Steele dossier: Difference between revisions

This article is part of a series about Donald Trump
Business and personal Business career The Trump Organization wealth tax returns Media career The Apprentice bibliography filmography Eponyms Family Foundation American football Golf Honors Public image in popular culture SNL parodies handshakes Legal affairs Sexual misconduct allegations Nicknames pseudonyms Racial views Comments on John McCain Conspiracy theories Residences Rhetoric 45th President of the United States Presidency timeline Transition Inauguration Presidential library Tenure Executive actions executive orders proclamations pardons Trips foreign '17 '18 '19 '20–'21 Namaste Trump North Korea summits Singapore Hanoi DMZ Riyadh summit Helsinki summit Shutdowns January 2018 2018–2019 Polls Lawsuits Protests federal law enforcement deployment St. John's Church photo op Social media False or misleading statements Killings al-Baghdadi Soleimani Afghanistan withdrawal Trumpism TikTok controversy Policies Economy tax cuts tariffs China trade war farmer bailouts Environment Paris withdrawal Foreign policy America First Saudi Arabia arms deal Iran nuclear deal withdrawal Jerusalem Golan Heights Palestine peace plan Abraham Accords USMCA United States–Taliban deal Immigration travel ban wall family separation migrant detentions troop deployments national emergency Infrastructure Social issues First Step Act cannabis Space Appointments Cabinet Ambassadors Federal judges Gorsuch Kavanaugh Barrett Supreme Court candidates Executives U.S. Attorneys Presidential campaigns 2000 primaries 2016 election primaries endorsements rallies Las Vegas incident convention debates Never Trump movement people Access Hollywood tape wiretapping allegations Spygate 2020 election primaries endorsements political non-political opposition rallies convention debates GOP reactions to election fraud claims Trump–Raffensperger phone call 2024 election primaries endorsements opposition eligibility Agenda 47 rallies convention debates assassination attempt perpetrator photographs Impeachments Efforts resolutions First impeachment Trump–Ukraine scandal House inquiry Senate trial Second impeachment Capitol attack Senate trial Proposed expungements Prosecutions 2020 election federal indictment Classified documents federal indictment special counsel investigation Plasmic Echo FBI search of Mar-a-Lago Trump v. United States New York indictment Stormy Daniels scandal Karen McDougal affair financial fraud Georgia election indictment Georgia election investigation mug shot Interactions involving Russia Business projects in Russia Election interference timeline before July 2016 July 2016 – election day topics Associates' links with Russian officials Steele dossier Trump Tower meeting Trump Tower Moscow Classified information disclosures Metadata seizures Mueller special counsel investigation Crossfire Hurricane charges Durham special counsel investigation legal teams Mueller report Barr letter Senate report COVID-19 pandemic Taskforce Communication Government response stimulus bills CARES Act Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 Operation Warp Speed White House outbreak Interference with science agencies
v t e

The Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier,^[1] is a private intelligence dossier of 17 memos that were consecutively written from June to December 2016^[2] by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence (MI6) officer. It contains allegations of misconduct and conspiracy between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russian government before and during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, much of it detailing alleged cooperation between the campaign and Russians to interfere in the election to benefit Trump.^[3] The contents of the dossier were published in full by BuzzFeed on January 10, 2017.^[4] Several mainstream media outlets have criticized BuzzFeed's decision to publish the dossier.^[5][6][7]

Some of the dossier's allegations have been confirmed, while others have yet to be proved or disproved.^[8][9] Some claims may require access to classified information for verification.^[10] The media, intelligence community, as well as most experts have treated the dossier with caution, while Trump himself denounced the report as "fake news". In February 2017, some details related to conversations between foreign nationals were independently verified.^[11] As of December 2017^[update], the dossier's allegations of collusion have not been corroborated.^[12][13]

The dossier and the separate investigation preceding its creation were both part of opposition research on Trump during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. The American research firm Fusion GPS was hired for both investigations. The first investigation into Trump was initially funded by a conservative political website, The Washington Free Beacon, before Steele was involved.

After Trump emerged as the probable Republican nominee, attorney Marc Elias of the Perkins Coie law firm retained Fusion GPS to investigate Trump on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton presidential campaign. Fusion GPS later subcontracted Steele to research and compile the dossier.^[14] Following Trump's election as president, funding from the Democrats ceased, but Steele continued working on the report, with financing coming directly from Glenn R. Simpson of Fusion GPS.^[15] The completed dossier and its information was then passed on to British and American intelligence services.^[16]

The dossier contains multiple allegations, some of which are currently unverified and others for which possible verification is classified.^[10] Natasha Bertrand has stated that it "alleges serious misconduct and conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia's government", and that, quoting the dossier, the "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership was managed on the Trump side by the Republican candidate's campaign manager, Paul Manafort."^[17]

The memos allege that Russia has been cultivating a relationship with Trump for decades, that the Kremlin favored Trump in the U.S. presidential election, and took various actions during the 2016 election to promote his candidacy and oppose Hillary Clinton's. The document claims that several of Trump's associates, in particular campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump's personal attorney Michael D. Cohen, and Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page, worked with Russian contacts to promote Trump's candidacy. Alleged activities include planning the hack of Democratic National Committee emails and their subsequent leaking, arranging coverups and cash payments, and promising favorable policies toward Russia if Trump was elected.

The document also claims that Russian operators possessed "kompromat" about Trump which could make him subject to blackmail. Trump has denied allegations of sexual misconduct in Moscow.^[18] Trump's longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller "privately testified that he rejected an offer by a Russian individual to send five women to then private-citizen Trump's hotel room during their 2013 trip to Moscow," stating that "he took the offer as a joke ... and Trump laughed it off." However, Schiller could not account for what happened after he left Trump's hotel room that evening, just after the conversation.^[19]

Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have repeatedly denied the allegations, with Trump labeling the dossier as "discredited", "debunked", "fictitious", and "fake news".^[20][21] Paul Manafort has "denied taking part in any collusion with the Russian state, but registered himself as a foreign agent retroactively after it was revealed his firm received more than $17m working as a lobbyist for a pro-Russian Ukrainian party."^[22] Cohen has also denied the allegations against him.^[23][24][25] Carter Page originally denied meeting any Russian officials, but his later testimony, acknowledging that he had met with senior Russian officials at Rosneft, has been interpreted as appearing to corroborate portions of the dossier.^[26][27][28]

The allegation of a 19% privatized stake in Rosneft, in exchange for lifting sanctions and dropping "Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue",^[29] has been described by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen in Newsweek as a quid pro quo deal that "colloquially, if not in the legal sense,... is called treason".^[30] In Paste Magazine, Jacob Weindling described this deal as a "potential scandal so big, words don't exist to convey it." He further stated: "I want to take a moment to stress this potential revelation. In exchange for dropping sanctions that were levied for invading an ally [Ukraine], the president of the United States would receive a personal stake in a Russian oil company. Treason doesn't even begin to describe it."^[31]

The dossier and the investigations preceding it were part of opposition research on Trump. The investigation into Trump was initially funded by The Washington Free Beacon, an American conservative political journalism web site, before Steele was involved, and was later funded by Democrats.^{[32][33][2][34]}

In October 2015, during the Republican primary campaign, The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website primarily funded by Republican donor Paul Singer, hired the American research firm Fusion GPS to conduct general opposition research on Trump and other Republican presidential candidates.^[1] 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 Free Beacon stopped funding research on him.^[2][35][36]

In April 2016, Marc Elias, a partner in the large Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie and head of its Political Law practice, hired Fusion GPS to do opposition research on Trump. Elias was the attorney of record for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton presidential campaign.^[14] As part of their investigation, Fusion GPS hired Orbis Business Intelligence, a private British intelligence firm, to look into connections between Trump and Russia. Orbis co-founder Christopher Steele, a retired British MI6 officer with expertise in Russian matters,^[2] was hired as a subcontractor to do the job.^[37] Orbis was hired between June and November 2016, and Steele produced 16 memos during that time,^[24] with a 17th memo added in December.^[24]

According to Fusion GPS's co-owners, Glenn R. Simpson and Peter Fritsch, they did not tell Steele who their clients were and "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?'"^[38] In total, Perkins Coie paid Fusion GPS $1.02 million in fees and expenses, $168,000 of which was paid to Orbis and used by them to produce the dossier.^[39] Simpson has stated that Steele did not pay any of his sources.^[40][38]

Steele delivered his reports as a series of two- or three-page memos, starting in June 2016 and continuing through December. He continued his investigation even after the Democratic client stopped paying for it following Trump's election.^[2] After the election, Fusion GPS co-owner Simpson "reportedly spent his own money to continue the investigation".^[15]

According to Steele, he soon found "troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. He said that, according to his sources, "there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit."^[41] Luke Harding states that "Steele was shocked by the extent of collusion his sources were reporting." Steele told friends: "For anyone who reads it, this is a life-changing experience."^[42] He felt that what he had unearthed "was something of huge significance, way above party politics".^[43] Howard Blum described Steele's rationale for becoming a whistleblower: "The greater good trumps all other concerns."^[43]

On his own initiative, Steele decided to also pass the information to British and American intelligence services because he believed the findings were a matter of national security for both countries.^[44] According to the testimony of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, Steele approached the FBI because he was concerned that the then candidate, Donald Trump, was being blackmailed by Russia,^[45] and he became "very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat". Steele was so "alarmed" by his findings, that he showed them to FBI agents in Rome in early July. Their reaction was "shock and horror".^[46][47][48]

Simpson later revealed that "Steele severed his contacts with the FBI before the election following disclosures that the bureau’s inquiry had found no connection between Trump campaign and Russia and concerns that it was being 'manipulated for political ends by the Trump people'."^[49] He had become frustrated with the FBI, which he believed was failing to investigate his reports, choosing instead to focus on the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. According to The Independent, Steele came to believe that there was a "cabal" inside the FBI, particularly its New York field office linked to Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani, which blocked any attempts to investigate the links between Trump and Russia.^[44] In October 2016, Steele had compiled 33 pages (16 memos) and passed on what he had discovered so far to David Corn, a reporter from Mother Jones magazine.^[41]

In a court filing in April 2017, Steele revealed previously unreported information that in December 2016, shortly after the presidential election, he gave a copy of the 16 memos to "the senior British national security official and sent an encrypted version to Fusion GPS with instructions to deliver a hard copy to Senator John McCain (R-AZ).^[24] McCain, who had been informed about the alleged links between Kremlin and Trump, met with former British ambassador to Moscow Sir Andrew Wood. Wood confirmed the existence of the dossier and vouched for Steele's "professionalism and integrity".^[44] McCain obtained the dossier from David J. Kramer and took it directly to FBI director James Comey on December 9, 2016.^[2][33] Comey has confirmed that counter-intelligence investigations are under way into possible links between Trump associates and Moscow, and CNN has reported that the FBI used the dossier to bolster its investigations."^[24]

After delivering the 16 memos, more information was received, and two more pages, the "December memo", dated "13 December 2016", was prepared. It alleged efforts by Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to pay those who had hacked the DNC and to "cover up all traces of the hacking operation".^[23][24] Cohen has denied the allegations against him,^[23][24][25] stating that he was in Los Angeles between August 23 and August 29, and in New York for the entire month of September.^[50] According to a Czech intelligence source, there is no record of him entering Prague by plane, but Respekt magazine pointed out that it's theoretically possible he could have entered by car or train from a neighboring country within the Schengen Zone. In the latter case, a record of Cohen entering the Schengen Zone via a non-Schengen area country should exist.^[51]

By the third quarter of 2016, many news organizations knew about the existence of the dossier, which had been described as an "open secret" among journalists. However, they chose not to publish information that could not be confirmed.^[2] Finally 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.^[41] It starts with the allegation that:

The "Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance". It maintained that Trump "and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals". It claimed that Russian intelligence had "compromised" Trump during his visits to Moscow and could "blackmail him".

— Mother Jones, October 31, 2016^[41]

Although the dossier alleges (in June 2016) that the Kremlin had been cultivating Trump for "at least five years", investigative journalist Luke Harding has written that they had been interested in him since his first visit to Russia in 1987. Harding also asserts that "The top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his 1987 Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB... The spy chief [Vladimir Kryuchkov] wanted KGB staff abroad to recruit more Americans." Harding then gives a detailed description of the process of cultivation used by the KGB. He posits that the KGB may have opened a file on Trump as early as 1977, when he married Ivana Trump (née Zelníčková), and that they were closely observed and analyzed from that time on.^[52][53]

In October 2016, the FBI reached an agreement with Steele to pay him to continue his work, according to involved sources reported by The Washington Post. "Steele was known for the quality of his past work and for the knowledge he had developed over nearly 20 years working on Russia-related issues for British intelligence."^[54] The FBI found Steele credible and his unproved information worthy enough that it considered paying Steele to continue collecting information, but the release of the document to the public stopped discussions between Steele and the FBI.^[54]

President-Elect Trump and President Barack Obama were briefed on the existence of the dossier by the chiefs of several U.S. intelligence agencies in early January 2017. Vice President Joe Biden has confirmed that he and the president had received briefings on the dossier, and the allegations within.^{[55][35][56][57]}

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 stated that it would not publish specific details on the memos because it had not "independently corroborated the specific allegations".^[58][59] Following the CNN report,^[60] BuzzFeed published a 35-page dossier that it said was the basis of the briefing, including unverified claims that Russian operatives had collected "embarrassing material" involving Trump that could be used to blackmail him.^{[61][62][59][63]}

Many news organizations knew about the document in the fall of 2016, before the presidential election, but did not publish it because they could not independently verify the information.^[64] BuzzFeed was harshly criticized for publishing what Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan called "scurrilous allegations dressed up as an intelligence report meant to damage Donald Trump",^[65] while The New York Times noted that the publication sparked a debate centering on the use of unsubstantiated information from anonymous sources.^[66] 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.^[5]

When CNN reported the existence of the dossier on January 10, 2017,^[67] 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 realized it was "only a matter of time until his name became public knowledge", and, accompanied by his family, he fled into hiding in fear of "a prompt and potentially dangerous backlash against him from Moscow".^[68][69][32] The Wall Street Journal revealed Steele's name the next day, on January 11.^[70] Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, for whom Steele worked at the time the dossier was authored, and its director Christopher Burrows would not "confirm or deny" that Orbis had produced the dossier.^[67][2]

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 and is currently working for Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, a private intelligence company Steele co-founded in London.^[71][70][72] Steele entered MI6 in 1987, directly after his graduation from Cambridge University.^[73]

Former British ambassador to Moscow Sir Andrew Wood has vouched for Steele's reputation.^[44] He views Steele as a "very competent professional operator ... I take the report seriously. I don't think it's totally implausible." He also stated that "the report's key allegation—that Trump and Russia's leadership were communicating via secret back channels during the presidential campaign—was eminently plausible".^[74]

On December 26, 2016, Oleg Erovinkin, a former KGB/FSB general, was found dead in his car in Moscow. Erovinkin was a key liaison between Igor Sechin, head of state-owned oil company Rosneft, and President Putin. Steele claimed much of the information came from a source close to Sechin. According to Christo Grozev, a journalist at Risk Management Lab, a think-tank based in Bulgaria, the circumstances of Erovinkin's death were "mysterious". Grozev suspected Erovinkin helped Steele compile the dossier on Trump and suggests the hypothesis that the death may have been part of a cover-up by the Russian government.^[75][76] Mark Galeotti, senior research fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague, who specializes in Russian history and security, rejected Grozev's hypothesis.^[77][75] In interviews with Luke Harding, "Steele was adamant that Erovinkin wasn't his source and 'not one of ours.' As a person close to Steele put it to me: 'Sometimes people just die.'"^[78]

On March 7, 2017, as some members of the U.S. Congress 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."^[79]

Observers and experts have had varying reactions to the dossier. Generally, "former intelligence officers and other national-security experts" urged "skepticism and caution" but still took "the fact that the nation's top intelligence officials chose to present a summary version of the dossier to both President Obama and President-elect Trump" as an indication "that they may have had a relatively high degree of confidence that at least some of the claims therein were credible, or at least worth investigating further".^[80] The author of the dossier said he believes that 70–90% of the document is accurate.^[81] In his June 2017 congressional testimony, former FBI director James Comey called "some personally sensitive aspects" of the dossier "salacious and unverified," but he did not state that the entire dossier was unverified or that the salacious aspects were false. When Senator Richard Burr asked if any of the allegations in the dossier had been confirmed, Comey said he could not answer that question in a public setting.^[82][10]

Vice President Biden told reporters that while he and President Obama were receiving a briefing on the extent of Russian hackers trying to influence the US election, there was a two-page addendum which addressed the contents of the Steele dossier.^[83] Top intelligence officials told them they "felt obligated to inform them about uncorroborated allegations about President-elect Donald Trump out of concern the information would become public and catch them off-guard".^[84]

Former Los Angeles Times Moscow correspondent Robert Gillette wrote in an op-ed in the Concord Monitor that the dossier has had at least one of its main factual assertions verified. On January 6, 2017, the Director of National Intelligence released a report assessing "with high confidence" that Russia's combined cyber and propaganda operation was directed personally by Vladimir Putin, with the aim of harming Hillary Clinton's candidacy and helping Trump.^[85] Gillette wrote: "Steele's dossier, paraphrasing multiple sources, reported precisely the same conclusion, in greater detail, six months earlier, in a memo dated June 20."^[86]

Newsweek published a list of "13 things that don't add up" in the dossier, writing that the document was a "strange mix of the amateur and the insightful" and stating that the document "contains lots of Kremlin-related gossip that could indeed be, as the author claims, from deep insiders—or equally gleaned" from Russian newspapers and blogs.^[87] Former UK ambassador to Russia Sir Tony Brenton stated that certain aspects of the dossier were inconsistent with British intelligence's understanding of how the Kremlin works, commenting: "I've seen quite a lot of intelligence on Russia, and there are some things in [the dossier] which look pretty shaky."^[88]

The dossier alleges that "the Trump campaign agreed to minimize US opposition to Russia's incursions into Ukraine".^[17][89] NPR reported: "Diana Denman, a Republican delegate who supported arming U.S. allies in Ukraine, has told people that Trump aide J.D. Gordon said at the Republican Convention in 2016 that Trump directed him to support weakening that position in the official platform."^[90] In July 2016, the Republican National Convention made changes to the Republican Party's platform on Ukraine: initially they proposed providing "lethal weapons" to Ukraine, but the line was changed to "appropriate assistance". J. D. Gordon, who was one of Trump's national security advisers during the campaign, said that he had advocated for changing language because that reflected what Trump had said.^[17][91]

Luke Harding considers this allegation to have been confirmed by the actions of the Trump campaign: "This is precisely what happened at the Republican National Convention last July, when language on the US's commitment to Ukraine was mysteriously softened. Meanwhile, in a series of tweets, Trump questioned whether US allies were paying enough into Nato coffers."^[23] According to Aiko Stevenson, some of Trump's actions seem to align with "Putin's wish list", which "includes lifting sanctions on Russia, turning a blind eye towards its aggressive efforts in the Ukraine, and creating a divisive rift amongst western allies." Trump has "called Nato, the centrepiece of Transatlantic security 'obsolete', championed the disintegration of the EU, and said that he is open to lifting sanctions on Moscow."^[92]

According to Paul Wood of BBC News, the salacious information in Steele's report is also reported by "multiple intelligence sources" and "at least one East European intelligence service". They report that "compromising material on Mr. Trump" included "more than one tape, not just video, but audio as well, on more than one date, in more than one place, in both Moscow and St. Petersburg." While also mentioning that "nobody should believe something just because an intelligence agent says it",^[93][70] he added that "the CIA believes it is credible that the Kremlin has such kompromat—or compromising material—on the next US commander in chief" and "a joint taskforce, which includes the CIA and the FBI, has been investigating allegations that the Russians may have sent money to Mr Trump's organisation or his election campaign".^[94][95][93]

On March 30, 2017, Wood reported that the FBI was using the dossier as a roadmap for its investigation.^[96] On April 18, 2017, CNN reported that, according to U.S. officials, information from the dossier had been used as part of the basis for getting the FISA warrant to monitor former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page during the summer of 2016. Officials told CNN this information would have had to be independently corroborated by the FBI before being used to obtain the warrant.^[16]

Susan Hennessey, a former National Security Agency lawyer now with the Brookings Institution, stated: "My general take is that the intelligence community and law enforcement seem to be taking these claims seriously. That itself is highly significant. But it is not the same as these allegations being verified. Even if this was an intelligence community document—which it isn't—this kind of raw intelligence is still treated with skepticism."^[80][97] Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes wrote that "the current state of the evidence makes a powerful argument for a serious public inquiry into this matter".^[97] Robert S. Litt, a former lawyer for the Director of National Intelligence, wrote that the dossier "played absolutely no role" in the intelligence community's determination that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.^[98]

On February 10, 2017, CNN reported that some communications between "senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals" described in the dossier had been corroborated by multiple U.S. officials. They "took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier". Sources told CNN that some conversations had been "intercepted during routine intelligence gathering", but refused to reveal the content of conversations, or specify which communications were detailed in the dossier. CNN was unable to confirm whether conversations were related to Trump. U.S. officials said the corroboration gave "US intelligence and law enforcement 'greater confidence' in the credibility of some aspects of the dossier as they continue to actively investigate its contents".^[11]

British journalist Julian Borger wrote in October 2017 that "Steele’s reports are being taken seriously after lengthy scrutiny by federal and congressional investigators", at least Steele's assessment that Russia had conducted a campaign to interfere in the 2016 election to Clinton's detriment; that part of the Steele dossier "has generally gained in credibility, rather than lost it".^[22] Liberal commentator Jonathan Chait wrote in December 2017 about the dossier that mainstream media "treat it as gossip" whereas the intelligence community "take it seriously".^[99]

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has stated: "As I understand it, a good deal of his information remains unproven, but none of it has been disproven, and considerable amounts of it have been proven."^[100]

On November 2, 2017, Carter Page, Donald Trump's foreign policy adviser during the campaign, testified before the House Intelligence Committee which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Page testified he informed Jeff Sessions, J. D. Gordon, Hope Hicks and Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager, of a planned trip to Russia and that Lewandowski approved the trip, responding "If you'd like to go on your own, not affiliated with the campaign, you know, that's fine."^[101][26] In his testimony, Page admitted he met with high ranking Kremlin officials. Previously, Page had denied meeting any Russian officials during the trip. His comments appeared to corroborate portions of the dossier.^[27][28]

According to Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), the dossier's allegations are being investigated by a Special Counsel led by Robert Mueller, which is also investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 elections.^[102] In the summer of 2017, Mueller's team of investigators met with Christopher Steele.^[103] As some leads stemming from the dossier have already been followed and confirmed by the FBI, legal experts have stated that Special Counsel investigators, headed by Robert Mueller, are obligated to follow any leads the dossier has presented them with, irrespective of what parties financed it in its various stages of development, or "[t]hey would be derelict in their duty if they didn't."^[102][104]

While Trump and some Republicans have claimed that the dossier was behind the beginning of the investigation into the Trump campaign's potential conspiracy with Russia, in December 2017, former and current intelligence officials revealed that the actual impetus was a series of comments made in May 2016 by Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos during a night of "heavy drinking at an upscale London bar" made to a top Australian diplomat in Britain. Papadopoulos revealed that he had inside information by bragging that the Kremlin had "thousands of emails" stolen from Hillary Clinton which could be used to damage her campaign. He had learned this about three weeks earlier. Two months later, when WikiLeaks started releasing DNC emails, Australian officials alerted the Americans about Papadopoulos' remarks.^[105][47]

Other soon-discovered factors then played into the FBI's decision to investigate Russian interference and any role played by the Trump campaign: intelligence from friendly governments, especially the British and Dutch, and then the information about a trip to Moscow by Trump adviser Carter Page. Steele's first report was sent to Fusion GPS, dated June 20, 2016, and FBI agents first interviewed Steele in October 2016.^[47] A year later, in October 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and became a cooperating witness in Mueller's investigation.^[105]

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

House Intelligence Committee Interview of Glenn Simpson Transcript

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Senate Judiciary Committee Interview of Glenn Simpson

Donald Trump called the dossier "fake news" and criticized the intelligence and media sources that published it.^[106] During a press conference on January 11, 2017, Trump denounced the unsubstantiated claims as false, saying that it was "disgraceful" for U.S. intelligence agencies to report them. Trump refused to answer a question from CNN's senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta on the subject. In response, CNN said that it had published "carefully sourced reporting" on the matter which had been "matched by the other major news organizations", as opposed to BuzzFeed's posting of "unsubstantiated materials".^[107][60] James Clapper described the leaks as damaging to US national security.^[108] This also contradicted Trump's previous claim that Clapper said the information was false; Clapper's statement actually said the intelligence community had made no judgement on the truth or falsity of the information.^[109]

Russian press secretary Dmitry Peskov insisted in an interview that the document is a fraud, saying "I can assure you that the allegations in this funny paper, in this so-called report, they are untrue. They are all fake."^[110] The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, called the people who leaked the document "worse than prostitutes"^[111] and referred to the dossier itself as "rubbish".^[112] Putin went on to state he believed that the dossier was "clearly fake",^[113] fabricated as a plot against the legitimacy of President-elect Donald Trump.^[114]

Some of Steele's former colleagues expressed support for his character, saying "The idea his work is fake or a cowboy operation is false—completely untrue. Chris is an experienced and highly regarded professional. He's not the sort of person who will simply pass on gossip."^[115]

Among journalists, Bob Woodward called the dossier a "garbage document," while Carl Bernstein took the opposite view, noting that the senior-most U.S. intelligence officials had determined that the content was worth reporting to the president and the president-elect.^[116]

Ynet, an Israeli online news site, reported on January 12, 2017 that U.S. intelligence advised Israeli intelligence officers to be cautious about sharing information with the incoming Trump administration, until the possibility of Russian influence over Trump, suggested by Steele's report, has been fully investigated.^[117]

Aleksej Gubarev, chief of technology company XBT and a figure mentioned in the dossier, sued BuzzFeed for defamation on February 3, 2017. The suit, filed in a Broward County, Florida court, centers on allegations from the dossier that XBT had been "using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct 'altering operations' against the Democratic Party leadership".^[118][119] In the High Court of Justice, Steele's lawyers said their client did not intend for the memos to be released, and that one of the memos "needed to be analyzed and further investigated/verified".^[120]

On March 2, 2017, media began reporting that the Senate may call Steele to testify about the Trump dossier.^[121] On March 27, 2017, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley asked the Department of Justice to initiate an inquiry into Fusion GPS, who initially retained Steele to write the dossier.^[122] Fusion GPS was previously associated with pro-Russia lobbying activities due to sanctions imposed by the Magnitsky Act.^[123] On August 22, 2017, Steele met with the FBI and had provided them with the names of his sources for the allegations in the dossier.^[124]

Steven L. Hall, former CIA chief of Russia operations, has compared Steele's methods with those of Donald Trump Jr., who sought information from a Russian attorney in June 2016: "The distinction: Steele spied against Russia to get info Russia did not want released; Don Jr took a mtg to get info Russians wanted to give."^[125]

On January 2, 2018, the founders of Fusion GPS, Glenn R. Simpson and Peter Fritsch authored an op-ed in the New York Times, requesting that Republicans, "release full transcripts of our firm’s testimony" and further wrote that, "the Steele dossier was not the trigger for the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russian meddling. As we told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump camp."^[38] Ken Dilanian of NBC News clarified that a "source close to Fusion GPS" told him that the FBI had not planted anyone in the Trump camp, but rather that Simpson was referring to George Papadopoulos.^[126][49]

On January 5, 2018, in the first known Congressional criminal referral resulting from investigations related to the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley made a referral to the Justice Department suggesting that they investigate possible criminal charges against Christopher Steele^[127][128] for allegedly making false statements to the FBI about the distribution of the dossier's claims.^[129] Senator Lindsey Graham also signed the letter.^[130][131] Both Grassley and Graham declared that they were not alleging that Steele "had committed any crime. Rather, they had passed on the information for 'further investigation only'."^[132] The referral was met with skepticism from legal experts, as well as some of the other Republicans and Democrats on the Judiciary committee, who had reportedly not been consulted.^[130]

On January 8, 2018, a spokesman for Grassley said he did not plan to release the transcript of Simpson's August 22, 2017 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.^[133] The next day, Ranking Committee Member Senator Dianne Feinstein unilaterally released the transcript.^[134][135]

Also on January 9, 2018, Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen sued Buzzfeed for defamation over allegations about him in the dossier, which Buzzfeed had published.^[136]

On January 18, 2018, the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released the transcript of the Glenn Simpson Testimony given on November 14, 2017.^[137][138] Democratic committee member Adam Schiff stated that the testimony contains "serious allegations that The Trump Organization may have engaged in money laundering with Russian nationals". Trump Organization's chief counsel Alan Garten called the allegations "unsubstantiated" and "reckless", and said that Simpson was mainly referring to properties to which Trump licensed his name. Democratic member Jim Himes said that Simpson "did not provide evidence and I think that's an important point. He made allegations."^[139]

• Nunes memo
• Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections

• Harding, Luke (November 19, 2017). "The Hidden History of Trump's First Trip to Moscow". Politico Magazine (an excerpt of his book Collusion).
• Harding, Luke (November 16, 2017). Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0525520931.
• Hamburger, Tom; Helderman, Rosalind S. (2018-02-06). "Hero or hired gun? How a British former spy became a flash point in the Russia investigation." The Washington Post.

• Glenn Simpson (August 22, 2017). "Glenn Simpson's testimony re Trump–Russia dossier" (PDF). Official U.S. Senate website of Senator Dianne Feinstein (redacted transcript). Interviewed by U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. {{cite interview}}: Unknown parameter |subjectlink= ignored (|subject-link= suggested) (help)
• Glenn Simpson (November 14, 2017). "Glenn Simpson's testimony re Trump-Russia dossier" (PDF). Official U.S. House of Representatives website (redacted transcript). Interviewed by House Intelligence Committee. {{cite interview}}: Unknown parameter |subjectlink= ignored (|subject-link= suggested) (help)
• Schiff, Adam (March 20, 2017). "Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Schiff Opening Statement During Hearing on Russian Active Measures". Schiff's official U.S. House website (press release). Congressman Schiff (D) discusses the dossier.
• "Grassley Probes Opposition Research Firm behind Unsubstantiated Trump Dossier". Official U.S. Senate website of Senator Chuck Grassley (press release). March 27, 2017. Senator Grassley (R) discusses the dossier. Includes text of a letter from Grassley to Glenn R. Simpson of Fusion GPS asking 13 questions of Simpson.