerns at that time, because he believed the dossier to be more reliable than indicated in Clapper's non-committal statement:
Publication by ''BuzzFeed News''
On January 10, 2017, CNN reported that classified documents presented to Obama and Trump the previous week included allegations that Russian operatives possess "compromising personal and financial information" about Trump. CNN said it would not publish specific details on the reports because it had not "independently corroborated the specific allegations".
Following the CNN report,
''
BuzzFeed
BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. Ken ...
'' published a draft dossier that it said was the basis for the briefing, including unverified claims that Russian operatives had collected "embarrassing material" involving Trump that could be used to blackmail him. ''BuzzFeed'' said the information included "specific, unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives".
''The New York Times'' commented: "Mr. Steele has made clear to associates that he always considered the dossier to be
raw intelligence—not established facts, but a starting point for further investigation."
Judge Craig Karsnitz described the purpose of the dossier: "An intelligence report is simply a report of information potentially relevant to an investigation. It can take many forms, be true or false, and can be used as opposition research and an intelligence report."
Christopher Burrows, co-founder of Orbis Business Intelligence, does not consider it a "dossier", but "information that is referred to as 'raw intelligence' in intelligence circles.... a mixture of knowledge, rumor and hearsay....
intelligence agency would enrich the findings with data, test probabilities and write analyses. It's an elaborate process. But Steele is not an intelligence agency."
''BuzzFeed'' was harshly criticized by several mainstream media outlets for releasing the draft dossier without verifying its allegations.
''Washington Post'' columnist
Margaret Sullivan called it "scurrilous allegations dressed up as an intelligence report meant to damage Donald Trump",
while ''The New York Times'' noted that the publication sparked a debate centering on the use of unsubstantiated information from anonymous sources.
''BuzzFeed''s executive staff said the materials were newsworthy because they were "in wide circulation at the highest levels of American government and media" and argued that this justified public release.
A judge in the
Superior Court of the District of Columbia
The Superior Court of the District of Columbia, commonly referred to as DC Superior Court, is the trial court for the District of Columbia, in the United States. It hears cases involving criminal and civil law, as well as family court, landlor ...
agreed with this reasoning when he threw out a libel suit against Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence.
The draft dossier's publication by ''BuzzFeed'' has always been defended by
Jack Shafer
Jack Shafer (born November 14, 1957) is an American journalist who writes about media for ''Politico''. Prior to joining ''Politico'', he worked for Reuters and also edited and wrote the column'' "''Press Box" for ''Slate'', an online magazine. B ...
,
''
Politico
''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American, German-owned political journalism newspaper company based in Arlington County, Virginia, that covers politics and policy in the United States and intern ...
''s senior media writer, as well as by
Richard Tofel Richard Tofel is the principal of Gallatin Advisory, a journalism consultancy, and former president of ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism organization.
He was the general manager of ProPublica from its founding in 2007 until 2012, an ...
of ''
ProPublica
ProPublica (), legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City. In 2010, it became the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize, for a piece written by one of its journalists''The Guardian'', April 13, 2010P ...
'' and the ''
Columbia Journalism Review
The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its contents include news and media industry trends, ana ...
''. Shafer defended the public's right to know about the allegations against Trump, and saw a parallel in Judge Ungaro's ruling in the defamation suit filed by Aleksej Gubarev.
Ungaro wrote that the "privilege exists to protect the media while they gather information needed for the public to exercise effective oversight of the government". She also noted that, before the FBI received any reports from Steele, they had "already opened a counterintelligence investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign".
In relation to a defamation lawsuit filed by Gubarev against ''BuzzFeed'', regarding their publication of the draft dossier,
Senior Master
There are various levels of judiciary in England and Wales—different types of courts have different styles of judges. They also form a strict hierarchy of importance, in line with the order of the courts in which they sit, so that judges ...
Barbara Fontaine
Barbara Janet Fontaine (born 29 December 1953) is a British judge and solicitor. She has served as Senior Master of the King's Bench Division and King's Remembrancer since 2014: she is the first woman and first solicitor to hold this ancient pos ...
said Steele was "in many respects in the same position as a whistle-blower" because of his actions "in sending part of the dossier to Senator John McCain and a senior government national security official, and in briefing sections of the US media". She said that "it was not known who provided the dossier to ''BuzzFeed'' but Mr Steele's evidence was that he was 'horrified and remains horrified' that it was published at all, let alone without substantial redactions."
The founders of Fusion GPS felt so alarmed by what sources reported to Steele that they have defended the fact that they and Steele used intermediaries to pass dossier content to the authorities, but, regarding the publication by ''BuzzFeed'', if it had been up to them, "Steele's reporting never would have seen the light of day."
They were also alarmed that the leak of the draft dossier would endanger sources, and Glenn Simpson immediately phoned Ken Bensinger at ''BuzzFeed'': "Take those fucking reports down right now! You are going to get people killed!"
Steele wrote:
Christopher Burrows said: "We didn't expect the findings on Russia to reach the public."
Format
When ''BuzzFeed'' published the dossier in January 2017, the individual reports were one to three pages long, numbered, and page numbers 1–35 had been handwritten at the bottom. All but one had a typed date at the bottom. Each of the first 16 reports (pre-election memoranda
) was assigned a typed number in the heading between 80 and 135, but the numeric order didn't always match the chronological order. The 17th report, known as the "December memo",
was numbered 166.
Of the original reports numbered 1–166, only certain reports were used for the dossier, and it is unknown what happened with the content of the other reports: "For example, the first report is labeled as '080', with no indication given as to where the original 79 antecedents might have gone. The second report is then labeled '086', creating yet another mystery as to 81 through 85, and what content they might contain that would otherwise bolster or contextualize what came before or what follows."
Each report started with a page heading in the same style as the first one shown here:
Authorship and sources
The dossier is based on information from witting and unwitting
anonymous sources
In journalism, a source is a person, publication, or knowledge other record or document that gives timely information. Outside journalism, sources are sometimes known as "news sources". Examples of sources include but are not limited to officia ...
known to counterintelligence specialist
Christopher Steele
Christopher David Steele (born 24 June 1964) is a British former intelligence officer with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1987 until his retirement in 2009. He ran the Russia desk at MI6 headquarters in London between 2006 and 200 ...
.
Some were later revealed.
Christopher Steele
When
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
reported the existence of the dossier on January 10, 2017,
it did not name the author of the dossier, but revealed that he was British. Steele concluded that his anonymity had been "fatally compromised", and, realizing it was "only a matter of time until his name became public knowledge", fled into hiding with his family in fear of "a prompt and potentially dangerous backlash against him from Moscow".
His friends later reported that he feared assassination by Russians.
''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' revealed Steele's name the next day, on January 11.
Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, for whom Steele worked at the time the dossier was authored, and its director Christopher Burrows, a counterterrorism specialist,
would not confirm or deny that Orbis had produced the dossier.
On March 7, 2017, as some members of the
U.S. Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is Bicameralism, bicameral, composed of a lower body, the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives, and an upper body, ...
were expressing interest in meeting with or hearing testimony from Steele, he reemerged after weeks in hiding, appearing publicly on camera and stating, "I'm really pleased to be back here working again at the Orbis's offices in London today."
Called by the media a "highly regarded Kremlin expert" and "one of MI6's greatest Russia specialists", Steele formerly worked for the British intelligence agency
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
for 22 years, including four years at the British embassy in Moscow,
and headed MI6's Russia Desk for three years at the end of his MI6 career. He entered MI6 in 1987, directly after his graduation from
Cambridge University
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
.
He currently works for Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, a private intelligence company he co-founded in London.
Sir Andrew Wood, the former British ambassador to Moscow, has vouched for Steele's reputation.
He views Steele as a "very competent professional operator... I take the report seriously. I don't think it's totally implausible." He also said "the report's key allegation—that Trump and Russia's leadership were communicating via secret back channels during the presidential campaign—was eminently plausible".
FBI investigators reportedly treat Steele "as a peer", whose experience as a trusted Russia expert has included assisting the
Justice Department
A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...
, British prime ministers, and at least one U.S. president.
Steele's biases and motivations toward Trump appear to have changed over time. Starting in 2007, many years before he started his opposition research on Trump, he repeatedly met Ivanka Trump over several years, had a "friendly relationship" with her, and was "favorably disposed" to the Trump family. They even discussed the possibility of the Trump Organization using the services of Orbis Business Intelligence, but no arrangements were made.
Simpson has also confirmed that "there was no pre-existing animus toward Trump by Steele or Fusion".
Later, as Steele was preparing the dossier before the 2016 election,
Bruce Ohr
Bruce Genesoke Ohr is a former United States Department of Justice official. A former associate deputy attorney general and former director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), as of February 2018 Ohr was working in the ...
said Steele told him he "was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president",
attitudes that have been described by
Julian Sanchez as "entirely natural, not suggestive of preexisting bias", considering Steele believed his own reporting.
Steele has disputed Ohr's statement, and he told interviewers for Inspector General Horowitz that Ohr's wording was a paraphrase of his sentiments and not an exact quote, and the IG Report continues: "Steele told us that based on what he learned during his research he was concerned that Trump was a national security risk and he had no particular animus against Trump otherwise."
Steele told the FBI that he "did not begin his investigation with any bias against Trump, but based on the information he learned during the investigation became very concerned about the consequences of a Trump presidency."
Steele first became a
confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI in 2013 in connection with the investigation in the
2015 FIFA corruption case
In 2015, United States federal prosecutors disclosed cases of corruption by officials and associates connected with the Fédération internationale de Football Association ( FIFA), the governing body of association football, futsal and beach s ...
, but he considered the relationship as contractual. He said the relationship "was never really resolved and both sides turned a blind eye to it. It was not really ideal."
Later, the
discusses "divergent expectations about Steele's conduct in connection with his election reporting", as Steele considered his first duty to his paying clients, and not to the FBI. The Inspector General's report states that "Steele contends that he was never a CHS for the FBI but rather that his consulting firm had a contractual relationship with the FBI." Steele said "he never recalled being told that he was a CHS and that he never would have accepted such an arrangement,..." This divergence in expectations was a factor that "ultimately resulted in the FBI formally closing Steele as a CHS in November 2016 (although... the FBI continued its relationship with Steele through Ohr)."
On May 3, 2021, ''
The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was fo ...
'' reported that Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence, using new sources not used for the original dossier, continued to supply the FBI with raw intelligence during the Trump presidency. During an interview with the FBI in September 2017, Steele informed the FBI that Orbis had "four discrete, 'hermetically-sealed' main agent networks". His Primary sub-source for the dossier was no longer "active" at the time of the interview with FBI agents, but that another "main agent network is up and running and is now starting to get good information".
This resulted in "a second dossier for the FBI on Donald Trump". It included further claims of Russian election meddling; "alleged Russian interference linked to Mr Trump and his associates"; claims about the "existence of further sex tapes"; and "further details of Mr Manafort's alleged Russian contacts".
Risk of contamination with Russian disinformation considered
In 2019, during Trump's
first impeachment inquiry, national security expert
Fiona Hill stated Steele may have been "played" by the Russians to spread disinformation.
The Inspector General's investigative team examined how seriously the FBI Crossfire Hurricane team had considered "whether Steele's election reports, or aspects of them, were the product of a Russian disinformation campaign".
Bill Priestap explained to the OIG that by May 2017, after examining several possibilities for how disinformation could affect Steele's reporting, the FBI "didn't have any indication whatsoever that the Russians were running a disinformation campaign through the Steele election reporting". Priestap further explained that "the Russians ... favored Trump, they're trying to denigrate Clinton ...
ndI don't know why you'd run a disinformation campaign to denigrate Trump on the side." The IG Report said Steele explained how sophisticated the Russians were at planting and controlling misinformation, but Steele "had no evidence that his reporting was 'polluted' with Russian disinformation".
The inspector general's report ultimately concluded "that more should have been done to examine Steele's contacts with intermediaries of Russian oligarchs in order to assess those contacts as potential sources of disinformation that could have influenced Steele's reporting".
Steele's sources
The Inspector General's report stated that "Steele himself was not the originating source of any of the factual information in his reporting."
Instead, the report found that Steele relied on a "Primary Sub-source", later revealed as
Igor Danchenko
Igor Yurievich Danchenko (born May 5, 1978) is a Russian citizen and U.S. resident currently residing in Virginia who works as a Eurasia political risk, defense and economics analyst. Together with Clifford Gaddy he analyzed Vladimir Putin's 1996 ...
,
who "used a network of
urthersub-sources to gather the information that was relayed to Steele".
In an Alfa-Bank lawsuit, Steele revealed that he "did not rely on Danchenko alone, instead obtaining information from "one main source and a couple of subsidiary sources". According to Steele: "The dossier was intelligence obtained from 3 sources and approximately 20 sub-sources."
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'', wrote: "Steele had '20 to 30' sources for the dossier and in two decades as a professional intelligence officer he had never seen such complete agreement by such a wide range of sources."
Simpson has said that, to his knowledge, Steele did not pay any of his sources.
whose information came from a network of often unwitting sub-subsources.
Since payment of these sub-subsources can be seen as bribery or might encourage exaggeration, they are unpaid.
Steele testified that these sub-subsources "were not paid and were not aware that their information was being passed to Orbis or Fusion GPS".
, Steele's sources were not new, but trusted, proven, and familiar sources.
Howard Blum said Steele leaned on sources "whose loyalty and information he had bought and paid for over the years".
Steele later informed the Inspector General's investigators that "this source network did not involve sources from his time as a
and was developed entirely in the period after he retired from government service."
In January 2017, the Primary Sub-source, later identified as Ukrainian-born and Russian-trained attorney
was contacted by the FBI for an interview. About a week and a half later, in exchange for
, he agreed to answer questions about his working relationship with Steele, as well as his opinion on the accuracy of the Steele dossier.
and said that Steele misstated or exaggerated certain information.
Danchenko has said "he did not know who Mr. Steele's client was at the time and considered himself a nonpartisan analyst and researcher".
but the FBI's Supervisory Intel Analyst said that "it was his impression that the Primary Sub-source may not have been 'completely truthful' and may have been minimizing certain aspects of what he/she told Steele".
He also "believed that there were instances where the Primary Sub-source was 'minimizing' certain facts but did not believe that he/she was 'completely fabricating' events". He added that he "did not know whether he could support a 'blanket statement' that the Primary Sub-source had been truthful".
Starting in March 2017, Danchenko became a paid confidential human source for the FBI. During this time he lied to the FBI several times during interviews and was terminated in October 2020.
, who "has repeatedly been accused of abusing his powers to help Mr. Trump politically". Lindsey Graham had also "asked the F.B.I. to declassify the interview report".
Immediately after Barr's unmasking of Danchenko, Graham posted it to the Senate Judiciary Committee's web site.
The declassification order was criticized by former law enforcement officials as an unmasking that could endanger other sources and make the FBI's work harder.
, and his lawyer revealed that his client "fears for his life", since Russian agents are known to kill such informers.
Information about Danchenko's network of sources was provided to the FISA court:
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 2016 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, 2021, 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.
These included Danchenko having allegedly obscured his relationship with Charles Dolan Jr. and having allegedly fabricated contacts with
.
In November 2021, CNN's Marshall Cohen stated that recent "revelations about Dolan, Millian and Galkina raise grave questions about where Danchenko got his information, or if he perhaps made some of it up".
and four days later, Danchenko was acquitted of the other four charges.
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
'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''."
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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:
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".
She is an old friend of Danchenko and a middle school classmate. On October 28, 2020, ''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. 'I believe that Mr. 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.
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 102.
He denies being a dossier source.
Although Steele told the FBI that Person 1 was a "boaster" and "egoist" who "may engage in some embellishment",
the FBI omitted these "caveats about his source" from the FISA application.
In November 2021, 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'."
On November 12, 2021, following the November 4 indictment of Igor Danchenko, ''The Washington Post'' corrected and removed the "parts of two stories regarding the Steele dossier" that identified Millian as a source.
CNN reported that "Millian has since said he was 'framed' by Danchenko and has publicly denied that they ever spoke, though there is no indication in the indictment that Millian ever denied it to the FBI or under oath."
cast doubt on Millian and two 2020 emails he wrote denying he talked to Danchenko: The "emails lack the necessary 'guarantees of trustworthiness' as the government does not offer direct evidence that Millian actually wrote the emails, and, even if he did, Millian possessed opportunity and motive to fabricate and/or misrepresent his thoughts."
Charles Dolan Jr.
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 2014". He also became acquainted with Danchenko and allegedly "fed the dossier before he fought against it".
Danchenko had also introduced Olga Galkina, another one of Danchenko's sources, to him. 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"
"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." Both men had also met in Moscow in June 2016, where Dolan had stayed at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and toured the presidential suite where Trump had stayed in 2013.
that Mr. Trump had stayed there — but Mr. Dolan and another person on the tour told the F.B.I. that the staff member did not mention any salacious activity."
After meeting in Moscow, Danchenko flew "to London to provide information that would later appear in the dossier, the indictment claims, setting forth the timeline of these encounters without stating that Dolan was the source for specific claims about the purported tape."
'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's 'historical and ongoing involvement in Democratic politics,' the indictment asserts, 'bore upon' his 'reliability, motivations, and potential bias as a source of information' for Steele’s reports."
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".
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.
wrote that "Recent interviews and investigation, however, reveal Steele may not be in a position to judge the reliability of his subsource network."
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 Supervisory Intel Analyst believed this key sub-source (not the Primary Sub-source) "may have been attempting to minimize his/her role in the
election reporting following its release to the public".
The FBI's Supervisory Intel Analyst said that "it was his impression that the Primary Sub-source may not have been 'completely truthful' and may have been minimizing certain aspects of what he/she told Steele".
He also "believed that there were instances where the Primary Sub-source was 'minimizing' certain facts but did not believe that he/she was 'completely fabricating' events". He added that he "did not know whether he could support a 'blanket statement' that the Primary Sub-source had been truthful".
The veracity of allegations can vary widely, with some allegations publicly confirmed,
, none are disproven.
Trump and Putin have repeatedly denied the allegations, and Trump has labeled the dossier "discredited", "debunked", "fictitious", and "fake news".
, 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).
* ... that "Russian authorities" had cultivated Trump "for at least 5years", and that the operation was "supported and directed" by Putin.
(Report 80)
* ... that the Russian government's support for Trump was originally conducted by the
(FSB), and was eventually directly handled by the Russian presidency because of its "growing significance over time".
(Report 130)
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
(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.
* ... that there was an extensive and "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between
with information willingly exchanged in both directions.
That this co-operation was "sanctioned at the 'highest level' and involved Russian diplomatic staff based in the US".
That the Trump campaign used "moles within DNC as well as hackers in the US and Russia".
(Report 95)
* ... that Trump had "so far declined various sweetener real estate business deals", but had "accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin", notably on his political rivals.
(Report 80)
* ... that Trump associates had established "an intelligence exchange
for at least 8years". That Trump and his team had delivered "intelligence on the activities, business and otherwise, in the US of leading Russian oligarchs and their families", as requested by Putin.
* ... that a major goal of the Russians in supporting Trump was "to upset the liberal international status quo, including on
, which was seriously disadvantaging the country".
(Report 130)
* ... that Putin aimed to spread "discord and disunity" within the United States and between Western allies, whom he saw as a threat to Russia's interests.
(Report 80)
* ... that "TRUMP was viewed as divisive in disrupting the whole US political system; anti-Establishment; and a pragmatist with whom they could do business." That Trump would remain a divisive force even if not elected.
* ... that "there had been talk in the Kremlin of TRUMP being forced to withdraw from the presidential race altogether as a result of recent events, ostensibly on grounds of his state and unsuitability for high office."
(Report 100)
* ... that the Trump camp became angry and resentful toward Putin when they realized he not only was aiming to weaken Clinton and bolster Trump, but was attempting to "undermine the US government and democratic system more generally".
* ... that Trump "hated" Obama so much that when he stayed in the Presidential suite of the
in order to defile the bed used by the Obamas on an earlier visit. The alleged incident from 2013 was reportedly filmed and recorded by the
as kompromat.
(Report 80)
* ... that Trump was vulnerable to
and that the authorities were "able to blackmail him if they so wished".
(Reports 80, 95, 97, 113)
* ... that the Kremlin had promised Trump they would not use the kompromat collected against him "as leverage, given high levels of voluntary co-operation forthcoming from his team".
(Report 97)
* ... that Trump had explored the real estate sectors in
and Moscow, "but in the end TRUMP had had to settle for the use of extensive sexual services there from local prostitutes rather than business success".
(Report 95)
* ... that witnesses to his "sex parties in the city" had been "'silenced' i.e. bribed or coerced to disappear."
(Report 113)
* ... that Trump had paid bribes in St. Petersburg "to further his
interests".
(Report 113)
* ... that Aras Agalarov, "would know most of the details of what the Republican presidential candidate had got up to" in St. Petersburg.
(Report 113)
* ... that Trump associates did not fear "the negative media publicity surrounding alleged Russian interference", because it distracted attention from his "business dealings in China and other emerging markets" involving "large bribes and kickbacks" that could be devastating if revealed.
* ... that Putin ordered the maintenance of a secret dossier on Hillary Clinton, with content dating back to the time of
. The dossier comprised
; it did not contain "details/evidence of unorthodox or embarrassing behavior", but focused more on "things she had said which contradicted her current positions on various issues".
(Report 80)
* ... that the Clinton dossier had been collated by the FSB