Background and Fusion GPS In September 2015,
The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, retained
Fusion GPS, a Washington D.C. political research firm, to conduct research on Republican primary candidates including Trump. The research was not primarily related to Russia and ended once Trump secured the nomination. Fusion GPS was subsequently hired by the
Hillary Clinton campaign and the
Democratic National Committee through their attorney
Marc Elias at Perkins Coie. Fusion GPS then hired Steele to investigate possible Russia-related activities by Trump. In July 2016, Steele provided a report to an FBI agent in Rome, the same agent with whom he had worked on the FIFA investigation. In September 2016, Steele held off-the-record meetings with journalists from
The New York Times,
The Washington Post,
Yahoo! News,
The New Yorker, and
CNN.
Stated motivations Steele said he provided the dossier to both British and American intelligence officials because he believed the material represented a national security concern for both countries. According to Glenn Simpson, the Fusion GPS co-founder who hired Steele, Steele approached the FBI because he was concerned that Trump was being blackmailed by Russia. In a 2018 procedural ruling in the Gubarev defamation case, Senior Master Barbara Fontaine said Steele was "in many respects in the same position as a whistle-blower" in his actions sharing the dossier with Senator John McCain and briefing sections to the media.
End of cooperation with FBI Steele first became a
confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI in 2013 in connection with the
FIFA corruption case, though he considered the relationship contractual rather than a formal CHS arrangement. The
Inspector General report on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation noted "divergent expectations about Steele's conduct," as Steele considered his first duty to his paying clients rather than to the FBI. Steele disputed this characterization, stating on Twitter that the funds were offered to resettle sources willing to testify publicly, not to "prove up" the reporting. In November 2016, after Steele discussed his findings with the press, the FBI formally closed him as a confidential human source, though the FBI continued contact with Steele through DOJ official
Bruce Ohr.
Post-election work on the dossier Steele continued to work for Fusion GPS on the dossier without a client to pay him. After the election, Steele's dossier "became one of Washington's worst-kept secrets, and journalists worked to verify the allegations". Wood vouched for Steele's professionalism and integrity. In early December, McCain obtained a copy of the dossier from
David J. Kramer, a former U.S. State Department official working at
Arizona State University.
Revealed identity On 11 January 2017,
The Wall Street Journal revealed that Steele was the author of the dossier about Trump, citing "people familiar with the matter". On 7 March 2017, as some members of the United States Congress were expressing interest in meeting with or hearing testimony from Steele, he re-emerged after weeks in hiding, appearing publicly on camera and stating, "I'm really pleased to be back here working again at Orbis's offices in London today".
Disclosure and reactions In early January 2017, a two-page summary of the dossier was presented to US President
Barack Obama and incoming US President Donald Trump in meetings with Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper, FBI Director
James Comey, CIA Director
John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral
Mike Rogers. On 10 January 2017,
BuzzFeed News was the first media outlet to publish the full 35-page dossier. In publishing the Trump dossier, BuzzFeed said it had been unable to verify or corroborate the allegations. The UK issued a DSMA notice on 10 January 2017, requesting that the media not reveal Steele's identity, although the BBC and other UK news media released the information in news stories the same day. Trump said the dossier's allegations were "
fake news" during a press conference.
Vladimir Putin also dismissed the claims.
Ynet, an Israeli online news site, reported that US 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. Former British ambassador to Russia, Sir
Tony Brenton, read Steele's report. Speaking on
Sky News he said, "I've seen quite a lot of intelligence on Russia, and there are some things in it which look pretty shaky". Brenton expressed some doubts due to discrepancies in how the dossier described aspects of the hacking activities, as well as Steele's ability to penetrate the Kremlin and Russian security agencies, given that he is an outsider. On 15 March 2017, former Acting CIA Director
Michael Morell raised questions about the dossier. He was concerned about the accuracy of the information, due to the approach taken by Steele to gather it. Steele gave money to intermediaries and the intermediaries paid the sources. Morell said, "Unless you know the sources, and unless you know how a particular source acquired a particular piece of information, you can't judge the information—you just can't." Morell, described as a "Clinton ally" by
NBC News, strongly believes that Russia attempted to influence the election via social media, but that there is "smoke but no fire" on Trump's collusion with Russia. In a 2020
Washington Post editorial, Morell summarized his view that Russia launched a "human intelligence operation" against the Trump campaign, and that several officials in the Trump campaign may have passed on information due to "naivete".
Relationship to Crossfire Hurricane investigation The dossier did not trigger the opening of the FBI's
Crossfire Hurricane investigation; that investigation was opened on July 31, 2016, based on information about Trump campaign adviser
George Papadopoulos. However, the dossier was subsequently used in applications for
FISA surveillance warrants on Trump campaign adviser
Carter Page, with the December 2019 DOJ Inspector General report finding the dossier "played a central and essential role" in those applications. In early February 2018, the
Nunes memo, written by staff of Republican
U.S. Representative Devin Nunes (who was at the time Chair of the
House Intelligence Committee), acknowledged that information on
George Papadopoulos "triggered the opening of" the FBI's counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016. However, the memo argued that the
Steele dossier "formed an essential part" of the
FISA warrant application for
Carter Page and that the FBI had not adequately disclosed Steele's political motivations to the FISA court. In late February 2018, a
rebuttal memo by Democrats on the committee, led by ranking member
Adam Schiff, agreed that Steele's reporting "played no role in launching the counterintelligence investigation," noting it "did not reach the counterintelligence team investigating Russia at FBI headquarters until mid-September 2016, more than seven weeks after the FBI opened its investigation." However, the Democratic memo disputed the Nunes memo's characterization of the FISA process, arguing that the FBI had disclosed Steele's potential political bias to the court and that "DOJ cited multiple sources to support the case for surveilling Page" beyond the dossier. Subsequent government investigations examined the FBI's use of the dossier. The December 2019
DOJ Inspector General report identified 17 significant errors and omissions in the FISA applications that relied on the dossier, including the FBI's failure to disclose Steele's potential political motivations and information from Steele's primary sub-source that contradicted the dossier's claims. Special Counsel
John Durham's May 2023 report concluded that the FBI used Steele's reports in FISA applications "within days of receipt" despite being "unvetted and unverified," and that the FBI "did not and could not corroborate any of the substantive allegations" contained in the dossier.
Role in subsequent investigations In the summer of 2017, two Republican staffers for the
United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence travelled to London to investigate the dossier, visiting the office of Steele's lawyer but not meeting with Steele. In August 2018,
Representative Devin Nunes, Chair of the
House Intelligence Committee, travelled to London in an attempt to meet with the heads of
MI5,
MI6, and
GCHQ for information about Steele, but was rebuffed by the three agencies. Steele reportedly revealed the identities of the sources used in the dossier to the
FBI. Investigators from
Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation team met with Steele in September 2017 to interview him about the dossier's claims. The
United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was in contact with lawyers representing Steele. Over the course of two days in June 2019, Steele was interviewed in London by investigators from the
United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General regarding the
Steele dossier. They found his testimony surprising and his "information sufficiently credible to have to extend the investigation".
Legal action Several Russian individuals and entities named in the dossier filed defamation and data protection lawsuits against Steele, BuzzFeed, and Fusion GPS in the United States and United Kingdom.
Gubarev litigation Russian tech entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev sued both BuzzFeed (in Florida) and Steele (in the UK) after the dossier accused him and his company Webzilla of having "knowing involvement" in the hacking of Democratic Party computer systems. In December 2018, a federal judge in Florida granted BuzzFeed's motion for summary judgment on First Amendment grounds, ruling that the dossier was a document of public concern that had been briefed to two successive presidents.
Alfa Bank litigation Alfa Bank executives Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and German Khan sued Steele in both Washington, D.C. and the UK over claims in the dossier that they had delivered "large amounts of illicit cash" to Vladimir Putin when Putin was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. The U.S. lawsuit was dismissed in August 2018 on First Amendment grounds. In July 2020, the UK High Court ruled against Steele in what was his first defeat in dossier-related litigation. Justice Mark Warby found that claims in the dossier were "inaccurate or misleading as a matter of fact." The court found that the allegation about a former Alfa executive delivering payments to Putin was inaccurate because documentary evidence showed the individual did not begin working for Alfa until after Putin left the deputy mayor position. Steele acknowledged in cross-examination that the allegation was inaccurate. The court ordered Steele's firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, to pay £18,000 (approximately $23,000) each to Fridman and Aven for violating the UK Data Protection Act. The Alfa Bank executives also sued Fusion GPS in October 2017. That lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed in March 2022 after Alfa Bank was sanctioned by the United States and European Union following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Senate Republicans' referral for a criminal investigation On January 5, 2018,
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman
Chuck Grassley and Subcommittee Chairman
Lindsey Graham referred Steele to the
Justice Department for investigation of potential violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (false statements to federal authorities). Both senators stated the referral was "for further investigation only" and was "not intended to be an allegation of a crime." The referral alleged that Steele had made inconsistent statements to the FBI about his contacts with the media. Specifically, a September 2016
Yahoo News article by
Michael Isikoff containing information similar to the dossier was cited in the FISA application as apparent corroboration, but Grassley and Graham alleged Steele had denied being Isikoff's source when he in fact was. The referral noted that the FISA application "relied more heavily on Steele's credibility than on any independent verification or corroboration for his claims." Steele was not charged as a result of the referral.
U.S. Inspector General findings On December 9, 2019, the
DOJ Office of the Inspector General released a 434-page report examining the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation and FISA applications targeting
Carter Page. Inspector General
Michael E. Horowitz found that the FBI had adequate predication to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and found no documentary evidence that political bias influenced the decision to open the investigation. However, the report identified 17 "significant inaccuracies and omissions" in the four FISA applications used to surveil Page. Horowitz concluded that the Steele dossier "played a central and essential role" in the FBI's decision to seek the FISA order, with FBI and DOJ officials telling investigators the Steele reporting "pushed [the FISA proposal] over the line" in terms of establishing probable cause. The report found that the FBI did not have corroborating information for the specific allegations against Page in Steele's reporting when it submitted the first FISA application or subsequent renewals. Despite this, the FBI did not share this information with the DOJ attorneys preparing the subsequent FISA renewal applications, and continued to seek and obtain renewals without disclosing these concerns to the FISA court. ==Public statements and media==