Thread by @JohnWHuber

How a David Ignatius column inadvertently blew a hole in Chris Steele, the media and the FBI's cover story about the Trump dossier’s “sources” over two years ago, and nobody noticed

THREAD

Steele, Fusion GPS, the WSJ, WaPo, NYT & the FBI (even in FISA warrants) claim that the Trump dossier was written by Steele, based on Steele's real sources

A key source was supposedly "Person 1" (Sergei Millian) an "unwitting" source talking to Steele's Primary Sub Source (PSS)

But if that were true, Person 1 would have told -"boasted"- to the PSS about @GeorgePapa19. HE NEVER DID

And had Steele *really* been investigating Trump's team & writing the dossier, he'd have known about @GeorgePapa19 too - but unbelievably, HE TOLD THE FBI HE DIDN’T KNOW HIM

Here is the @IgnatiusPost column, which is now over two years old. washingtonpost.com/opinions/are-r…

The FBI asked Steele in a meeting in Rome (in Oct 2016) if Steele had "ever heard of" @GeorgePapa19. "Steele hadn’t”.

(Note: This was clearly leaked to Ignatius by a well informed source, as this was the first time this information had ever been published)

The motivation for whoever leaked was to try and prove the FBI's investigation started with Papadopoulos, not the Steele dossier. Jan 2018 was just one month after the Papadopoulos "origin story" (full of factual issues) was planted in the NYT in Dec 2017 nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/…

But the leaker(s) inadvertently blew a hole in the cover story about how "Steele" compiled his dossier...lets take a closer look at that meeting in Rome and "Person 1”, and the implications of Steele having no idea who @GeorgePapa19 was…

According to the IG, the FBI disclosed to Steele in Rome the existence of CLASSIFIED investigations of Papadopoulos, Page, Flynn and Manafort

(This divulged “too much” & was “peculiar” even to other FBI officials in attendance, including Steele’s handler)
justice.gov/storage/120919…

The IG report (buried in little noticed footnote 250) CONFIRMS the Ignatius Jan 2018 column. According to notes from the Rome meeting (taken by "Case Agent 2"), Steele told the FBI that "he was not aware of" Papadopoulos

While admitting to not having a clue who @GeorgePapa19 was, Steele did tell the FBI about his sources - e.g "Person 1", claiming they were in contact with their Primary Sub Source (PSS) & that they were a "a boaster"

*But those two things together destroy Steele’s credibility*

Lets do a quick recap of “Person 1”, and then come back to Steele’s credibility and how the dossier cover story falls apart

It is near certain the true identity of "Person 1" is naturalized US citizen Sergei Millian 👇

https://twitter.com/JohnWHuber/status/1232024405003427847

The dossier interchangeably uses “Source D”, “Source E” and other terms such as “Ethnic Russian associate” when attributing allegations to P1. The IG report confirms all refer to the same real-world person

To be clear, this does NOT mean that P1 really was a Steele dossier source (either witting or unwitting) just that the Steele dossier attributed all of these claims to P1, using multiple source names

DOJ official (and unofficial Steele intermediary) Bruce Ohr told the FBI that Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS said "much of the collection" on Trump and Russia came from P1/Millian (and he was “central” according to the IG report).

But despite being responsible for "much of the collection" on Trump/Russia, P1/Millian is supposedly an "unwitting" source for the Steele dossier according to narrative shaping media leaks from Fusion GPS in early 2017

WSJ: wsj.com/articles/key-c…

WaPo: washingtonpost.com/politics/who-i…

Okay, let’s blow those holes in this cover, given the facts so far.

P1/Millian - Steele's "unwitting" source - was in repeated, direct personal contact with Papadopoulos. Millian first reached out to Papadopoulos on July 15, 2016, via LinkedIn

P1/Millian and Papadopoulos met face to face multiple times up to and after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. For example:

—July 20 in New York
—Aug 1 in New York
—Nov 14 in Chicago
—Jan 20 in Washington D.C

And they exchanged dozens of messages between these meetings

Papadopoulos even referred to "Sergey...in Brooklyn" as a "friend", to another long time friend (who was secretly a newly minted FBI Confidential Human Source, “Source #3” in the IG report)

P1/Millian even carried on contacting Papadopoulos after his arrest was made public by the FBI and Special Counsel - example, on Oct 30, 2017 (provided by @GeorgePapa19 attorney’s to Team Mueller)

You’ve probably started to ask this already: if the Steele/Fusion GPS/Media/FBI cover story of the dossier is true - a Primary Sub Source (PSS) talking to an unwitting "boaster" source P1/Millian...

...why does P1/Millian *NEVER mention Papadopoulos* to the PSS (or Steele)?🤔🚨

P1/Millian supposedly gives the PSS/Steele the goods on Trump's pee tape sexual exploits & Trump's "well developed conspiracy of co-operation" with Russia/Putin but zero, zip, nothing on one of Trump's 5 announced foreign policy advisors that he’s in close direct contact with?

Steele told the FBI that he had "never heard of" Papadopoulos at all. Even though one of his key dossier sources had been in repeated contact with Papadopoulos throughout the entire 2016 election campaign?

There's no logical explanation of that, because it just ain't true

And while we're on the subject, Steele had supposedly been hired to investigate Trump and his team. He writes dossier memos that name plenty of the Trump team - e.g. Manafort, Cohen, Flynn, Page. But never Papadopoulos. Nothing on this guy at all. The odd man out

Yet Papadopoulos was announced publicly at the same time as Carter Page as one of the first 5 foreign policy advisors. The WaPo even ran high profile hit pieces on Papadopoulos early on, about his lack of experience. washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoin…

Whoever wrote the dossier is obviously an avid media consumer, given the number of memos that cite open source information from the press. But Steele never saw this in one of the worlds most prominent newspapers, when it was his job to know Trump's team?

Papadopoulos was also the only member of Trump's team living & working in London where Steele himself lived. And that was reported in many outlets (including the WaPo hit piece above). Steele doesn't read WaPo? Or he does, but isn't the least bit curious & doesn't Google him?

How about when Papadopoulos became front page news in England in May 2016 for attacking as a semi official surrogate the then Prime Minister David Cameron for his comments about Trump? Steele doesn’t read The Times either? thetimes.co.uk/article/say-so…

And that Times story was such a big deal that it supposedly prompted Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer to set up the meeting with Papadopoulos that the FBI/DOJ via the NYT allege "sparked" Crossfire Hurricane in the first place. Yet super spook Steele totally missed it

A close reading of the dossier also shows that the author ("Steele") is researching obscure Russian language articles (e.g. ria.ru/20160413/14097… about Millian), but NOT reading front page stories in newspapers in his own country about the people he's being paid to investigate?

That Russian language RIA article was published just a month before The Times article by the way (April 2016, the Times was May 2016). Internal Fusion GPS documents confirm Fusion GPS was aware of it too, and much of the descriptions of P1/Millian are used in the dossier👆🏻

As if all of this wasn't bad enough for the Steele/Fusion/FBI story - the Rome meeting where Steele was told about Papadopoulos was on Oct *3,* 2016

Steele would go on to write at least another 5 dossier memos *after* this, on Oct 12, Oct 18, Oct 18, Oct 20, and Dec 13, 2016

So Steele's now been told explicitly about Papadopoulos by the FBI (and told the FBI want more info on him, yet he's never able to get his PSS to get the "boaster" P1/Millian to spill anything about Papadoupolos, even though by this point they're in regular friendly contact? 🤔

The reason none of this adds up, is simple. The cover story is false.

Person 1/Sergei Millian isn't a source for the Primary Sub Source, "unwitting" or not. If they were, they'd almost certainly have mentioned Papadopoulos, which should have got back to Steele

And if "Steele" were really behind the allegations & the investigatory work for the dossier, he'd have come across Papadopoulos long before the FBI mentioned his name in Rome (just from reading the press) AND he'd have definitely investigated his name AFTER he was told about him

CONCLUSION (1/5)

—The media narrative leaked to the WSJ and WaPo on Person 1/Millian as an "unwitting" dossier is false. Fake news.

—The same story sworn to under oath in the FISA applications is false. Bad news for the FBI/DOJ.

CONCLUSION (2/5)

There's another thing that's false too, which may be even worse.

The FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation on P1/Millian in Oct 2016, after they learned his "true name" (presumably from Steele in Rome)

https://twitter.com/JohnWHuber/status/1232024411420725249

CONCLUSION (3/5)
The IG report implies that P1/Millian may even have been a conduit for "Russian disinformation". And Glenn Simpson claimed he was an actual "Russian Intelligence Officer” (which the FBI considered such a "secret", they had it redacted until @RichardGrenell)

CONCLUSION (4/5)
Except if *any* of that were true: why does P1/Millian never "boast" or mislead the Primary Sub Source about Papadoupolos? Why doesn't he ever say anything about him? This would have been an ideal vector with which to implant so-called "Russian disinformation”!

CONCLUSION (5/5)
Because, the story about P1/Millian being a source of "Russian disinformation" likely isn't true either. Which begs a question for a future thread - why did the FBI/DOJ invent that as yet another cover story, and why did the IG seem to buy it?

/ENDS

N.B. The IG report has nothing to say about the implications of all of these things being false, even though it confirms the self serving FBI leak to David Ignatius two years prior in its own report. While it has a lot of good info - some relied on here - it’s a major flaw.