
In 2019, the Justice Department’s inspector general sharply criticized the F.B.I.

Page, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser with ties to Russia. Steele’s memos in applications to wiretap Carter A.
#Copy of trump dossier verification
Steele’s reputation, and used some of it - without independent verification - for a narrow purpose that led to a dead end and became a political debacle.

take any investigative step based on the dossier? The basis for the investigation was instead that WikiLeaks had disrupted the Democratic National Convention by releasing Democratic emails believed to have been stolen by Russian hackers, and that an Australian diplomat said a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser had bragged to him about apparent outreach from Russia involving an offer to help the campaign by anonymously releasing information damaging to Mrs. Steele’s reports reached that counterintelligence team on Sept. An inspector general report established that Mr. But when counterintelligence agents launched the effort on July 30, 2016, they did not yet know about the dossier. based the Russia investigation on the dossier. Trump and his allies have insinuated that the F.B.I. open the investigation because of the dossier? Danchenko of lying about that call and of concealing that a Democratic Party-linked public relations executive was his source for a claim about Trump campaign office politics. He also said a key source had called him without identifying himself, and that he had guessed at the source’s identity. Danchenko portrayed the blackmail tape story as rumors and speculation that he was not able to confirm. Danchenko in 2017, he told the bureau that he thought the tenor of the dossier was more conclusive than was justified for example, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, had met with Russian officials in Prague during the campaign - was false. No corroborating evidence has emerged in intervening years to support many of the specific claims in the dossier, and government investigators determined that one key allegation - that Mr. It has become clear over time that its sourcing was thin and sketchy. Was the dossier a reliable source of information? His March 2019 report detailed “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign” and established that “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.” He did not charge any Trump associate with a criminal conspiracy. launched the investigation in July 2016, and a special counsel, Robert S. The scrutiny of Russia’s activities included examining the nature of links between Trump campaign associates and Russians to see if there was any coordination. It was a counterintelligence and criminal inquiry into the Russian operation to manipulate the 2016 presidential election by hacking and anonymously dumping Democratic emails and by spreading propaganda using fake accounts on American social media platforms. Steele in turn hired Igor Danchenko, the recently indicted researcher, to canvass for information from people he knew, including in Europe and Russia. Their law firm, Perkins Coie, contracted with a research firm called Fusion GPS, which subcontracted research about Trump business dealings in Russia to Mr. Trump funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party. It grew out of a political opposition research effort to dig up information about Mr. Many things that were not immediately apparent about the dossier have since become clearer. Buzzfeed published 35 pages in January 2017. In addition to giving his memos to his client, Mr.

It cited unnamed sources who claimed there was a “well-developed conspiracy of coordination” between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and that Russia had a blackmail tape of Mr.
