The Steele dossier is back in the news because it turns out that one of its sources lied about some stuff. Something like that, anyway.
Unfortunately, I never paid a lot of attention to the dossier so I'm a little unsure of why we should care about this. It was always presented as raw, unverified intel, and it played no role in launching the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign. There's also no reason to believe it ever played much of a role in the later stages of the investigation. As I recall, it showed up only as a footnote in a FISA application for surveillance of a minor player, and that was about it.
But maybe I'm missing something. Aside from the "pee tape" mania, which was more snark than anything else, did the dossier play a bigger role in events than I remember? I guess it was a bigger deal on TV than in print? Maybe that slid by me since I almost never watch political shows on cable.
It's because John Durham is determined to conceal the fact that his investigation came up empty. I guess we should be thankful that he has enough integrity to not just make shit up.
Dude is more Ken Starr than Robert Fisk, still.
He will definitely Wiliambarrify the findings of his report to make it seem worse than it is.
Depends on how you qualify "Make shit up".
https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/11/16/john-durhams-cut-and-paste-failures-and-other-indicies-of-unreliability/
Marcy included a handy chart near the bottom.
But it spawned one of my favorite jokes of the Trump era:
Q: What's the difference between a garbanzo and a chickpea?
A: Trump never paid to have a garbanzo on him
Ouch!
Was the Steele dossier a big deal? Bet your booties it was. One of the biggest straw men Trump (with help from minion Durham) has set up to date.
With Deripaska's help from the ground up.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/05/23/you-cannot-discuss-disinformation-and-the-steele-dossier-without-discussing-oleg-deripaska/
Big deal in public imagination.
Apparently not so much in the actual investigation.
People could talk about the Steele dossier. Little information leaked from the actual investigation into Trump--unlike the nonsense that was going on with HRC.
While you are entirely correct, nothing you have said prevents the GOPs from conflating the whole Russia thing into the Steele Dossier and claiming the charge against Danchenko proves the whole thing was made up by Hillary and is proven false. Ergo a)Trump is innocent of everything anyone ever hinted at and b) the whole think was MSM fake news. And most depressingly, the supposedly liberal MSM will go along with this.
Doesn't matter. Trump has so much out on him, his arrest in 2022 has been long coming.
The noteworthy thing for me was the allegation that Trump was getting paid off in shares from a big Russian oil concern. Sexual kinks are not that interesting to me, I don't find them especially relevant. Sooo many politicians have them.
Of course, there hasn't been any followup on this at all. I mean, I have to entertain the notion that Trump was Putin's toady of his own free will, or in some sort of demonstration of defiance.
Near as I can figure Republicans *completely* believe the stories, and are enraged that their Orange God is so embarrassed and thus are very easily put into a great state of agitation by any mention of them and have launched a Ken starr like endless probe to discredit something that nobody else ever thought was more than a funny story that could be true, or total nonsense, but isn't it great how *everyone* thinks it *could be*, especially Republicans.
It's all very strange and mildly amusing.
I could certainly be wrong, because these things are difficult to quantify, but I do think the dossier did play a large role in the “narrative” of the Trump presidency (or at least the Democratic version of that narrative). We heard a lot about it, and it created an impression of misdeeds. That narrative likely influenced reporting. So, even if there weren’t any official ways (through court proceedings or legal filings) where the dossier became important, it still entered our dialogue, fairly or not, in an influential manner. I’m sure the Clintons could relate…
Nope. The narrative is in the Mueller report. Trump's ties to Russia to back to 1987 and have been noted for years. Are you retarded???
Not sure what to make of your comment, and not certain it's made in good faith. The narrative of the Mueller report was notoriously tilted in Trump's favor by his attorney general. The narrative of the Steele Dossier, on the other hand, seemed to slip past the right wing spin machines, and that's certainly one of the most likely reasons why that report infuriates so many Republicans.
There's two aspects:
how important was the dossier in the FBI's investigation and the FISA warrants--were they just careless or was Clinesmith prejudiced. I don't think we can dismiss his guilty plea (as we don't dismiss guilty verdicts for Bannon, Manafort, etc.)
how good or poorly a job did the media do when they reported on it. The Post and others are admitting error.
I'm willing to say it was a case of liberal motivated reasoning--the dossier fitted my preconceptions of who Trump was so I was more willing to believe it than I should have been. Where I was particularly naive was in disregarding the idea that any Democrats had a role in it.
They didn't!
JEB!, & then Soup, paid for it in 2015.
It was irrelevant to the FBI investigation. There wasn't a actual investigation to Mueller. Which outlined Trumps long ties to Russia and others
Nostril detachment would serve you well.
The facts about the Steele Dossier that keep being shoved under the rug are:
It was commissioned by a Republican presidential candidate, who eventually dropped out of consideration and wouldn't pay, so it was shopped out to the DNC, and
Although the Clinton campaign ultimately had to pay for it, Hillary Clinton never saw it.
(drat! WordPress can't handle list html)
Not to mention that Christopher Steele actually knew the Trumps and was supposedly a friendly acquaintance of Ivanka and Jared's. Why would he set out to sabotage them? It was only when his sources started reporting a bunch of crazy stuff about Trump's Russia connections, and Russian efforts to interfere in the election, that he tipped off colleagues in the American IC. A lot of it may have been just hearsay or disinformation, but Republicans' attempt to paint Steele as some kind of left-wing Dem operative are just another part of the gaslighting operation.
Christopher Steele almost certainly plowed Ivanka in 2007 or so.
I’m ok with anything used to discredit, harass, or ruin trump and the republicans. It’s a war. We’re losing.
MAGA Thanksgiving,
still in the fridge from last year,
https://static.politico.com/dims4/default/fc2e459/2147483647/resize/1160x%3E/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2Fda%2F6e%2Ff03a05d64159999743cafee7e148%2F1-rick-mckee-counterpoint.jpg
Nope, think again. Liars are lying. So if the source saying a source lied, everybody is lying.
Republicans pretended it did because it was always considered the weakest part of the Trump stuff. No one else ever toom it seriously.
The Steele Dossier matters because Republicans are determined to gaslight everyone into thinking that it was the only thing that sparked the Trump Russia investigation. So if non-credible or non-verifiable information made it into the leaked dossier, then Trump did nothing wrong. Or something.
Of course that's horseshit. The dossier was only one small part of a huge pile of evidence showing that Trump accepted and encouraged Russian help in interfering in the 2016 election.
If you don't watch political shows, you missed all the conspiracy nuts. The Steele dossier is a central part of the Vast Deep State Conspiracy Against the Heroic Donald Trump. Because of that, it is evergreen.
Anything critical of a Trumpublican that turns out to be false in any way will be a lead story at FauxNoise.
Although, bear in mind with that information that a dog biting a man is NOT newsworthy.