Thread by @SethAbramson

Attempts to discredit the Steele Dossier present a math problem. Steele said his raw intelligence would turn out to be "70% correct," meaning that if the dossier offered *100* data-points, *30* could be *false* and Steele would be vindicated. The GOP has found 1 false data-point.

The GOP "discrediting" of the Steele Dossier isn't even an attempt to discredit the dossier—it just tracks down Steele's sources and then implicitly asks, "Is this the *sort* of person who'd have reliable info?" The actual work of discrediting the dossier somehow never gets done.

Meanwhile, fact after fact after fact in the dossier has been proven minutely or broadly *accurate*—but neither the dossier nor its author ever get defended by mainstream media because the GOP deliberately made the issue too hot to touch. So all we ever hear is BS "discrediting."

I'm serious: take any right-wing article claiming to *disprove* the dossier, and all you find is a series of conclusory statements saying it's *already* been "discredited" by some other source that isn't linked to. Then the one "false" data point—Cohen in Prague—is hammered upon.

The other component of bait-and-switch articles discussing the "discrediting" of the Steele Dossier is that not only do they never substantiate how the intel has been discredited, they deliberately hide fom readers the *dozens* of data-points from the dossier we know are correct.

So right now, for instance, you have a Wall Street Journal article conservatives are crowing about that meets all the criteria I just described: it hammers on the Cohen-Prague data-point, references some mysterious past discrediting, and works over Steele's sources—not his Intel.

Conservatives have been pulling this sort of bait-and-switch on rational Americans for *years*. Remember how we kept being told that none of the sources detailing Trump's bad behavior were eyewitnesses—then his lawyer Cohen came clean and we were told it still wasn't good enough?

I was a trial lawyer. I've seen every evidentiary game played, and from every angle, a hundred times. The way Republicans are playing this game is sad—but surprisingly effective. It cows mainstream media into remaining quiet on matters it *should* be speaking up on, and urgently.

Everyone in journalism knows how an article discrediting the Steele Dossier would read: it'd analyze all the confirmed facts, all the still-unverified facts, and all the disproven facts. And it'd tell you *why each fact was put in each category*. We *never get that* from the GOP.

So here's where we stand, almost 4 years after the Steele Dossier was published by BuzzFeed News: much of it has been confirmed; much of it remains unverified; a handful of facts—*well* under 30%—appear to be wrong. It looks to be *exactly* as accurate as its author told the FBI.

PS/ Hilariously, the part of the dossier many in media refuse to talk about (and that's habitually misdescribed when discussed), and that Trumpists think (along with Prague) is the only thing *in* the dossier—"the tape"—is the *most corroborated piece of evidence* in the dossier.

PS2/ Not one or two but *three* Wall Street Journal reporters just followed me. Life is weird. *Or* maybe they too understand what conventional journalism looks like, versus advocacy journalism that doesn't actually prove what it claims—in the language of reporting—it has proven?