Thread by @SethAbramson

The Steele dossier remains one of the most lied-about items of the whole Trump presidency. Republicans lie about Steele's background, motivations, knowledge, funders and claims. They lie about the dossier timeline and they lie about its provenance and they lie about its accuracy.

We must also understand that it's no surprise that Republicans lie about the dossier. When the author of a dossier tells you in advance that 30% of it is likely inaccurate, as long as you lie about him telling you that and claim he didn't you can spend years pointing out the 30%.

Steele is an honorable man who had been a valuable FBI partner for years when *Republicans* approached him to try to keep Donald Trump from the presidency. When the GOP folded and accepted Trump as its Lord and Savior, a law firm hired Steele to continue his overseas work.

While Steele was doing his work, he didn't know who was paying him besides his immediate patron—the entity that was being paid by the law firm. Steele was not tasked by his boss to find dirt on Trump, he was explicitly tasked to simply find accurate information, whatever it said.

Steele used sources he'd been using for years—including when he was the Russia desk chief at the British foreign intelligence service, and indeed considered such a model spy he was asked by the British government to train new British spies. Steele knew his dossier was raw intel.

Steele had no idea what he was going to find when he contacted longtime trusted sources within Russia. Like any intel professional, his job was to report back the intel he received. He was shocked at the intel he received, and as a longtime FBI partner, wanted to inform the FBI.

Republicans would eventually take brutal advantage of the fact that Americans don't understand what a raw intel dossier is. They convinced average Americans, and even some untalented journalists, that Steele had a secret agenda and that he claimed his dossier was *100% accurate*.

In fact, Steele had done what any intel expert in his position would've done. He informed his FBI partners that he estimated the accuracy of the dossier at 70%. Time has borne out that assessment, which is unsurprising given that Chris Steele is one of the top spies in the world.

Incredibly, the very people who falsely called the Russia scandal a mere conspiracy theory—despite thousands of pages of evidence establishing collusion—have devised a wholly unsupported conspiracy theory about Steele and his dossier and done so without any public censure at all.