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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJANE MAYER for the New Yorker: Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Trump Dossier
Jane Mayer NYer is so good she can insert a moment of levity in the middle of a blockbuster profile about Christopher SteeleChristopher Steele, the Man Behind the Trump Dossier
How the ex-spy tried to warn the world about Trumps ties to Russia.
By Jane Mayer
...........
Its too early to make a final judgment about how much of Steeles dossier will be proved wrong, but a number of Steeles major claims have been backed up by subsequent disclosures. His allegation that the Kremlin favored Trump in 2016 and was offering his campaign dirt on Hillary has been borne out. So has his claim that the Kremlin and WikiLeaks were working together to release the D.N.C.s e-mails. Key elements of Steeles memos on Carter Page have held up, too, including the claim that Page had secret meetings in Moscow with Rosneft and Kremlin officials. Steele may have named the wrong oil-company official, but, according to recent congressional disclosures, he was correct that a top Rosneft executive talked to Page about a payoff. According to the Democrats report, when Page was asked if a Rosneft executive had offered him a potential sale of a significant percentage of Rosneft, Page said, He may have briefly mentioned it.
And, just as the Kremlin allegedly feared, damaging financial details have surfaced about Manaforts dealings with Ukraine officials. Further, his suggestion that Trump had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue seems to have been confirmed by the pro-Russia changes that Trump associates made to the Republican platform. Special Counsel Muellers various indictments of Manafort have also strengthened aspects of the dossier.
Indeed, its getting harder every day to claim that Steele was simply spreading lies, now that three former Trump campaign officialsFlynn, Papadopoulos, and Rick Gates, who served as deputy campaign chairmanhave all pleaded guilty to criminal charges, and appear to be coöperating with the investigation. And, of course, Mueller has indicted thirteen Russian nationals for waging the kind of digital warfare that Steele had warned about.
On January 9th, Trumps personal attorney, Michael Cohen, filed a hundred-million-dollar defamation lawsuit against Fusion. He also sued BuzzFeed. Cohen tweeted, Enough is enough of the #fake #RussianDossier. Steele mentioned Cohen several times in the dossier, and claimed that Cohen met with Russian operatives in Prague, in the late summer of 2016, to pay them off and cover up the Russian hacking operation. Cohen denies that hes ever set foot in Prague, and has produced his passport to prove it. A congressional official has told Politico, however, that an inquiry into the allegation is still active. And, since the dossier was published, several examples have surfaced of Cohen making secretive payments to cover up other potentially damaging stories. Cohen recently acknowledged to the Times that he personally paid Stephanie Clifford, a porn star who goes by the name Stormy Daniels, a hundred and thirty thousand dollars; it is widely believed that Trump and Clifford had a secret sexual relationship.
In London, Steele is back at work, attending to other cases. Orbis has landed several new clients as a result of the publicity surrounding the dossier. The week after it became public, the company received two thousand job applications.
John Sipher, the former C.I.A. officer, predicts that Muellers probe will render the final verdict on Steeles dossier. People who say its all garbage, or all true, are being politically biased, Sipher said. Theres enough there to be worthy of further study. Professionals need to look at travel records, phone records, bank records, foreign police-service cameras, and check it all out. It will take professional investigators to run it to ground. He believes that Mueller, whose F.B.I. he worked with, is a hundred per cent doing that.
Until then, Sipher said, Steele, as a former English spook, is the perfect political foil: The Trump supporters can attack the messenger, because no one knows him or understands him, so you can paint him any way you want. Strobe Talbott, a Russia expert who served as Deputy Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration, and who has known Steele professionally for ten years, has watched the spectacle in Washington with regret. Talbott regards Steele as a smart, careful, professional, and congenial colleague who knows the post-Soviet space, and is exactly what he says he is. Yet, Talbott said, theyre trying to turn him into political poloniumtouch him and you die. ♦
This article appears in the print edition of the March 12, 2018, issue, with the headline The Man Behind the Dossier.
The rest of this VERY comprehensive article HERE:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier
Link to tweet
MORE MORE MORE
British ex-spy reveals Kremlin blocked Trump from naming Mitt Romney as secretary of state: report
Former MI6 spy Christopher Steele has reportedly told special counsel Robert Mueller that he believes the Russian government directly intervened to block President Donald Trump from appointing Mitt Romney as his secretary of state.
In a New Yorker profile of Steele published Monday, reporter Jane Mayer writes that Steele who authored the infamous Fusion GPS dossier alleging deep ties between President Donald Trump and the Russian government wrote a memo in late 2016 claiming that Russia worked to stop then-President elect Trump from making noted Russia hawk Romney his chief diplomat.
This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as a senior Russian official,' writes Mayer. The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what hed heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trumps initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney.
As Mayer notes, however, Trump had plenty of reasons to reject Romney as his secretary of state other than his views on Russia, including Romneys own blistering criticism of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump did eventually pass over Romney and instead named former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his top diplomat.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/british-ex-spy-reveals-kremlin-blocked-trump-naming-mitt-romney-secretary-state-report/
demmiblue
(36,823 posts)kpete
(71,964 posts)I love when DU shares!
peace,
kp
Mr. Ected
(9,670 posts)YES. COLLUSION. YES.
Scarsdale
(9,426 posts)office.? Wasn't he claiming that his wife Queen Anne was afflicted with MS, and so he needed to stay close to home? Did she request that he take a job, ANY job to get him out of the house??
not fooled
(5,801 posts)he was chosen to be the first mormon president. Wouldn't be at all surprised if he thinks he can use the Senate seat as a platform to launch another presidential run.
Hillary is supposed to just go away, yet this guy comes back from the political dead and it's all A-OK. The double standard is in full force with him.
kentuck
(111,052 posts)<snip>
Steele might have been expected to move on once his investigation of the bidding was concluded. But he had discovered that the corruption at fifa was global, and he felt that it should be addressed. The only organization that could handle an investigation of such scope, he felt, was the F.B.I. In 2011, Steele contacted an American agent hed met who headed the Bureaus division for serious crimes in Eurasia. Steele introduced him to his sources, who proved essential to the ensuing investigation. In 2015, the Justice Department indicted fourteen people in connection with a hundred and fifty million dollars in bribes and kickbacks. One of them was Chuck Blazer, a top fifa official who had embezzled a fortune from the organization and became an informant for the F.B.I. Blazer had an eighteen-thousand-dollar-per-month apartment in Trump Tower, a few floors down from Trumps residence.
Nobody had alleged that Trump knew of any fifa crimes, but Steele soon came across Trump Tower again. Several years ago, the F.B.I. hired Steele to help crack an international gambling and money-laundering ring purportedly run by a suspected Russian organized-crime figure named Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. The syndicate was based in an apartment in Trump Tower. Eventually, federal officials indicted more than thirty co-conspirators for financial crimes. Tokhtakhounov, though, eluded arrest, becoming a fugitive. Interpol issued a red notice calling for his arrest. But, in the fall of 2013, he showed up at the Miss Universe contest in Moscowand sat near the pageants owner, Donald Trump.
It was as if all criminal roads led to Trump Tower, Steele told friends.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)This looks good!
octoberlib
(14,971 posts)He acted with integrity and all Republicans can do is drag his name through the mud. I'm sorry he has to put up with their toxic shit.