Steele dossier

The Donald Trump–Russia dossier (or Steele dossier) is a discredited political work originally put together as opposition research, which was used as the source to obtain a FISA warrant against then-candidate Donald Trump.

The dossier is named after British MI6 officer Christopher Steele.

Timeline

In August 2016 Christopher Steele went to Sir Andrew Wood to ask him to act as a go-between to reach Sen. John McCain, to try to give his fake dossier credibility.

Throughout July, August and September 2016 FusionGPS paid journalists from the New York Times, Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post, ABC News, Ken Dilanian of NBC News, David Corn of Mother Jones, Michael Isikoff of Yahoo! News and others to listen to Christopher Steele and shop the Steele dossier narrative for mainstream publication. Court papers confirm payments.

• Late 2015 Washington Free Beacon hires Fusion GPS.
• Spring 2016 Beacon ends relationship with Fusion. DNC, Hillary campaign hires Fusion.
• June 2016 Fusion GPS hires Christopher Steele.
• June 20, 2017 Steele completes the first of seventeen sections of the dossier.
• July 19 Second section of dossier completed.
• July 26 to Sept. 14 Dossier sections 3 to 13 completed
• Oct. 3 to Oct. 19 Sections 14 to 17 completed.
• Oct. 21 FISA court grants FBI warrant to surveil Trump adviser Carter Page.
• Nov. 8 Donald Trump wins U.S. presidential election.
• Dec. 13 Steele completes final version of dossier.
• Jan. 10 Buzzfeed publishes dossier.

In the media

Although the Obama administration illegally kept secret from Congressional oversight the FBI's surveillance of Trump and the Trump organization, on September 23, 2016 the first fake news story from the joint Obama FBI/FusionGPS operation appeared in the mainstream media. A story in Yahoo! News by Michael Isikoff about an FBI briefing for Congress sourced to the FBI and not Hillary Clinton's opposition researchers at FusionGPS or Christopher Steele was based on the contents of the Steele dossier. Strzok offered to pay Steele to continue work on the fake dossier.

On October 31, 2016 New York Times published a story with the headline, Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link To Russia; The Clinton campaign fell into a tailspin as the FBI reopened the Clinton email investigation over reports classified emails were going on Anthony Weiner's computer. The same day the Times article appeared DNC operative David Corn of Mother Jones magazine reported Steele’s fake news allegations under the headline, A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump: Has the bureau investigated this material?.

January 10, 2016 Obama and the CIA leaked the phony Steele dossier to CNN & BuzzFeed who jointly made it available to the public. Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, who with the DNC paid for the dossier, secretly met with Simpson. The dossier alleges Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. Steele personally was paid $168,000 to write the phony dossier.

In November 2017 it was reported that Hillary Clinton was again in talks with Christopher Steele to create second dossier of alleged Trump affairs.

By December outrage of the Obama FBI abuses was omnipresent; in seven hours of testimony before House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) Dep. Dir. Andrew McCabe made statements that contradicted evidence, and was unable to provide any substantive examples of verified allegations in the Steele dossier. When pushed for examples of what was verified in the anti-Trump dossier, McCabe was only able to cite the fact that Trump campaign advisor Carter Page traveled to Moscow — McCabe could not verify anything about the meetings that Page supposedly had. McCabe claimed he could not recall — despite documents with McCabe’s own signature on them establishing his the fact of his knowledge of the dossier’s financing and provenance.

FBI Chief Counselor James Baker was fired two hours after McCabe's testimony. Associate Dep. Attn. Gen. Bruce Ohr withheld from his boss, Rod Rosenstein, his secret meetings with Steele and Simpson and the fact his wife Nellie Ohr helped author the phony dossier. Ohr was demoted, and there were calls for McCabe's firing. The House Committees began investigating possible criminal activity among Obama holdovers in DOJ & FBI.

Rep. Jim Jordan said

"We know, for a fact, the Clinton campaign paid Russians to influence the election...Most of Mueller’s team is anti-Trump. We know that. What concerns me is the intent to carry out a plan to disrupt the election. Because as Mr. Strzok said, we can’t afford to leave this in we the people’s hands....I’m convinced now the FBI actively seeking with intent, actively trying to stop Donald Trump from being president of the United States. Everything points to the fact that there was an orchestrated plan to try to prevent Donald Trump from being the next president of the United States."

Rep. Andy Biggs in USA Today Op-ed called for an end of the Mueller witch-hunt, and Sen. Rand Paul called for an investigation of Obama officials who tried to prevent the election of Donald Trump.

See also

• Deep state