Thread by @Vespertilio65

Who originally funded the Steele dossier? How did it all begin?
I posted on this back in July 2018, but we've been hit with so many lies since that I thought we might need a review.

This great article gives the entire breakdown.

washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/…

* I want to give you access to the entirety of the articles that I am referencing, but I will be highlighting certain passages. *

Fusion GPS, which was funded by former journalist Glenn Simpson, was hired by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication funded by Republicans opposed to Donald Trump, and begins to examine his and his team's relationship with Russia, along with other matters.

Key part there - "... hired by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication funded by Republicans opposed to Donald Trump."

Another great article
lawfareblog.com/steele-dossier…

* I want to give you access to the entirety of the articles that I am referencing, but I will be highlighting certain passages. *

From @lawfareblog article:
The dossier is actually a series of reports—16 in all—that total 35 pages. Written in 2016, the dossier is a collection of raw intelligence. Steele neither evaluated nor synthesized the intelligence. He neither made nor rendered bottom-line judgments.

The dossier is, quite simply and by design, raw reporting, not a finished intelligence product.
*** (read that part again)

In that sense, the dossier is similar to an FBI 302 form or a DEA 6 form. Both of those forms are used by special agents of the FBI and DEA, respectively, to record what they are told by witnesses during investigations.

The substance of these memoranda can be true or false, but the recording of information is (or should be) accurate.

In that sense, notes taken by a special agent have much in common with the notes that a journalist might take while covering a story—the substance of those notes could be true or false, depending on what the source tells the journalist, but the transcription should be accurate.

The dossier holds up well over time, and none of it, to our knowledge, has been disproven.
*** (read again - while not everything has been proven, nothing has been disproven)

Most significantly, the dossier reports a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [Trump and his associates] and the Russian leadership,” including an “intelligence exchange [that] had been running between them for at least 8 years.”

... the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing email messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to the Wikileaks platform.

... The reason for using Wikileaks was "plausible deniability" and the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team.

The indictment of 12 officers of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU) corroborates these allegations from Steele’s sources. In particular, the indictment alleges:
*** I am asking you to read #3-#7 directly from the article that I provided to you

On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, wrote to a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, “thank u for writing back … do you find anyt[h]ing interesting in the docs I posted?”

On or about August 17, 2016, the Conspirators added, “please tell me if I can help u anyhow … it would be a great pleasure to me.”

Another great article is:
businessinsider.com/how-john-mccai…

*excerpts from aforementioned article

Sen. John McCain provides intimate details of how he obtained the infamous so-called Steele dossier in his new book, "The Restless Wave."

The Republican senator was attending an annual security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia shortly after the presidential election in November 2016 when retired a British diplomat approached him.

After discussing Russian election interference for a few minutes, Wood explained why he'd approached McCain in the first place.

"He told me he knew a former MI6 officer by the name of Christopher Steele, who had been commissioned to investigate connections between the Trump campaign and Russian agents as well as ...

... potentially compromising information about the President-elect that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin allegedly possessed," McCain wrote.

"Our impromptu meeting felt charged with a strange intensity," McCain wrote. "No one wise-cracked to lighten the mood. We spoke in lowered voices. The room was dimly lit, and the atmosphere was eerie."

It all seemed "too strange a scenario to believe" at first, he wrote, but the six-term senator felt that "even a remote risk that the President of the United States might be vulnerable to Russian extortion had to be investigated."