Steele dossier

Two research operations and confusion between them The opposition research conducted by Fusion GPS on Donald Trump occurred in two distinct phases, each with different clients: • The client for the first phase was The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, which funded research into multiple Republican candidates, including Trump. This phase, from October 2015 to May 2016, was focused on Trump's domestic business and entertainment activities; was performed by Fusion GPS and used public sources and investigative reporter Wayne Barrett's files. : Immediately after the publication of the dossier, the media sometimes falsely assumed that the dossier started as a product of this research, so the Free Beacon released this statement: "none of the work product that the Free Beacon received appears in the Steele dossier". • The clients for the second phase were the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign. This phase, from April to December 2016, was focused on Trump's Russian connections; it was subcontracted by Fusion GPS to Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence and used Steele's own source network and public sources. Only this second phase produced the dossier. From April to early May 2016, The Washington Free Beacon and the DNC/Clinton Campaign were independently both clients of Fusion GPS. This overlap contributed to the media's confusion. The Washington Free Beacon operation does not produce the dossier In October 2015, before the official start of the 2016 Republican primary campaign, the founders of Fusion GPS were seeking political work and wrote an email to "a big conservative donor they knew who disliked Trump, [and] they were hired". He arranged for them to use The Washington Free Beacon, an American conservative political journalism website, for their general opposition research on several Republican presidential candidates, including Trump. The Free Beacon and Singer were "part of the conservative never-Trump movement". the conservative donor stopped funding the research on him. Due to media confusion over who produced the dossier, the Free Beacon issued a statement in October 2017 to debunk some false assumptions: Although the source of the Steele dossier's funding had already been reported correctly over a year before, and the Free Beacon had issued a statement to this effect in October 2017, By the spring of 2016, researchers at Fusion GPS had become so alarmed by what they had already learned about Trump that they felt the need "to do what they could to keep Trump out of the White House". In an October 2017 letter, Perkins Coie general counsel Matthew Gehringer described how, in March 2016, Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie and, knowing the Clinton campaign and the DNC were its clients, inquired whether its clients wished to pay Fusion GPS "to continue research regarding then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, research that Fusion GPS had conducted for one or more other clients during the Republican primary contest." In April 2016, Elias hired Fusion GPS to perform opposition research on Trump. In June 2016, Prior to and during some of his work on the dossier, Steele had been a paid confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI for information unrelated to the Russia investigation. The DNC and Clinton campaign treasurers reported they paid Perkins Coie a total of $12.4 million for legal and compliance services during the 2016 campaign. This led Trump to claim the dossier had cost $12 million, According to Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie paid them $1.02 million in fees and expenses, and Fusion GPS paid $168,000 to Steele's firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, to produce the dossier. Despite that, Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. continued to claim for more than a year that Steele was paid "millions of dollars" for his work. Orbis was hired between June and November 2016, and Steele produced 16 reports during that time, with a 17th report added in December. Steele believes 70–90 percent of the dossier is accurate, Steele delivered his reports individually to Fusion GPS as one- to three-page numbered reports. Luke Harding wrote: Steele felt what he had unearthed "was something of huge significance, way above party politics". American reporter Howard Blum described Steele's rationale for becoming a whistleblower: "The greater good trumps all other concerns." In 2018, Steele told a UK parliamentary investigation that Theresa May's British government covered up the evidence he provided them of Trump's Russian ties and took no actions, and that Boris Johnson suppressed a report about the intelligence in the dossier that was prepared by Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee. After long delay, the report was published on July 21, 2020. According to Simpson's testimony, Steele, who enjoyed a good working reputation "for the knowledge he had developed over nearly 20 years working on Russia-related issues for British intelligence, and he became "very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat". In early July 2016, Steele called seasoned FBI agent Michael Gaeta, who was stationed in Rome, and asked him to come to London so he could show him his findings. Because he was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Rome, Gaeta sought and was granted approval for the trip from Victoria Nuland, who was then the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. When he arrived in London on July 5, 2016, he met with Steele at his office, Shortly after, in July, the report was sent to an agent with expertise in criminal organizations and organized crime at the FBI's New York field office—essentially, the wrong person to handle a counterintelligence investigation. Meanwhile, in the July to September time frame, according to The Washington Post, CIA Director John Brennan had started an investigation with a secret task force "composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI". At the same time, he was busy creating his own dossier of material documenting that "Russia was not only attempting to interfere in the 2016 election, they were doing so in order to elect Donald Trump. ... [T]he entire intelligence community was on alert about this situation at least two months before [the dossier] became part of the investigation." The "Steele dossier has so far proven to be fairly accurate", LeTourneau wrote. In early August, which was after the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened, At that time, he handed over the June 20 and July 26 reports. Steele has disputed this description: "And to correct the Danchenko trial record, we were not offered $1 million by the FBI to 'prove up' our Trump-Russia reporting. Rather, we were told there were substantial funds to resettle sources in the US if they were prepared to testify in public. Understandably they were not." After public release The subsequent public release of the dossier in January 2017 stopped discussions between Steele and the FBI. The Inspector General's report later confirmed that the FBI had initially offered to pay Steele $15,000 for his trip to Rome, but when the FBI dropped Steele as a CHS because he had shared information with a third party "in late October 2016" (Mother Jones magazine), the payment was halted. Winer recounted that during their meeting in Washington, he was allowed to review Steele's reports, but not to keep a copy: "I prepared a two-page summary and shared it with [Victoria] Nuland, who indicated that, like me, she felt that the secretary of state needed to be made aware of this material", he wrote. Later in September, Winer discussed the report with Sidney Blumenthal, who revealed he had received similar information from Cody Shearer, a controversial political activist and former journalist who was close to the Clinton White House in the 1990s. Winer met with Steele again in late September and gave him a copy of Shearer's report, later known as the "second dossier". On September 19, 2016, after the report had been "languishing in the FBI's New York field office" for two months, Some reports referred to members of Trump's inner circle. After that point, he continued to share information with the FBI. Steele had become frustrated with the FBI, whom he believed failed to investigate his reports, choosing instead to focus on the investigation into Clinton's emails. According to The Independent, Steele came to believe there was a "cabal" inside the FBI, particularly its New York field office linked to Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani, because it blocked any attempts to investigate the links between Trump and Russia. Jane Mayer reported that when the Clinton campaign "indirectly employed" Steele, Elias created a "legal barrier" by acting as a "firewall" between the campaign and Steele. Thus, any details were protected by attorney–client privilege By "late July 2016", "Far from a secret campaign weapon, Steele turned out to be a secret kept from the campaign." On February 15, 2022, The Washington Post reported: "So far, there is no evidence that the Clinton campaign directly managed the Steele reporting or leaks about it to the media." CBS News reported that "at no point did the Clinton campaign or DNC direct Steele's probe into the Trump campaign. A source confirmed to CBS News that Clinton only learned about the now-infamous 'Trump dossier' after BuzzFeed News posted it", and that the dossier "was never ultimately used". Hints of existence When Fusion GPS first hired Steele, "they thought that 'no one would ever find out' about the discreet work Steele would perform. That prediction proved naive", BBC correspondent Paul Wood was allowed to see "a dozen" pages of the dossier in October 2016. Mother Jones story By the third quarter of 2016, many news organizations knew about the existence of the dossier that had been described as an "open secret" among journalists but chose not to publish information they could not confirm. Mother Jones was the first to report the existence of the dossier and that it was exclusively funded by Democrats. By October 2016, Steele had compiled 33 pages (16 reports), and he then passed on what he had discovered to David Corn, a reporter from Mother Jones magazine. 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. The article disclosed some of the dossier's allegations: According to The New York Times, after the election, Steele's dossier became one of Washington's "worst-kept secrets", and journalists worked to verify the allegations. and also vouched for Steele's professionalism and integrity. According to Simpson's August 22, 2017, testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Steele and David J. Kramer, a longtime McCain aide and former U.S. State Department official working at Arizona State University, met each other at the Halifax forum and discussed the dossier. Kramer told Steele that McCain wanted to "ask questions about it at the FBI. ... All we sort of wanted was for the government to do its job and we were concerned about whether the information that we provided previously had ever, you know, risen to the leadership level of the FBI." which did not yet include the last "Report 166", dated December 13, 2016. Graham described how he confronted Trump: "Senator McCain deserves better. There were some McCain people who took a piece of garbage and tried to go after Trump after the election. But I told the president it was not John McCain." Comey later confirmed that counterintelligence investigations were underway into possible links between Trump associates and Moscow. in what Fritsch has called an "ill-advised" Hail Mary pass. On the afternoon All four of the top intelligence chiefs met with Trump and his transition team. They were Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers. They informed Trump of the Russian election interference, Then, according to a pre-arranged plan, Brennan, Clapper, and Rogers left, and Comey then asked to speak with Trump alone. Comey then informed Trump of the dossier and its allegations about salacious tapes held by the Russians. Comey later reported he was very nervous. The previous day, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security told Comey to "be very careful", "choose your words carefully", and then "get outta there". Trump became very defensive, and Comey described the meeting as "really weird". On December 14, 2018, the FBI released a document called "Annex A", that was "part of [the] Russia dossier summary" used to brief Trump and Obama. The FBI withheld parts of the synopsis on the grounds that it remained classified and "because it pertains to ongoing investigations or court proceedings, originated with a confidential source or describes confidential investigative techniques or procedures". The statement also included the non-committal wording that the U.S. intelligence community "has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions". James Comey disagreed with Clapper's wording, but Clapper's wording remained unchanged. Comey later told the Office of the Inspector General of his concerns at that time, because he believed the dossier to be more reliable than indicated in Clapper's non-committal statement: Following the CNN report, The New York Times commented: "Mr. Steele has made clear to associates that he always considered the dossier to be raw intelligence—not established facts, but a starting point for further investigation." Christopher Burrows, co-founder of Orbis Business Intelligence, does not consider it a "dossier", but "information that is referred to as 'raw intelligence' in intelligence circles. ... a mixture of knowledge, rumor and hearsay. ... [A]n intelligence agency would enrich the findings with data, test probabilities and write analyses. It's an elaborate process. But Steele is not an intelligence agency." Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan called it "scurrilous allegations dressed up as an intelligence report meant to damage Donald Trump", while The New York Times noted that the publication sparked a debate centering on the use of unsubstantiated information from anonymous sources. BuzzFeeds 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. A judge in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia agreed with this reasoning when he threw out a libel suit against Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence. Although the Columbia Journalism Review had originally (January 11, 2017) backed BuzzFeed publication of the dossier, he later (November 17, 2021) described it as "a document that was never designed to meet the standards of good journalism", noting that its credibility had collapsed, and concluding that it was the source of "a lot of nonsense and misdirection" in subsequent media coverage and should not have been published at all. Sara Fischer, media reporter for Axios, was critical of the initial press coverage of the dossier before it had been adequately scrutinized. The draft dossier's publication by BuzzFeed has always been defended by Jack Shafer, Politicos senior media writer, as well as by Richard Tofel of ProPublica and the Columbia Journalism Review. Shafer defended the public's right to know about the allegations against Trump, and saw a parallel in Judge Ungaro's ruling in the defamation suit filed by Aleksej Gubarev. Ungaro wrote that the "privilege exists to protect the media while they gather information needed for the public to exercise effective oversight of the government". She also noted that, before the FBI received any reports from Steele, they had "already opened a counterintelligence investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign". In relation to a defamation lawsuit filed by Gubarev against BuzzFeed regarding their publication of the draft dossier, Senior Master Barbara Fontaine said Steele was "in many respects in the same position as a whistle-blower" because of his actions "in sending part of the dossier to Senator John McCain and a senior government national security official, and in briefing sections of the US media". She said that "it was not known who provided the dossier to BuzzFeed but Mr Steele's evidence was that he was 'horrified and remains horrified' that it was published at all, let alone without substantial redactions." The founders of Fusion GPS felt so alarmed by what sources reported to Steele that they have defended the fact that they and Steele used intermediaries to pass dossier content to the authorities, but, regarding the publication by BuzzFeed, if it had been up to them, "Steele's reporting never would have seen the light of day." and Christopher Burrows said: "We didn't expect the findings on Russia to reach the public." They were also alarmed that the publication of the draft dossier would endanger sources, and Glenn Simpson immediately phoned Ken Bensinger at BuzzFeed: "Take those fucking reports down right now! You are going to get people killed!" Steele wrote: Six years after publishing the dossier, Ben Smith, editor of BuzzFeed, has described his regrets about how it was done: Format When BuzzFeed published the dossier in January 2017, the individual reports were one to three pages long, numbered, and page numbers 1–35 had been handwritten at the bottom. All but one had a typed date at the bottom. Each of the first 16 reports (pre-election memoranda was numbered 166. Of the original reports numbered 1–166, only certain reports were used for the dossier, and it is unknown what happened with the content of the other reports: "For example, the first report is labeled as '080', with no indication given as to where the original 79 antecedents might have gone. The second report is then labeled '086', creating yet another mystery as to 81 through 85, and what content they might contain that would otherwise bolster or contextualize what came before or what follows." In September 2017, Steele revealed he "intentionally left sequential gaps in the numbering of his election-related reports to obscure the actual number of reports being produced on the subject as well as to obscure the timing of the reports." Each report started with a page heading in the same style as the first one shown here: {{quote box COMPANY INTELLIGENCE REPORT 2016/080 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE DONALD TRUMP'S ACTIVITIES IN RUSSIA AND COMPROMISING RELATIONSHIP WITH THE KREMLIN but, because of the legal difference between an "expenditure" by a campaign and a "contribution" to a campaign, it does not run afoul of Federal Election Commission laws (52 U.S. Code § 30121) forbidding foreign nationals from contributing to or aiding political campaigns, and that applies to any form of aid, not just cash donations. Philip Bump has explained "why the Trump Tower meeting may have violated the law—and the Steele dossier likely didn't": The Trump Tower meeting involved a voluntary offer of aid ("a campaign contribution") By contrast, Steele's work was a legal campaign expense Jane Mayer referred to the same meeting and contrasted the difference in reactions to Russian attempts to support Trump: When Donald Trump Jr. was offered "dirt" on Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump", instead of "going to the F.B.I., as Steele had" when he learned Russia was helping Trump, Trump's son accepted the support by responding: "If it's what you say, I love it." In his 2021 book Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies, former New York Times journalist Barry Meier commented: "media organizations didn't conduct internal postmortems or public reconstructions about how they handle the dossier story [because] it would have required them to disclose the toxic relationship that had developed between journalists and private spies." Journalist David Corn of Mother Jones described the dossier as "a convenient foil, their false flag" for the "Trump gang": As long as it is not released, the alleged pee tape has a lasting effect. When Steele was asked why the Russians had not released the tape, he replied "It hasn't needed to be released. ... I think the Russians felt they'd got pretty good value out of Donald Trump when he was president of the U.S." The founders of Fusion GPS have written: "Ultimately, whether the incident detailed in the dossier is true or not is likely not of paramount importance. The Russians had ample kompromat against Trump and his top aides with or without any pee tape." == Authorship and sources ==

The dossier is based on information from witting and unwitting anonymous sources known to counterintelligence specialist Christopher Steele. 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, realizing it was "only a matter of time until his name became public knowledge", fled into hiding with his family in fear of "a prompt and potentially dangerous backlash against him from Moscow". His friends later reported that he feared assassination by Russians. The Wall Street Journal revealed Steele's name the next day, on January 11. Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, for whom Steele worked at the time the dossier was authored, and its director Christopher Burrows, a counterterrorism specialist, 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 for 22 years, including four years as "an undercover agent" and headed MI6's Russia Desk for three years at the end of his MI6 career. He entered MI6 in 1987, directly after his graduation from Cambridge University. He currently works for Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, a private intelligence company he co-founded in London. Sir Andrew Wood, the former British ambassador to Moscow, has vouched for Steele's reputation. FBI investigators reportedly treat Steele "as a peer", whose experience as a trusted Russia expert has included assisting the Justice Department, British prime ministers, and at least one U.S. president. Steele's biases and motivations toward Trump appear to have changed over time. Starting in 2007, many years before he started his opposition research on Trump, he repeatedly met Ivanka Trump over several years, had a "friendly relationship" with her, and was "favorably disposed" to the Trump family. They even discussed the possibility of the Trump Organization using the services of Orbis Business Intelligence, but no arrangements were made. Simpson has also confirmed that "there was no pre-existing animus toward Trump by Steele or Fusion". Later, as Steele was preparing the dossier before the 2016 election, Bruce Ohr said Steele, based on what he learned during his research, attitudes that have been described by Julian Sanchez as "entirely natural, not suggestive of preexisting bias", considering Steele believed his own reporting. Steele has disputed Ohr's statement, and he told interviewers for Inspector General Horowitz that Ohr's wording was a paraphrase of his sentiments and not an exact quote, and the IG Report continues: "Steele told us that based on what he learned during his research he was concerned that Trump was a national security risk and he had no particular animus against Trump otherwise." This resulted in "a second dossier for the FBI on Donald Trump". It included further claims of Russian election meddling; "alleged Russian interference linked to Mr Trump and his associates"; claims about the "existence of further sex tapes"; and "further details of Mr Manafort's alleged Russian contacts". Instead, the report found that Steele relied on a "Primary Sub-source", later revealed as Igor Danchenko, who "used a network of [further] sub-sources to gather the information that was relayed to Steele". District Judge Anthony Trenga analyzed the question of Steele's sources and acknowledged that Steele had other sources than Danchenko. He countered Special Counsel John Durham's contention "that Danchenko was Steele's primary source of information for the Steele Reports writ large" by noting that Steele used other sources than Danchenko: "Nor is there any evidence that ... Steele only, or almost entirely, used Danchenko as his source for the Reports." In an Alfa-Bank lawsuit, Steele revealed that he "did not rely on Danchenko alone, instead obtaining information from "one main source and a couple of subsidiary sources". According to Steele: "The dossier was intelligence obtained from 3 sources and approximately 20 sub-sources." Simpson has said that, to his knowledge, Steele did not pay any of his sources. According to investigative reporter Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, Orbis has a large number of paid "collectors" (also called subsources) whose information came from a network of often unwitting sub-subsources. Since payment of these sub-subsources can be seen as bribery or might encourage exaggeration, they are unpaid. Howard Blum said Steele leaned on sources "whose loyalty and information he had bought and paid for over the years". He was interviewed for three days by the FBI and said that Steele misstated or exaggerated certain information. Immediately after Barr's unmasking of Danchenko, Graham posted it to the Senate Judiciary Committee's web site. The declassification order was criticized by former law enforcement officials as an unmasking that could endanger other sources and make the FBI's work harder. in 2016 to gather information, These included Danchenko having allegedly obscured his relationship with Charles Dolan Jr. and having allegedly fabricated contacts with Sergei Millian. On October 14, 2022, the judge dropped one charge, and four days later, Danchenko was acquitted of the other four charges, thus dealing special counsel Durham his second trial loss. Value as FBI source During his trial, two FBI officials revealed Danchenko was "an uncommonly valuable" CHS for several years whose role went far beyond the Steele dossier, and that his reports were used in 25 investigations and 40 intelligence reports between 2017 and 2020. FBI Special Agent Kevin Helson, Danchenko's handler, testified that Danchenko was considered "a model" informant who "reshaped the way the U.S. even perceives threats," and that losing him as a source "harmed national security." Olga Galkina Olga Galkina, labeled by the FBI as "Source 3", was alleged to be an unwitting sub-source in Danchenko's network of sources and "stood as the dossier's most important contributor". Galkina stated in an affidavit that "she had no idea Danchenko had used 'private discussions or private communications' as dossier material. 'I believe that Mr. Danchenko identified me as Sub-Source 3 to create more authoritativeness for his work'." According to the Wall Street Journal, she was Steele's source for the hacking accusations against Webzilla, and the source of the allegations about a secret meeting in Prague involving Michael Cohen and three colleagues. He denies being a dossier source. Although Steele told the FBI that Person 1 was a "boaster" and "egoist" who "may engage in some embellishment", the FBI omitted these "caveats about his source" from the FISA application. On November 12, 2021, following the November 4 indictment of Igor Danchenko, The Washington Post corrected and removed the "parts of two stories regarding the Steele dossier" that identified Millian as a source. CNN reported that "Millian has since said he was 'framed' by Danchenko and has publicly denied that they ever spoke, though there is no indication in the indictment that Millian ever denied it to the FBI or under oath." In October 2022, judge Anthony Trenga cast doubt on Millian and two 2020 emails he wrote denying he talked to Danchenko: The "emails lack the necessary 'guarantees of trustworthiness' as the government does not offer direct evidence that Millian actually wrote the emails, and, even if he did, Millian possessed opportunity and motive to fabricate and/or misrepresent his thoughts." Charles Dolan Jr. Dolan was another unwitting source for Danchenko. He was "well-known among Russia experts" and also "well-connected in Russian President Vladimir Putin's inner circle". He was a public relations executive and had "numerous, but not high-profile, roles in Democratic circles". Discrepancies between sources and their allegations One of the findings of the 2019 Inspector General's report related to conflicting accounts of sourced content in the dossier. When Steele's Primary Sub-source (Danchenko) was later interviewed by the FBI about the allegations sourced to them, he gave accounts that conflicted with Steele's renderings in the dossier and implied that Steele "misstated or exaggerated" their statements. Risk of contamination with Russian disinformation considered The dossier has been attacked by Trump supporters, especially Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, with claims it contained Russian disinformation. Those claims were rejected: Under the heading "Crossfire Hurricane Team's Assessment of Potential Russian Influence on the Steele Election Reporting," the Inspector General's investigative team examined how seriously the FBI Crossfire Hurricane team had considered "whether Steele's election reports, or aspects of them, were the product of a Russian disinformation campaign" and rejected the claims. This Deripaska/Steele association has been touted as a means whereby the Russians could get disinformation inserted into the dossier. The FBI rejected this theory as Priestap found it implausible, The IG report stated: Bill Priestap further explained that "the Russians  ... favored Trump, they're trying to denigrate Clinton  ... [and] I don't know why you'd run a disinformation campaign to denigrate Trump on the side." Jane Mayer describes how The IG Report said Steele explained how sophisticated the Russians were at planting and controlling misinformation, but Steele "had no evidence that his reporting was 'polluted' with Russian disinformation". The inspector general's report ultimately concluded "that more should have been done to examine Steele's contacts with intermediaries of Russian oligarchs in order to assess those contacts as potential sources of disinformation that could have influenced Steele's reporting". In 2019, during Trump's first impeachment inquiry, national security expert Fiona Hill stated Steele may have been "played" by the Russians to spread disinformation. == Allegations ==

with Russian President Vladimir Putin at 2018 summit in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16, 2018 While the dossier played a significant role in initially highlighting the general friendliness between Trump and the Putin administration, the corroboration status of specific allegations is highly variable. The following allegations have been publicly corroborated by U.S. intelligence agencies, the January 2017 ODNI report, In the sections below, the allegations are simply presented as they are, but in the Corroboration status of specific allegations section, the widely varying verification status for a number of allegations is examined, sometimes with conflicting reports for or against their veracity, including whether some sources have rejected them. Each allegation should be read as "Sources allege that" (and then the allegation). Cultivation of Trump • ... that "Russian authorities" had cultivated Trump "for at least 5 years", and that the operation was "supported and directed" by Putin. (Report 80) • ... that the Russian government's support for Trump was originally conducted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then by the Federal Security Service (FSB), and was eventually directly handled by the Russian presidency because of its "growing significance over time". (Report 130) The dossier describes two different Russian operations. The first was an attempt, lasting many years, to find ways to influence Trump, probably not so much "to make Mr. Trump a knowing agent of Russia", but most likely to make him a source the Russians could use. This operation utilized kompromat (Russian: short for "compromising material") and proposals of business deals. The second operation was very recent and involved contacts with Trump's representatives during the campaign to discuss the hacking of the DNC and Podesta. with information willingly exchanged in both directions. (Report 95) • ... that Trump had "so far declined various sweetener real estate business deals", but had "accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin", notably on his political rivals. (Report 80) • ... that Trump associates had established "an intelligence exchange [with the Kremlin] for at least 8 years". That Trump and his team had delivered "intelligence on the activities, business and otherwise, in the US of leading Russian oligarchs and their families", as requested by Putin. There he employed "a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show in front of him" in order to defile the bed used by the Obamas on an earlier visit. The alleged incident from 2013 was reportedly filmed and recorded by the FSB (Report 80) • ... that Trump was vulnerable to blackmail from Russian authorities and that the authorities were "able to blackmail him if they so wished". (Reports 80, 95, 97, 113) • ... that the Kremlin had promised Trump they would not use the kompromat collected against him "as leverage, given high levels of voluntary co-operation forthcoming from his team". (Report 97) • ... that Trump had explored the real estate sectors in St. Petersburg and Moscow, "but in the end TRUMP had had to settle for the use of extensive sexual services there from local prostitutes rather than business success". (Report 95) Kompromat: Clinton (2010s) • ... that Putin ordered the maintenance of a secret dossier on Hillary Clinton, with content dating back to the time of her husband's presidency. The dossier comprised eavesdropped conversations, either from bugging devices or from phone intercepts; it did not contain "details/evidence of unorthodox or embarrassing behavior", but focused more on "things she had said which contradicted her current positions on various issues". (Report 80) • ... that the Clinton dossier had been collated by the FSB (Report 94) • ... that Cohen played a "key role" in the Trump–Russia relationship arranging cover-ups and "deniable cash payments", and the recent appearance of the stolen DNC emails on WikiLeaks, and that the reason for using WikiLeaks was "plausible deniability". (Report 95) • ... that "the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of TRUMP and senior members of his campaign team". (Report 101) • ... that Page had "conceived and promoted" the idea of [the Russians] leaking the stolen DNC emails to WikiLeaks during the 2016 Democratic National Convention. (Report 102) • ... that the hacking of the DNC servers was performed by Romanian hackers ultimately controlled by Putin and paid by both Trump and Putin. (Report 166) • ... that Cohen, together with three colleagues, secretly met with Kremlin officials in the Prague offices of Rossotrudnichestvo in August 2016, (Report 166) Kickbacks and quid pro quo agreements to lift sanctions (2013) • ... that Viktor Yanukovych, the former pro-Russian President of Ukraine, had told Putin he had been making supposedly untraceable (Reports 95, 135, 166) • ... that Sechin "offered PAGE/TRUMP's associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft" (worth about $11 billion) in exchange for Trump lifting the sanctions against Russia after his election. (Report 101) Russian spy withdrawn • ... that Russia had hastily withdrawn from Washington their diplomat Mikhail Kalugin (misspelled as "Kulagin"), whose prominent role in the interference operation should remain hidden. (Report 111) Use of botnets and porn traffic by hackers • ... that Aleksej Gubarev's "XBT/Webzilla and its affiliates had been using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct 'altering operations' against the Democratic Party leadership" and that Gubarev had been coerced by the FSB and was a significant player. (Report 166) == FBI's attempts to investigate allegations stopped ==

The FBI's attempts to corroborate the dossier's allegations stopped shortly after Trump came to office in 2017, a fact criticized later by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The veracity status of many allegations is still somewhat unknown, with the FBI's inadequate attempts to corroborate them being criticized by the Senate Intelligence Committee: This lack of "thoroughness and rigor" leaves many allegations with an uncorroborated status. Lawfare wrote: "There is also a good deal in the dossier that has not been corroborated in the official record and perhaps never will be—whether because it's untrue, unimportant or too sensitive," but "none of it, to our knowledge, has been disproven". After a slow progression in the winter and spring of 2017, the FBI stopped all efforts to corroborate the dossier in May 2017 when Mueller's Special Counsel Office (SCO) took over the Russia investigation. As for the Senate Committee itself: The Committee also "lost access to all relevant information regarding FBI's efforts to verify the dossier, as it did with all information the SCO declared to touch its 'equities'." == Corroboration status with passage of time ==

The following allegations have been publicly corroborated by U.S. intelligence agencies, the January 2017 ODNI report, and the Mueller report: "that the Russian government was working to get Mr. Trump elected"; that Russia sought "to cultivate people in Trump's orbit"; that Trump campaign officials and associates had secretive contacts with Russian officials and agents; that Putin favored Trump over Hillary Clinton; that Putin personally ordered an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's campaign and to "undermine public faith in the US democratic process"; and that he ordered cyberattacks on both parties. Some other allegations are plausible but not specifically confirmed, and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven. In a December 2018 Lawfare report titled "The Steele Dossier: A Retrospective", the authors described how, after two years, they "wondered whether information made public as a result of the Mueller investigation—and the passage of two years—has tended to buttress or diminish the crux of Steele's original reporting." To make their judgments, they analyzed a number of "trustworthy and official government sources" and found that "These materials buttress some of Steele's reporting, both specifically and thematically. The dossier holds up well over time, and none of it, to our knowledge, has been disproven." They concluded with: Simpson has described his own and Steele's confidence in Steele's work: "Nothing that I have seen disproves anything in the dossier. Which isn't to say I think it's all true. I don't think Chris thinks it's all true, either. But there's a difference between things being fake or a hoax or a fraud or a lie and things being incorrect." Steele, the author of the dossier, said he believes that 70–90% of the dossier is accurate, although he gives the "golden showers" allegation a 50% chance of being true. As of August 2024, Igor Danchenko "still believes ... that there's a pee tape". The following sections describe how some allegations have been corroborated, while others remain unverified because they may be "untrue, unimportant or too sensitive". There are sometimes conflicting reports for or against their veracity, and, in some cases, there are discrepancies between sources and their allegations. == Corroboration status of specific allegations ==

Certain allegations have been corroborated, and the public knows which ones, but the public does not know the status of some other allegations that may have also been corroborated ("portions of the material were corroborated" "Comey revealed that elements of the dossier had been confirmed": Cultivation of Trump through time Source(s) for Report 80 (June 2016) alleged that the Kremlin had been cultivating Trump for "at least 5 years". and was cultivated as an "asset" by Russian intelligence since 1977: "Russian intelligence gained an interest in Trump as far back as 1977, viewing Trump as an exploitable target." Luke Harding writes that documents show Czechoslovakia spied on Trump during the 1970s and 1980s, when he was married to Ivana Trump, his Czechoslovakia-born first wife. Harding writes that the Czechoslovak government spied on Trump because of his political ambitions and notability as a businessman. It is known that there were close ties between Czechoslovakia's StB and the USSR's KGB. Harding also describes how, already since 1987, the Soviet Union was interested in Trump. In his book Collusion, Harding asserts that the "top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his 1987 Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB." Then-KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov "wanted KGB staff abroad to recruit more Americans". Harding proceeds to describe the KGB's cultivation process, and posits that they may have opened a file on Trump as early as 1977, when he married Ivana. "According to files in Prague, declassified in 2016, Czech spies kept a close eye on the couple in Manhattan, ... [with] periodic surveillance of the Trump family in the United States." Russian assistance to the Trump campaign On April 26, 2016, George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor, held a breakfast meeting with Joseph Mifsud, a man described by James B. Comey as a "Russian agent". Mifsud, who claimed "substantial connections to Russian officials", Papadopoulos later bragged "that the Trump campaign was aware the Russian government had dirt on Hillary Clinton". According to John Sipher, "court papers show he was, indeed, told by a Russian agent that the Kremlin had derogatory information in the form of 'thousands of e-mails'." encouraged Papadopoulos to fly to Russia and meet with agents of the Russian Foreign Ministry, who reportedly wanted to share "Clinton dirt" with the Trump campaign. When Donald Trump Jr. learned of the offer, he welcomed it by responding: "If it's what you say, I love it." Instead, the meeting was used to discuss lifting of the Magnitsky Act economic sanctions that had been imposed on Russia in 2012, codenamed Project Lakhta, including an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's electoral chances and "undermine public faith in the US democratic process", as well as ordering cyber attacks on the Democratic and Republican parties. John Brennan and James Clapper testified to Congress that Steele's dossier "played no role" in the intelligence community assessment about Russian interference in the 2016 election, testimony which was reaffirmed by an April 2020 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report that found the dossier was not used to "support any of its analytic judgments". There were conflicting opinions between the FBI and CIA on whether to include any of the dossier's allegations in the body of the ICA report, with the FBI pushing for inclusion, and the CIA countering that the dossier "was not completely vetted and did not merit inclusion in the body of the report". After much discussion, the CIA prevailed, and the final ICA report only included a short summary of Steele's reporting in the "highly classified" Annex A. There were also other reasons to not include it, and CNN wrote that: In July 2025, when the second Trump administration resumed attacks on the dossier, John Brennan, and others who contributed to the ODNI assessment, Brennan and Clapper responded in The New York Times: Chuck Grassley provided that explanation: "We have only limited corroboration of source's [Steele's] reporting in this case and did not use it to reach the analytic conclusions of the CIA/FBI/NSA assessment." The New York Times said "Parts of the dossier have proved prescient." In The New Yorker, Jane Mayer said the allegation that Trump was favored by the Kremlin, and that they offered Trump's campaign dirt on Clinton, has proven true. In February 2019, Michael Cohen implicated Trump before the U.S. Congress, writing that in late July 2016, Trump had knowledge that Roger Stone was communicating with WikiLeaks about releasing emails stolen from the DNC in 2016. Stone denied this and accused Cohen of lying to Congress. Stone was later convicted before being pardoned by Trump, and it was confirmed that Stone had been in contact with WikiLeaks. "That the Russians interfered in the election in hopes of helping Trump win" has been described as the dossier's "core theme – later widely accepted by the news media and the U.S. intelligence community". Fake news and social media misinformation Source(s) for Report 166 alleged that "hackers ... had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the CLINTON campaign". The Internet Research Agency (IRA) conducted an extensive campaign, including fake news and misinformation in social media, to undermine Clinton's campaign. On February 16, 2018, the IRA, along with 13 Russian individuals and two other Russian organizations, was indicted following an investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller with charges stemming from "impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of government". John Sipher reported on this dossier allegation and the documentation of the Russian efforts to harm Clinton. Researchers at Oxford University found that "An automated army of pro-Donald J. Trump chatbots overwhelmed similar programs supporting Hillary Clinton five to one in the days leading up to the presidential election." In March 2017, former FBI agent Clint Watts told Congress about websites involved in the Russian disinformation campaign "some of which mysteriously operate from Eastern Europe and are curiously led by pro-Russian editors of unknown financing". Aaron Blake examined two studies that indicate these efforts "made a significant difference...[and] may well have cost Clinton the presidency". Manafort's and others' cooperation with Russian efforts Dossier source(s) allege that Manafort, who had worked for Russian interests in Ukraine for many years, to prove the existence of a formal written or oral "conspiracy", some consider the actions of Manafort, and the myriad secret contacts between other Trump campaign members and associates with Russians to be the alleged "co-operation" with the Russian's "'sweeping and systematic' operation in 2016 to help Trump win", These reported intercepts are considered "remarkably consistent with the raw intelligence in the Steele Dossier ... [that] states that 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'." Russian conversations confirmed On February 10, 2017, CNN reported that: Moscow weekend, November 810, 2013 Dossier source(s) allege that Trump "hated" Obama so much that when he stayed at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow, he hired the presidential suite (Report 80). Igor Danchenko alleges that "Trump was with some powerful Russian oligarchs, who brought the sex workers." Thomas Roberts, the host of the Miss Universe 2013 pageant, confirmed that "Trump was in Moscow for one full night and at least part of another." According to flight records, Keith Schiller's testimony, social media posts, and Trump's close friend, Aras Agalarov, Trump arrived by private jet on Friday morning, November 8, going to the Ritz-Carlton hotel and booking in. The night of November 8–9, he attended Aras Agalarov's 58th birthday party at 10:00 p.m. hours described by Rob Goldstone as a "five-hour window" of time that Trump was afforded to sleep early Saturday morning". Jennifer Rubin described Trump's fake alibi as "strong evidence of guilt". The morning of November 9, Facebook posts showed he was still at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and other sources document that he then had a busy day with various meetings and tours of Moscow. Legacy of "pee tape" rumor James Comey wrote in his book A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership that Trump asked him to have the FBI investigate the "pee tape" allegation "because he wanted to convince his wife that it wasn't true". The sincerity of Trump's denials was doubted by Comey who, after Trump repeatedly lied to him about the alleged incident, came to believe the incident may have happened. Regarding the "golden showers" allegation, Michael Isikoff and David Corn have stated that Steele's "faith in the sensational sex claim would fade over time. ... As for the likelihood of the claim that prostitutes had urinated in Trump's presence, Steele would say to colleagues, 'It's 50–50'." The book Russian Roulette says that Steele's confidence in the truth of "the Ritz-Carlton story was 'fifty-fifty'. He treated everything in the dossier as raw intelligence material—not proven fact." Slate journalist Ashley Feinberg investigated the pee tape rumor and linked to a 25-second video of the purported occurrence. She concluded that the tape was "fake", but "very far from being an obvious fake". A key "discrepancy", according to Feinberg, was that the video apparently showed the presidential suite as it appeared after a 2015 renovation, despite the purported occurrence being in November 2013, before the renovation occurred. The video had been in circulation since at least January 26, 2019. Describing the leaked Kremlin papers mention of kompromat on Trump, John Dobson, former British diplomat, wrote: "[T]he report confirms that the Kremlin possessed 'kompromat' on the future president, which the document claims was collected during 'certain events' that happened during Trump's trip to Moscow in November 2013." Marc Bennetts, correspondent in Russia for The Times, also wrote about that mention: : On August 25, 2024, Rolling Stone revealed that Danchenko "still believes – despite never having viewed it, despite his evidence really only being rumors and innuendo that he gathered but that many discredit – that there's a pee tape": The Senate Intelligence Committee report Mueller's office "twice interviewed Rtskhiladze" (April 4, 2018, and May 10, 2018), by claiming that the "tapes were fake", but District Judge Christopher R. Cooper cast doubt on that claim. He said Rtskhiladze "undercut" his claim by speaking as if getting recorded was a real consequence of indiscretions committed around Agalarov/Crocus, and because Rtskhiladze's own words indicated "that the tapes may have been real": In "2014 or 2015", after learning of the rumor, Cohen asked Rtskhiladze for help "to find out if the tape was real", It was only after the Steele dossier's publication in 2017 that Trump publicly mentioned the rumor and focused his ire on the dossier as if it were the creator of a new rumor. Some other sources did the same. Trump and some sources falsely claim Steele "made-up" In fact, Trump already knew about reports, "separate from" the much later Steele dossier, of "alleged compromising tapes of him in Moscow": The Agalarovs were also linked to several other events involving Trump, including the invitation to share "dirt" on Clinton at the Trump Tower meeting and knowledge of Trump's alleged sexual activities in Russia, both in St. Petersburg and the Moscow Ritz-Carlton. The dossier's sources reported that Aras Agalarov "would know most of the details of what the Republican presidential candidate had got up to" in St. Petersburg. came from a Russian who was accompanying Emin Agalarov". A footnote in the Mueller Report describes how Giorgi Rtskhiladze reported that he had successfully stopped the "flow of ... compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group" [owned by Agalarov]. At the joint press conference, when asked directly about the subject, Putin denied having any kompromat on Trump. Even though Trump was reportedly given a "gift from Putin" the weekend of the pageant, Putin argued "that he did not even know Trump was in Russia for the Miss Universe pageant in 2013 when, according to the Steele dossier, video of Trump was secretly recorded to blackmail him." In reaction to Trump's actions at the summit, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) spoke in the Senate: "Millions of Americans will continue to wonder if the only possible explanation for this dangerous and inexplicable behavior is the possibility—the very real possibility—that President Putin holds damaging information over President Trump." Several operatives and lawyers in the U.S. intelligence community reacted strongly to Trump's performance at the summit. They described it as "subservien[ce] to Putin" and a "fervent defense of Russia's military and cyber aggression around the world, and its violation of international law in Ukraine" which they saw as "harmful to US interests". They also suggested he was either a "Russian asset" or a "useful idiot" for Putin, and that he looked like "Putin's puppet". Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wondered "if Russians have something on Trump", and former CIA director John Brennan, who has accused Trump of "treason", tweeted: "He is wholly in the pocket of Putin." Former acting CIA director Michael Morell has called Trump "an unwitting agent of the Russian federation", and former CIA director Michael V. Hayden said Trump was a "useful fool" who is "manipulated by Moscow". House Speaker Nancy Pelosi questioned Trump's loyalty when she asked him: "[Why do] all roads lead to Putin?" Former KGB major Yuri Shvets asserts that Trump has been cultivated as an "asset" by Russian intelligence since 1977: "Russian intelligence gained an interest in Trump as far back as 1977, viewing Trump as an exploitable target." 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. described what he sees as more "evidence of Trump's subservience to Putin", and he tied it to new government confirmations of rumors about Trump's alleged "dalliances with Russian women during visits to Moscow" that leave "him open to blackmail", rumors mentioned in the 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report: While the Senate Intelligence Committee report extensively explored the possibility of Russian kompromat, much of the discussion was redacted in the public version of the report. Ultimately, the Senate Intelligence Committee "did not establish" that Russia had kompromat on Trump. On the subject of kompromat, Bruce Ohr testified to the House Judiciary and Oversight committees that on July 30, 2016, Steele told him that "Russian intelligence believed 'they had Trump over a barrel' ... [a] broader sentiment [that] is echoed in Steele's dossier". Paul Wood described the source as "another Danchenko contact, a 'former senior intelligence officer now a Kremlin official'. This was later said to be no less than a former head of Russia's foreign intelligence services. This source did not talk specifically about the "pee tape" but, Danchenko told Steele, he said they had sexual kompromat on Trump going back years. 'We've got him over a barrel.'" The Mueller Report confirmed that the dossier was correct that the Kremlin was behind the appearance of the DNC emails on WikiLeaks, noting that the Trump campaign "showed interest in WikiLeaks's releases of documents and welcomed their potential to damage candidate Clinton". It was later confirmed that Roger Stone was in contact with WikiLeaks. Timing of release of hacked emails Dossier source(s) allege that Carter Page "conceived and promoted" the idea of [the Russians] leaking the stolen DNC emails to WikiLeaks during the 2016 Democratic National Convention The New York Times reported that Assange told Democracy Now! "he had timed their release to coincide with the Democratic convention". The leaks started the day before the DNC national convention, a timing that was seen as suspicious by David Shedd, a former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who said: "The release of emails just as the Democratic National Convention is getting underway this week has the hallmarks of a Russian active measures campaign." Manafort and kickback payments from Yanukovych Dossier source(s) allege that Russia-friendly president Yanukovych, whom Manafort advised for over a decade, had told Putin he had been making supposedly untraceable Manafort has denied receiving the payments. Manafort was accused of receiving $750,000 in "illegal, off-the-books payments from Ukraine's pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych before he was toppled". From 2006 to at least 2009, Manafort had a $10 million annual contract with Putin ally and aluminum magnate, Oleg Deripaska, a contract under which Manafort had proposed he would "influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin's government". Page met with Rosneft officials (2017) (2016) On November 2, 2017, Carter Page testified, without a lawyer, for more than six hours before the House Intelligence Committee that was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. He testified about his five-day trip to Moscow in July 2016. According to his testimony, before leaving he informed Jeff Sessions, J. D. Gordon, Hope Hicks, and Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager, of the planned trip to Russia, and Lewandowski approved the trip, responding: "If you'd like to go on your own, not affiliated with the campaign, you know, that's fine." Dossier source(s) allege that Page secretly met Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin on that July trip. Newsweek has listed the claim about Page meeting with Rosneft officials as "verified". Jane Mayer said this part of the dossier seems true, even if the name of an official may have been wrong. However, Page insisted that "there was never any negotiations, or any quid pro quo, or any offer, or any request even, in any way related to sanctions". CNN noted that his admissions to the House Intelligence Committee did confirm the Steele dossier was right about Page attending high-level meetings with Russians and possibly discussing "a sale of a stake in Rosneft", even though he denied doing so at the time. In April 2019, the Mueller Report concluded that their investigation did not establish that Page coordinated with Russia's interference efforts. According to Jeff Montgomery in Law360: "Judge Craig A Karsnitz ruled that the articles ... were either true or protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act." Mike Leonard, writing for Bloomberg Law, quoted Judge Karsnitz: "The article simply says that U.S. intelligence agencies were investigating reports of plaintiff's meetings with Russian officials, which Plaintiff admits is true." Brokerage of Rosneft privatization Dossier source(s) allege that Sechin "offered PAGE/TRUMP's associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft" (worth about $11 billion) in exchange for Trump lifting the sanctions against Russia after his election. About a month after Trump won the election, according to The Guardian, Carter Page traveled to Moscow "shortly before the company announced it was selling a 19.5% stake" in Rosneft. He met with top Russian officials at Rosneft but denied meeting Sechin. He also complained about the effects of the sanctions against Russia. On December 7, 2016, Putin announced that a 19.5% stake in Rosneft was sold to Glencore and a Qatar fund. Public records showed the ultimate owner included "a Cayman Islands company whose beneficial owners cannot be traced", with "the main question" being "Who is the real buyer of a 19.5 percent stake in Rosneft? ... the Rosneft privatization uses a structure of shell companies owning shell companies." Michael Horowitz's 2019 inspector general report "said Steele's claims about Page 'remained uncorroborated' when the wiretaps ended in 2017". Trump's attempts to lift sanctions The dossier says Page, claiming to speak with Trump's authority, had confirmed that Trump would lift the existing sanctions against Russia if he were elected president. Within days after the inauguration, new Trump administration officials ordered State Department staffers to develop proposals for immediately revoking the economic and other sanctions. The staffers alerted Congressional allies who took steps to codify the sanctions into law. The attempt to overturn the sanctions was abandoned after Flynn's conversation was revealed and Flynn resigned. After Trump hired Manafort, his approach toward Ukraine changed; he said he might recognize Crimea as Russian territory and might lift the sanctions against Russia. In January 2019, Trump's Treasury Department lifted the sanctions on companies formerly controlled by Deripaska. Sanctions on Deripaska himself remained in effect. Cohen and alleged Prague visit Dossier source(s) allege that Cohen and three colleagues met Kremlin officials in the Prague offices of Rossotrudnichestvo in August 2016, The December 2019 Horowitz Report stated that the FBI "concluded that these allegations against Cohen" in the dossier "were not true". In August 2018, The Spectator reported that "one intelligence source" said "Mueller is examining 'electronic records' that would place Cohen in Prague." In December 2018, McClatchy reported that a phone of Cohen's had "pinged" cellphone towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, citing four sources, leading to foreign intelligence detecting the pings. The Washington Post sent a team of reporters to Prague in an attempt to verify that Cohen had been there for the purposes alleged in the Dossier. According to reporter Greg Miller in November 2018, they "came away empty". In April 2019, The New York Times reported that when the FBI attempted to verify the dossier's claims, the Prague allegation "appeared to be false", as "Cohen's financial records and C.I.A. queries to foreign intelligence services revealed nothing to support it." thus contradicting the dossier and the McClatchy report. Glenn Kessler, fact-checker for The Washington Post, has said that "Mueller does not indicate he investigated whether Cohen traveled to Prague; he simply dismisses the incident in Cohen's own words". Matt Taibbi wrote that news reports of the Cohen-Prague allegation were "either incorrect or lacking factual foundation". CNN interpreted the Horowitz Report as saying that the dossier's Cohen-Prague allegation was untrue. In August 2020, the testimony of David Kramer was publicized, where he said Steele was uncertain about the "alleged Cohen trip to Prague". Kramer said: "it could have been in Prague, it could have been outside of Prague. He also thought there was a possibility it could have been in Budapest ... [but Steele] never backed off the idea that Cohen was in Europe." Republican position on Russian conflict with Ukraine and related sanctions In 2015, Trump had taken a hard line in favor of Ukraine's independence from Russia. He initially denounced Russia's annexation of Crimea as a "land grab" that "should never have happened", and called for a firmer U.S. response, saying "We should definitely be strong. We should definitely do sanctions." With the hirings of Paul Manafort and Carter Page, Trump's approach toward Ukraine reversed. Manafort had worked for Russian interests in Ukraine for many years, and after hiring Manafort as his campaign manager, Trump said he might recognize Crimea as Russian territory and might lift the sanctions against Russia. Dossier source(s) allege that "the Trump campaign agreed to minimize US opposition to Russia's incursions into Ukraine". In July 2016, the Republican National Convention did make changes to the Republican Party's platform on Ukraine: initially the platform proposed providing "lethal weapons" to Ukraine, but the line was changed to "appropriate assistance". NPR reported that "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." J. D. Gordon, who was one of Trump's national security advisers during the campaign, said he had advocated for changing language because that reflected what Trump had said. Although the Trump team denied any role in softening the language, Denman confirmed that the change "definitely came from Trump staffers". Kyle Cheney of Politico sees evidence that the change was "on the campaign's radar" because Carter Page congratulated campaign members in an email the day after the platform amendment: "As for the Ukraine amendment, excellent work." Paul Manafort falsely said that the change "absolutely did not come from the Trump campaign". Trump told George Stephanopoulos that people in his campaign were responsible for changing the Republican party's platform stance on Ukraine, but he denied personal involvement. Relations with Europe and NATO (2023) Dossier source(s) allege that, as part of a quid pro quo agreement, "the TRUMP team had agreed ... to raise US/NATO defense commitments in the Baltics and Eastern Europe to deflect attention away from Ukraine, a priority for PUTIN who needed to cauterise the subject." Harding adds that Trump repeatedly "questioned whether US allies were paying enough into Nato coffers". Nancy LeTourneau tied dossier allegations with Trump's attacks on NATO and reminded readers of "what Vladimir Putin wanted when, back in about 2011, he started courting Donald Trump as basically a Russian asset". She then quoted the dossier: Trump's appearances at meetings with allies, including NATO and G7, have frequently been antagonistic; according to the Los Angeles Times, "The president's posture toward close allies has been increasingly and remarkably confrontational this year, especially in comparison to his more conciliatory approach to adversaries, including Russia and North Korea." Spy withdrawn from Russian embassy Dossier source(s) allege that "a leading Russian diplomat, Mikhail KULAGIN" participated in U.S. election meddling, and was recalled to Moscow because the Kremlin was concerned his role in the meddling would be exposed. The BBC later reported that U.S. officials in 2016 had identified Russian diplomat Mikhail Kalugin as a spy and that he was under surveillance, thus "verifying" a key claim in the dossier. Botnets and porn traffic by hackers The validity of the accusation that Aleksej Gubarev's "XBT/Webzilla and its affiliates had been using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct 'altering operations' against the Democratic Party leadership" The report by FTI Consulting said: Cybersecurity and intelligence expert Andrew Weisburd has said both Gubarev and the dossier "can be right": "Their explanation is entirely plausible, as is the Steele Dossier's description of Mr. Gubarev as essentially a victim of predatory officers of one or more Russian intelligence services. ... Neither BuzzFeed nor Steele have accused Gubarev of being a willing participant in wrongdoing." XBT has denied the allegations, and "findings do not prove or disprove claims made about XBT in the dossier, but show how the company could have been used by cyber criminals, wittingly or unwittingly". According to the Wall Street Journal, Steele's source for the hacking accusations against Webzilla was Olga Galkina, who was involved in a "messy dispute" with the firm "after being fired in November 2016". == Dossier's veracity and Steele's reputation ==

Steele and the dossier became "the central point of contention in the political brawl raging around" Those who believed Steele considered him a hero who tried to warn about the Kremlin's meddling in the election, and people who distrusted him considered him a "hired gun" used to attack Trump. Some dossier assertions were later accepted as fact: Shepard Smith said: "Some of the assertions in the dossier have been confirmed. Other parts are unconfirmed. None of the dossier, to Fox News's knowledge, has been disproven." In some cases, public verification is hindered because the information is classified. According to Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff, a major portion of the dossier's content is about Russian efforts to help Trump, and those allegations "turned out to be true". On January 12, 2017, Paul Wood, of BBC News, wrote that Steele was "not the only source" for claims about Russian kompromat on Trump and that multiple intelligence sources were privately reporting about it before the publication of the dossier: Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes wrote that "the current state of the evidence makes a powerful argument for a serious public inquiry into this matter". On January 13, 2019, Sonam Sheth reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee was also using it as a roadmap for their investigation into Russia's election interference. 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 Page in October 2016. Mimi Rocah, Dan Goldman, and Barbara McQuade debunked three false arguments made by National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy against the FBI's use of the dossier when seeking a FISA warrant on Carter Page. They explained why the FBI was justified in doing so and would have been "derelict" if it had not: "[McCarthy] misses the point. Even if the specific details in the Steele dossier are not directly confirmed, the fact that other evidence unrelated to the dossier corroborates the dossier's main allegations is sufficient to support a finding of probable cause." but CNN later reported "it's now clear that this level of verification never materialized". The Senate Intelligence Committee criticized the FBI and found the FBI gave the allegations "unjustified credence" before first understanding "Steele's past reporting record": On October 25, 2017, James Clapper said that "some of the substantive content of the dossier we were able to corroborate in our Intelligence Community assessment which from other sources in which we had very high confidence." On October 27, 2017, Robert S. Litt, a former lawyer for the Director of National Intelligence, was quoted as stating the dossier "played absolutely no role" in the intelligence community's determination that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. On November 15, 2017, Adam Schiff said much of the dossier's content is about Russian efforts to help Trump, and those allegations "turned out to be true", something later affirmed by the January 6, 2017, intelligence community assessment released by the ODNI. On December 7, 2017, commentator Jonathan Chait wrote that as "time goes by, more and more of the claims first reported by Steele have been borne out", with the mainstream media "treat[ing] [the dossier] as gossip" whereas the intelligence community "take it seriously". On January 29, 2018, a House Intelligence Committee minority report stated that "multiple independent sources ... corroborated Steele's reporting". John Sipher, who served 28 years as a clandestine CIA agent, including heading the agency's Russia program, said investigating the allegations requires access to non-public records. He said "[p]eople who say it's all garbage, or all true, are being politically biased", adding he believes that while the dossier may not be correct in every detail, it is "generally credible" and "In the intelligence business, you don't pretend you're a hundred per cent accurate. If you're seventy or eighty per cent accurate, that makes you one of the best." He said the Mueller investigation would ultimately judge its merits. In May 2018, former career intelligence officer James Clapper believed that "more and more" of the dossier had been validated over time. James Comey told the Office of the Inspector General that: Varied observations of dossier's veracity Steele, the author of the dossier, said he believes that 70–90% of the dossier is accurate, Vice President Joe Biden told reporters that, while he and Obama were receiving a briefing on the extent of election hacking attempts, there was a two-page addendum that addressed the contents of the Steele dossier. 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". On January 11, 2017, Newsweek published a list of "13 things that don't add up" in the dossier, writing that it was a "strange mix of the amateur and the insightful" and stating that it "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. Former UK ambassador to Russia Sir Tony Brenton said 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." In his June 2017 Senate Intelligence Committee testimony, former FBI director James Comey said "some personally sensitive aspects" of the dossier were "salacious and unverified" when he briefed Trump on them on January 6, 2017. Comey also said he could not say publicly whether any of the allegations in the dossier had been confirmed. In June 2019, investigators for Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz found Steele's testimony surprising and his "information sufficiently credible to have to extend the investigation". In November 2019, the founders of Fusion GPS published a book about the dossier and had this to say about its veracity: David A. Graham of The Atlantic has noted that in spite of Trump's "mantra that 'there was no collusion' ... it is clear that the Trump campaign and later transition were eager to work with Russia, and to keep that secret." Trump and Barr claimed that Mueller exonerated Trump and that there was "no collusion", but those claims were false: Former CIA Director John Brennan stated that Trump's claims of "no collusion" with Russia were "hogwash": Adam Goldman and Charlie Savage of The New York Times have described the impact of some of the flaws in the dossier: On October 17, 2021, in Steele's first major interview with ABC News, George Stephanopoulos asked him if he thought the "pee tape" was real. Steele answered that it "probably does exist", but he "wouldn't put 100 percent certainty on it". When he was asked why the Russians hadn't released it, he replied "It hasn't needed to be released. ... I think the Russians felt they'd got pretty good value out of Donald Trump when he was president of the U.S." == Investigations ==

On July 31, 2016, the existing FBI investigation into suspicious Russian activities and election interference suddenly morphed into the creation of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into possible Trump campaign involvement in the Russian interference. Neither investigation was triggered by the dossier, and the Inspector General report on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The investigations led to Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson being interviewed in August 2017 by Congress. John Durham has been investigating whether FBI agents "mishandled classified information" about operation Crossfire Hurricane when they questioned Steele. The IG report documents that a case agent mentioned Papadopoulos to Steele. The FBI has no "established guidelines for how to address the disclosure of sensitive or classified information to sources", and the Inspector General "concluded that the case agent should not be faulted". == Conspiracy theories and claims about dossier ==

Conspiracy theory it was trigger for start of investigation The Russia investigation origins conspiracy theory is a disproven right-wing alternative narrative, sometimes identified as a set of conspiracy theories, concerning the origins of the original Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the following Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. The theory asserts that Trump "was targeted by politically biased Obama officials to prevent his election", have been pushed by Trump, Fox News, Republican politicians like Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Trump's Attorney General William Barr. The conspiracy theory falsely claims the dossier triggered the Russia investigation and was used as an excuse by the FBI to start it. It also aims to discredit Steele and thus discredit the whole investigation. The real trigger for the July 31 opening of the investigation was two connected events: the July 22 release by WikiLeaks of Democratic National Committee emails stolen by Russian hackers and the July 26 revelation by the Australian government of the bragging by Papadopoulos of Russian offers to aid the Trump campaign by releasing those emails. The dossier could not have had any role in the opening of the Russia investigation on July 31, 2016, as top FBI officials received the dossier much later on September 19. Instead, it was the activities of George Papadopoulos that started the investigation. The investigation by Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz into Russian interference and alleged FISA abuses found that "none of the evidence used to open the [original Crossfire Hurricane FBI] investigation" came from the C.I.A. or Trump–Russia dossier. On February 4, 2018, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) affirmed that the Russia probe would have happened without the dossier: "So there's going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier." FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe mentioned both the investigation and the FISA warrants: Durham also confirmed "it was not until mid-September that the Crossfire Hurricane investigators received several of the Steele Reports". Claim it was "a significant portion" of FISA application 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 October 2016 FISA warrant to monitor Page. He also "denied having ever told Congress that the [FISA] warrant would not have been sought without information from the dossier". Adam Schiff said the FBI had a "wholly independent basis for investigating Page's long-established connections to Russia, aside from the Steele dossier". The IG Report defended the FBI's use of Steele's reporting: Trump has insinuated that the dossier had its origins in Ukraine, that the Clintons were involved, that Hillary Clinton's email server is currently secreted in Ukraine, and that Clinton's deleted emails are in Ukraine. Congressman Devin Nunes, a staunch Trump defender, asserted as fact that the dossier originated in Ukraine during his questioning of EU ambassador Gordon Sondland during the Trump impeachment inquiry hearings in September 2019. Nunes also accused Hillary Clinton of colluding with Russia to get dirt on Trump. A fact-check by The Washington Post analyzed the claim and the role of the dossier. It found the claim to be false and gave it four Pinocchios. According to Eric Lutz, Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan have pushed a conspiracy theory that the dossier was "based on Russian disinformation". The inspector general's report concluded "that more should have been done to examine Steele's contacts with intermediaries of Russian oligarchs in order to assess those contacts as potential sources of disinformation that could have influenced Steele's reporting". == Denials of specific accusations ==

Michael Cohen , says (at 8:50) Cohen was "never, ever" in Prague. Dossier source(s) allege that Cohen and three colleagues met Kremlin officials in the Prague offices of Rossotrudnichestvo in August 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported Cohen telling them (at an unspecified date) that he had been in Prague in 2001. Following the dossier's publication, as well as after subsequent reports, Cohen repeatedly denied having ever been to Prague. Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis said Cohen was "never, ever" in Prague, and that all allegations mentioning Cohen in the Steele dossier were false. Cohen's passport showed that he entered Italy in early July 2016, and that he left Italy in mid-July 2016, from Rome, Italy. From this, Nancy LeTourneau of Washington Monthly commented that Cohen may have "lost his alibi", and thus doubted if he had really not traveled to Prague. In March 2019, The Washington Post reported that Cohen had been in Capri and Rome during his Italy trip, and that Cohen said he met Steven van Zandt in Rome. Cohen has also stated that he was in Los Angeles between August 23 and 29, and in New York for the entire month of September. Aleksej Gubarev Gubarev has denied all accusations made in the dossier. On February 11, 2021, Page lost a defamation suit he had filed against Yahoo! News and HuffPost for their articles describing his activities mentioned in the Steele dossier. The judge said: "The article simply says that U.S. intelligence agencies were investigating reports of plaintiff's meetings with Russian officials, which Plaintiff admits is true." This contradicted an interview in 2015 when he stated: "'I'm not germaphobic,' he said, when asked if he would kiss babies and shake hands on the campaign trail." at the time of the Miss Universe contest in 2013. That claim was contradicted by several types of sources, including flight records that document he stayed overnight in Moscow the full night before the pageant, then, during the night of the pageant, he left Moscow at 3:58 a.m. According to Comey, Trump's false denials about whether he had stayed overnight in Moscow, despite Comey not asking about it, exhibited behavior that "tends to reflect consciousness of guilt", but this conclusion is "not definitive", said Comey. == Reactions to dossier ==

transcript of Glenn Simpson Descriptions The dossier has been described with many negative epithets: Trump has labeled the dossier "fake news", a "political witch hunt", Adam Goldman and Charlie Savage called it "deeply flawed". Both have also described it as a "compendium of rumors and unproven assertions". During a press conference on January 11, 2017, Trump denounced the dossier's claims as false, saying it was "disgraceful" for U.S. intelligence agencies to report them. In response to Trump's criticism, CNN said it had published "carefully sourced reporting" on the matter that had been "matched by the other major news organizations". A footnote in the Mueller Report revealed that Trump requested James Comey and James Clapper to publicly refute the dossier. The two men then exchanged emails about the request, with Clapper saying that "Trump wanted him to say the dossier was 'bogus, which, of course, I can't do'." Mueller Report In July 2019, Special Agent in Charge David Archey briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee about certain aspects of the Special Counsel Office's (SCO) "investigative process and information management": As Putin's press secretary, Peskov insisted in an interview that "I can assure you that the allegations in this funny paper, in this so-called report, they are untrue. They are all fake." Putin called the people who leaked the dossier "worse than prostitutes" and referred to the dossier itself as "rubbish". Putin went on to state he believed the dossier was "clearly fake", fabricated as a plot against the legitimacy of President-elect Trump. 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." Among journalists, Bob Woodward called the dossier a "garbage document". Chuck Todd of CBS News labeled the report "fake news". Ben Smith, editor of BuzzFeed, wrote: "The dossier is a document ... of obvious central public importance. It's the subject of multiple investigations by intelligence agencies, by Congress. That was clear a year ago. It's a lot clearer now." 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. On January 2, 2018, Simpson and 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 FBI'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." Ken Dilanian of NBC News said a "source close to Fusion GPS" told him the FBI had not planted anyone in the Trump camp, but rather that Simpson was referring to Papadopoulos. for allegedly making false statements to the FBI about the distribution of the dossier's claims, specifically possible "inconsistencies" in what Steele told authorities and "possibly lying to FBI officials". Senator Lindsey Graham also signed the letter. 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'." The referral was met with skepticism from legal experts, as well as some of the other Republicans and Democrats on the Judiciary committee, who reportedly had not been consulted. The next day, ranking committee member Senator Dianne Feinstein unilaterally released the transcript. On January 10, 2018, Fox News host Sean Hannity appeared to have advance information on the forthcoming release of the Nunes memo and its assertions about the dossier, saying "more shocking information will be coming out in just days that will show systemic FISA abuse". Hannity asserted that this new information would reveal "a totally phony document full of Russian lies and propaganda that was then used by the Obama administration to surveil members of an opposition party and incoming president," adding that this was "the real Russia collusion story" that represented a "precipice of one of the largest abuses of power in U.S. American history. And I'm talking about the literal shredding of the U.S. Constitution." In April 2018, the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) gave The Merriman Smith Memorial Award to CNN reporters Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein. In January 2017, they reported that the intelligence community had briefed Obama and Trump of allegations that Russians claimed to have "compromising personal and financial information" on then-President elect Donald Trump. As late as July 29, 2018, Trump continued to falsely insist the FBI investigation of Russian interference was initiated because of the dossier, and three days later White House press secretary Sarah Sanders repeated the false assertion. Fox News host Shepard Smith said of Trump's assertion: "In the main and in its parts, that statement is patently false." Alan Huffman, an expert on opposition research, has compared the two forms of opposition research represented by the dossier and WikiLeaks. He didn't believe the dossier's intelligence gathering to be illegitimate, although "a little strange", while he was troubled by the large dump of documents from WikiLeaks that "may have been obtained in an illegal way". In March 2020, Steele commented publicly on the dossier, stating: "I stand by the integrity of our work, our sources and what we did." Litigation Multiple lawsuits have been filed in connection with the Steele dossier, primarily involving defamation claims by plaintiffs such as Aleksej Gubarev, the three owners of Alfa-Bank (Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and German Khan), Michael Cohen, Devin Nunes, Giorgi Rtskhiladze, Carter Page, and Trump. They have been filed against Christopher Steele, Orbis Business Intelligence, BuzzFeed, Oath, the Democratic National Committee, and others. All of these defamation cases, except one, were dismissed or withdrawn by the plaintiffs. In Trump v. Orbis Business Intelligence, Trump accepted "that the Defendant is not responsible in law for the publication of the Memoranda by BuzzFeed". Carter Page unsuccessfully sought damages in a lawsuit against the United States Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and several former U.S. government officials, alleging violations of his constitutional rights. Trump also filed unsuccessful lawsuits against Hillary Clinton, Steele, Orbis, and others. In September 2018, the Virginia-based entity Coolidge Reagan Foundation filed a complaint at the FEC against the Clinton campaign, DNC, Perkins Coie, and Fusion GPS, for having "violated campaign finance law by conspiring with foreign nationals, including current and former members of the Russian government, to manipulate the results of the 2016 election". The complaint contained seven points, mostly about the alleged conspiracy with foreigners, but also about hiding the alleged crimes by misrepresenting the costs as 'legal expenses' to Perkins Coie, and of the latter acting as a middle man for these expenses. However, the FEC did find "probable cause to believe" that the DNC and the Clinton campaign (and their treasurers) had "[misreported] the purpose of certain disbursements". In November 2025, Senator Chuck Grassley released FBI documents indicating the bureau had sought authorization in 2019 to investigate the Clinton campaign and DNC for the misreported payments, but DOJ officials declined to authorize the investigation. In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order suspending security clearances for employees of Perkins Coie, citing the firm's role in hiring Fusion GPS to produce the dossier as evidence of "dishonest and dangerous activity". Perkins Coie called the order "patently unlawful" and filed a lawsuit challenging it. == See also ==