Thread by @SethAbramson

(THREAD) Major media must stop enabling far-right lies about the Steele dossier and the Trump-Russia scandal. Both these lies and those enabling them give aid and comfort to a neofascist insurrection. This thread debunks the NYT oped below. Please RETWEET. nytimes.com/2021/11/15/opi…

1/ As I know from hard experience, columnists often don't get to write their own headlines. But what this means is that someone at the New York Times either wrote or specifically approved this headline, which is not just a lie but an easily disproven one, at that. And here's why:

2/ There's no proof in this article, nor could there be, of how media "got the Steele dossier so wrong"—as the media never reported that *any* part of the dossier had been conclusively confirmed, never misreported its origins and wrote on the dossier far less than is now claimed.

3/ Indeed, the supposed smoking gun with respect to media reporting on the Steele dossier is that one news outlet received a leak from a source close to the Mueller investigation indicating that Mueller had found *some* evidence that *one* claim in the dossier might be accurate.

4/ It turns out that that leak—not the outlet's reporting that it'd received a leak—was incorrect, and Mueller found no evidence to substantiate that component of the dossier. This component remains neither confirmed nor denied, though Trumpists lie and say it has been disproven.

5/ The same Trumpists who say that this component of the dossier—a claim about Michael Cohen and Prague—has been "disproven," and say so on the basis of Cohen's denials and his alibi for a tiny sliver of the time-period in question, *also* say Cohen is a *liar* and a *scoundrel*.

6/ So what do the journalists that "got the Steele dossier so wrong" say of the Cohen-Prague claim? The truth—no more, no less. Which is that it remains neither proven nor disproven, but that Steele told the FBI his dossier was 30% incorrect, and this *could* be part of that 30%.

7/ The simple fact is this: though media bent over backwards—with the exception of a single outlet, the fringe, left-leaning, non-mainstream Mother Jones—to *not* report on the dossier before the 2016 election, Trumpists are angry that its existence was ever reported on at *all*.

8/ More than that, we *know* what Trumpists wanted media to do: lie to voters about the dossier. How do we know? Because Trumpists *celebrate* a late October 2016 NYT article in which the FBI denies the existence of any evidence in its possession—e.g. the dossier—on Trump-Russia.

9/ So even as media made sure the raw, unconfirmed intel in the Steele dossier would play *no part* in the 2016 election—then reported on the dossier's *existence* without saying any of it had been proven, and reporting on its origins—*critics* wanted a *disinformation campaign*.

10/ Here comes the first twist in this thread: I agree with the NYT headline. I fervently believe major media got Steele's dossier "so wrong." Media got the dossier "so wrong" by refusing to report on how much of it had been confirmed or corroborated and misreporting its origins.

11/ It took a fringe digital rag, The Daily Caller—not major media!—to reveal that the Ritz-Carlton Moscow allegation (the "pee tape" allegation) was fully briefed by Fusion GPS in fall 2015 (not a typo) via funding from *GOP sources* and *before Steele was contracted by Fusion*.

12/ Are you hearing the information I just wrote for the first time? Probably. That's because major media "got the Steele dossier so wrong" by falsely reporting it was the indirectly DNC-funded Orbis that unearthed the "pee tape" issue in 2016, not the GOP-funded Fusion in 2015.

13/ Moreover, Fusion GPS's Glenn Simpson testified under oath—something almost no Trumpist will do (and those who do perjure themselves)—that at the time Fusion contracted with Steele and Orbis in June 2016, Steele *didn't know* who was funding him or who his ultimate client was.

14/ Steele himself has since testified—again (notice a trend?) voluntarily and under oath—that what Simpson testified to was true: Steele didn't know his funder or his client when he took on the work. Yet those who say media "got the Steele dossier so wrong" claim otherwise. Why?

15/ There's never been any evidence Steele or Simpson perjured themselves on this point—yet the very people who claim to be so concerned that media "got the Steele dossier so wrong" routinely say Steele *explicitly agreed with the DNC and Clinton campaign* to find dirt on Trump.

16/ The one group of people *in the world* who under *no circumstances* can get a *single* thing about the Steele dossier wrong are those who say "the media got the Steele dossier so wrong"—and somehow they can't seem to say a *single correct thing* about the Steele dossier. Why?

17/ Steele's critics falsely claim that he "worked with Russian agents" on his dossier. Their proof? Their *only* proof? One Steele source, Igor Danchenko, a Russian national, was investigated more than a decade ago as a possible Russian agent. And what did the FBI find? Nothing.

18/ Now guess who hired—as his first NatSec adviser—a man who'd been investigated as a possible Russian agent well after Danchenko; admitted to giving nonpublic energy-sector intel to men he knew were Russian spies; and claimed (*post-FBI probe*) he was still a "Kremlin adviser"?

19/ If you guessed Donald Trump, you're right.

The man he hired? Carter Page.

And unlike Danchenko, the FBI *continued to believe Page was a Russian agent* well into 2017. Why? Because the Steele dossier *correctly reported on all Page's overseas activities with the Russians*.

20/ So how much have you read in the media that "got the Steele dossier so wrong" about Page being investigated as a Russian spy shortly before Trump hired him in January 2016?

Almost nothing? Oh.

How much have you read about the dossier being *dead-on* about Page? Nothing? Oh.

21/ As confirmed by the Mueller and Senate reports, Page traveled to Moscow while on Trump's campaign and met with *exactly the men Steele said* and talked about *exactly what Steele said they talked about* and lied to America about it *exactly as the dossier implied he would*.

22/ The only people who the then-suspected Russian agent *didn't* lie to about his activities in Moscow? How convenient—it was the very people who now say the dossier has been debunked. And did those people reveal what Page told them to the FBI? No they did not! When asked? Nope!

23/ Let's try another one. Steele's critics falsely say that Steele worked with Russian agents—a debunked claim. We know about Page (Trump's first NatSec hire), but what about Trump's *top Russia adviser* during the 2016 presidential campaign? What do we know about him? Anything?

24/ Actually, we know a lot! His name is Dimitri Simes; Putin calls him a "friend"; he was suspected of being a Russian agent long after the FBI found nothing on Danchenko; and after the Mueller probe started he... uh.... fled to Moscow and took a job as a propagandist for Putin.

25/ (Feel free to Google the facts from that last tweet.)

With this preamble out of the way—who has lied about the dossier; who has undersold the dossier; and who has told the truth about the dossier—I'll now *begin* my evisceration of this lie-filled, pile-of-garbage NYT op-ed.

26/ Grueskin begins by saying that the dossier "touch[ed on] everything from dodgy real estate negotiations to a sordid hotel-room tryst."

He's already gotten everything wrong—and I mean *factually* wrong. And it's only the third sentence of an article the NYT agreed to publish.

27/ One of the biggest things the very media Grueskin is criticizing "got so wrong" about the dossier is *exactly* what Grueskin gets so wrong here: the dossier *doesn't* describe Trump having a "tryst" in a Moscow hotel room. It describes him instigating a juvenile, silly prank.

28/ The Steele dossier says that while Trump was hanging out with—*not sleeping with*—Russian escorts, he urged them to urinate on a bed that Obama had once slept in. That's it. That's the allegation. No sex.

The best part? Almost every single part of this intel is corroborated.

29/ I won't delve *too* deep into the facts on this—as I already wrote a NYT bestseller on this episode, the Mueller and Senate reports cover it, I published my book chapter on it below, and the corroboration is so voluminous it'd take 50 tweets by itself. sethabramson.substack.com/p/proof-exclus…

30/ But I can spare, say, *ten* tweets—so let's do that.

1. Donald Trump himself admitted, in a public statement, that his hotel room was being video-monitored by the Kremlin, meaning he admits there's a tape of whatever happened that night. He just claims that nothing happened.

31/

2. Stephen Colbert—of all people—and a journalist confirmed Trump's claim he was being video-recorded that night, as they visited the room and found wiring behind a mirror that could only be explained as a video recording setup. IC experts also confirm the Kremlin does this.

32/

3. Trump says he was on his best behavior that night, but we know that's a lie. *Before the dossier dropped*, a former Miss Hungary, Kata Sarka, revealed to Hungarian media that Trump solicited her to have adulterous sex in his hotel room that night. (She declined to do so.)

33/

4. So who went up to Trump's hotel room instead? Well, one of Trump's host's best friends runs Moscow's largest brothel (Dosug). Trump's bodyguard, Keith Schiller, admits that this host offered to send "Russian prostitutes" up to Trump's room that night to party with him.

34/

5. So we should just ask Schiller what happened, right? Wrong. Schiller now says that *on that night only* he left his nightly post outside Trump's door and "doesn't know what happened after." The RNC then hired Schiller to do...*nothing*...and began paying him exorbitantly.

35/

6. But Trump's a germaphobe. Surely a *germaphobe* wouldn't be titillated by watching someone urinate? Wrong. Michael Cohen says Trump's Moscow hosts took him to see a "golden showers" show in Las Vegas just a few months earlier... and he loved it. So Moscow was a *reprise*.

36/

7. Did anyone see women go to Trump's room? You bet. The BBC and The Spectator (UK) reported on *multiple* witnesses—a US hotel guest; a Trump Org employee; and hotel staff—seeing a group of women arguing in the hotel lobby about going up to Trump's room without signing in.

37/

8. So what does the CIA say about all this? Well, it told the BBC, via an intermediary, that the Kremlin has "multiple" tapes of Trump, of a "sexual" nature, from "multiple" dates and locations.

Why didn't U.S. media "get this right" by reporting it? bbc.com/news/world-us-…

38/

9. What does Putin say? "Please don't ask about this again." What does Trump say? He admits asking Putin beforehand to see some "beautiful women" once he got to the Ritz—and has since lied (provably!) about *every single aspect of his trip to Moscow*, even core trip details.

39/

10. Mueller and the Senate Report reveal that in October 2016 the Trump campaign was *told* by a trusted source with Kremlin contacts that a tape existed. These two reports reveal that Cohen believed the source and was worried about such a tape. The campaign hid all of this.

40/ All this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the corroboration and confirmation of Steele's "most salacious" claim, which is the only thing the US media that "got the Steele dossier so wrong" would say: that the claim was "salacious" and involved sex...which it didn't.

41/ So what does Grueskin—who is livid about the media "getting the Steele dossier so wrong"—say about this part of the Steele dossier, all the initial research for which was funded by the GOP before Fusion ever hired Steele? That it came from Steele and involved a "tryst." Nope.

42/ This is the part where I remind you that Grueskin was a dean at the top journalism school in America, the Columbia School of Journalism. And folks wonder why Americans are losing faith in major media, when I—an indie journo—am effortlessly running *circles* around a CSJ dean?

43/ In the same sentence in which he falsely alleges a "tryst", Grueskin says the Steele dossier content involving "dodgy real estate negotiations" was "just allegations." He goes on to say "the memo provided little hard evidence or specific detail [about them]."

Uh, *what now*?

44/ Aras Agalarov, Trump's 2013 host in Moscow, has *admitted* that Trump signed a Letter of Intent with the Agalarovs—who are known agents of the Kremlin (Agalarov is Putin's architect)—to build a "Trump Tower" on a specific site in Moscow. The LOI expired in February of *2017*.

45/ Michael Cohen—Trump's longtime fixer and lawyer—admits that Trump signed *yet another* secret Letter of Intent with a Russian national to build a Trump Tower in fall 2015, and this time Trump had Cohen *negotiate directly with the Kremlin* and (*and*!) known Putin ally Sater.

46/ While under these *two* Kremlin-linked—secret but since confirmed—Letters of Intent, Trump (a) hired Kremlin agent Manafort; (b) had his Russia policy co-written by Russian Alfa Bank adviser Richard Burt and a man who told him he was secretly in contact with Kremlin agents...

47/ ...George Papadopoulos, whose continued secret contacts with Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Trump greenlit; (c) made his top Russia adviser a Putin friend who'd later flee to Moscow to work as Putin's propagandist; (d) answered a "planted" question from a Russian spy...

48/ ...Maria Butina, at an event in Las Vegas in July 2016, which gave Trump the chance to announce that he was okay with Putin invading, seizing, and keeping 7% of the land area of Europe's biggest nation (Ukraine) and should face no punishment for doing so. And all the while...

49/ ...he was secretly negotiating deals with Kremlin agents, just as Steele's dossier said. So what did Trump tell voters about negotiating the most lucrative deal of his life while formulating—with the help of Putin allies—the most pro-Russia policy of any POTUS candidate ever?

50/ He lied—ruthlessly. Repeatedly. At great length. About every aspect of his secret "dodgy business deals" with the Kremlin, and who was behind his Russia policy, and what contacts his campaign was having with Russia. Then he went out and urged Putin's agents to attack America.

51/ Americans must never forget that Trump's plea for Kremlin agents to wage cyberwar on America's 2016 presidential election ("Russia, if you're listening...")—which call was heeded by Russian hackers within 24 hours—was coupled with, "I have no deals, no nothing with Russia..."

52/ In his third paragraph, Grueskin must—bizarrely—admit that media reporting on the dossier was transparent: "BuzzFeed's own opening description of the allegations [called them] 'explosive but unverified.'"

But Grueskin says he "dismiss[es]" this caveat as merely "obligatory."

53/ If you teach journalism at the university level—as I do—you probably laughed at this part of the Grueskin article. Yes, Bill, Buzzfeed's caveat *was* "obligatory." The obligation is called "journalism." Buzzfeed was making *crystal clear* that the allegations were unverified.

54/ Grueskin next says the dossier "inspired a slew of juicy—and often thinly sourced—articles and commentaries about Trump and Russia." Uh, what articles? You mean the ones inspired by 7 allied intel agencies disclosing secret Trump-Russia ties *in 2015*? theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/a…

55/ Grueskin here passes the far-right's *second* Big Lie: that Steele's dossier—which went unreported except by one fringe outlet pre-election, and wasn't published until 2017—actually *launched* a sequence of reporting that had actually begun two years earlier...in late *2015*.

56/ Again, per Carlson's The Daily Caller, journalists were contacting Trump's campaign about the Ritz Moscow in *2015*—on the strength of *GOP-funded*, Steele-free Fusion GPS research. Per the Guardian, the USIC was working on this in 2015 also. Steele had nothing to do with it.

57/ If you're reading Grueskin's article waiting for him to cite the "juicy and thinly sourced" articles the dossier launched... don't hold your breath. Grueskin offers one: the aforementioned Mueller leak (from a trusted source) that turned out to be *good-faith* but inaccurate.

58/ Grueskin's other citations are bait-and-switch mind games. He intimates that Rachel Maddow did something *terrible*...then admits that she merely said—100% accurately!—that the dossier "remain[s] neither verified nor proven false." So... she did journalism? And that's... bad?

59/ Meanwhile, Grueskin tars Slate for an oped that said that Trump's *confirmed* tryst with porn star Stormy Daniels—which Trump also lied about—makes "the picture that's painted in the dossier" more "plausible." Which seems, like... just a fair, neutral observation? But also...

60/ ...what an irresponsible *undersale* of the dossier! What responsible op-ed *wouldn't* have added, "The same week the dossier was published, the BBC reported that the CIA had confirmed 'multiple' Kremlin-held Trump tapes of a 'sexual' nature, from 'multiple' dates/locations."

61/ So Jacob Weisberg of Slate gets *attacked* by Grueskin for *tepidly* noting that Trump's long history of sex, lies, and videotape makes the unverified and unproven allegations of Steele's dossier seem "more plausible", when he *should* have been attacked for not saying more.

62/ What exactly prevented Weisberg from saying then—or prevents Grueskin from saying now—that the BBC spoke to the CIA about the kompromat allegation? What prevents Weisberg or Grueskin from doing the research I did for NYT bestseller Proof of Collusion (Simon & Schuster, 2018)?

63/ Grueskin's last feeble attempt to prove his thesis—isn't this man a journalist? wasn't he a dean at the Columbia School of Journalism? why is he so bad at this?—attacks Natasha Bertrand for saying that the Stormy Daniels scandal, which Trump lied about ruthlessly for years...

64/ ..."makes it much more plausible that Trump did go to Russia and he did have these kinds of sexual escapades with prostitutes." Again, this isn't a "report," and it isn't "juicy," it's just...neutral observation? And one that ignores the reporting Bertrand *should* have done.

65/ Bertrand *should* have cited the BBC. She declined. She *should* have cited Schiller's testimony that Trump's hosts wanted to gift him prostitutes that night. She declined. She *should* have cited Sarka's pre-dossier claim: Trump wanted sexual trysts that night. She declined.

66/ Bertrand *could* have run down the same witnesses the BBC ran down. Or—oh, irony atop irony!—she *could* have done what Steele's sub-source Charles Dolan *quite responsibly* did, which was *go to the Ritz Moscow* and interview witnesses (which Trumpists now *attack* him for!)

67/ Indeed, I *invite* you to read John Durham's preposterous *indictment* of Igor Danchenko and tell me that he and Charles Dolan didn't have much *better* contacts in Russia—and do much *better* research!—than any of the journalists Grueskin now attacks. sethabramson.substack.com/p/the-durham-i…

68/ And this is *precisely* why Grueskin turns, at this point in his oped, to attacking Danchenko and Dolan—because Durham's indictment of the former (and Grueskin's non-legal indictment of both) aims to obscure that they acted more like *journalists* than *anyone in this story*.

69/ I'm serious about this. Both men refused to reveal their sources. Both men reported out positive and negative info as they encountered it. Both men conducted on-site interviews. Both men are deemed by their colleagues to have a great reputation for *neutrality* in their work.

70/ Both men are *conceded*—even by their angriest critics—to have an incredible network of sources who were in a position to know the information they passed on, much of which turned out to be accurate. But just as Grueskin "dismisses" Buzzfeed's careful, journalistic caveats...

71/ ...the Trumpists explain away all Danchenko and Dolan's sources, all their research, all the praise from their colleagues.... by implying the two men are Russian spies and all their sources are Russian spies. And they say this while accusing the left of conspiracy theorizing.

72/ So surely the Trumpists' new hero, Durham, has evidence Danchenko and Dolan are spies? He does not! Surely Grueskin has evidence? He does not! Surely the FBI has evidence? It does not! (It closed its 2009 probe with no finding of wrongdoing by Danchenko!)

So what gives here?

73/ Well, let's see what Bill Grueskin has to say about it. He hasn't gotten anything right yet—or proven any of his claims (and in an article decrying wrong and allegedly disproven claims, no less!)—but let's see if he can turn it around as he turns to Danchenko in his NYT oped:

74/ This is the oped's only paragraph on the supposedly-hoax-uncovering indictment—the one the far right has been crowing like Lost Boys over—so read it carefully. What do you see? Claims the dossier is wrong? No. Claims Danchenko is a spy? No. Claims of a Kremlin conspiracy? No.

75/ What we see here—at worst; that is, if you believe John Durham, and I don't know why you would, given his conduct as a seeming political agent for Trump and Barr—is a man lying to the FBI to protect a source. And you see a claim that another man claimed to be a source wasn't.

76/ What you don't see Grueskin discuss is what I've discussed at PROOF—and what Durham's indictment confirms—which is that Dolan and Danchenko had access to sources Sergei Millian didn't, which means their intel is *more* reliable than it would've been if it'd come from Millian.

77/ But here's the worst part (speaking of journalistic and prosecutorial integrity): Durham's chief source for the claim that Millian and Danchenko didn't speak is Millian, who in addition to being a shady character is—sacre bleu!—a Trump business associate. See how that works?

78/ I'll now put my lawyer cap on to make a related point: Durham offers no motive whatsoever for Danchenko to lie about Millian. If he was trying to protect Dolan's life, that's honorable; but his own sources were fantastic, so why pretend they were Millian's? Durham can't say.

79/ What none of this does is indict the media.

Unless it's yet another indictment for misreporting facts in a way that caters to Trump's base.

Why is media pretending this indictment is about the accuracy of the *content* of the dossier? Or its motivation? It's about neither.

80/ In a Washington Post report—discussed in detail at PROOF—that bent over backwards to make Durham's indictment seem legit, the Post had to keep citing colleagues of Dolan and Danchenko who describe the men as responsible and professional. There's no sign of any political plot.

81/ Now back to Grueskin, who spends the latter half of his oped citing—vaguely, inarticulately, in sloppy shorthand—1% of the documented evidence of Trump's ties to Russia.

He then adds that—given this 1%—"it was easy to assume that the dossier's allegations must also be true."

82/ There's just one problem: Grueskin *hasn't yet given examples* of anyone in media "assuming" the dossier "must" be "true," let alone reporting it *is* true.

Again, all the evidence is in the *other* direction: journalists minimizing the truths in the dossier at *every turn*.

83/ After confessing that Trump and his henchman are liars and can't be trusted—an odd concession in an oped making the argument this one does—Grueskin makes his oddest claim yet: journalists bolstered the dossier because they felt animus toward Trump.

Yep—a *conspiracy theory*.

84/ Does Grueskin prove his conspiracy theory about a media plot against Trump? I mean, this is the NYT, and Grueskin is a former Columbia Journalism School dean, so *yes*, right?

No.

In fact, Grueskin immediately abandons his claim to—incredibly—make the *opposite* allegation.

85/ After saying—without evidence—that journalists insisted the dossier was true, he quotes a claim that "plenty of reporters were skeptical of the dossier, but they hesitated to dismiss it, because they didn't want to look like they were carrying water for Trump or his cronies."

86/ But this is the *inverse* claim from Grueskin's original one: now he says journalists secretly wanted to dismiss the dossier (a claim that can't be disproven, as you can't disprove a negative) but held back from saying *anything at all* out of fear of progressives.

Uh, what?

87/ On precisely *what* journalistic basis would *all journalists* have decided, per Grueskin, to "dismiss" a dossier of raw intelligence requiring follow-up investigation? The fact that it was right about the Kremlin plot? And Manafort? And Page? And secret Trump business deals?

88/ Or would it be "dismissed" on the basis of it being *right* about the sudden withdrawal of a Russian diplomat from the United States? And right about non-public information regarding a Russian energy sector deal? And right about hacking by Russians pretending to be Romanians?

89/ Or perhaps Grueskin thinks responsible journalists should have "dismissed" the dossier out of hand—rather than investigating it—because it was *right* about Putin's geopolitical purpose in attacking America? Or because the CIA agrees that the Kremlin has kompromat on Trump?

90/ Perhaps he thinks all the corroboration of the Ritz Moscow incident alluded to in the dossier means the dossier should be "dismissed"? Or because it accurately recorded Page's private conversations with Kremlin agents? Or because we now know its sources were very well placed?

91/ Trust me as a longtime criminal defense lawyer who has seen a lot of rhetoric fly in American courtrooms: Bill Grueskin is really, *really* bad at the "bait-and-switch"—for all that he's fond of it. Can you detect the bait-and-switch he executes in the NYT oped excerpt below?

92/ What Grueskin does here is give *two* examples of media outlets *reporting* inaccurate info as *fact*, and then attempts to place on the same level his vague (wholly different!) allegation that media "amplified" an already-published document by... acknowledging its existence.

93/ One gets the impression Grueskin wrote this oped for the NYT—and the NYT agreed to publish it—without ever working out precisely *what* they think media did wrong. All we get is the bizarre—tautological—claim that the dossier should have been "dismissed" immediately as false.

94/ I'll say again what I have said before and will surely say in the future: this was a dossier of raw, unprocessed intelligence requiring follow-up investigation from media and the USIC. Its author guessed it was about "70%" accurate intel, and he's been proven roughly correct.

95/ No responsible person in media/government *ever* said the whole dossier was accurate.

No responsible person in media/government *ever* said the bulk of the dossier had been "confirmed."

The far-right deliberately miscasts social media banter as an NYT report or FBI presser.

96/ But Grueskin saves his worst for last. He falsely says media "focused heavily on the dossier"—when as we've seen they reported on ~0% of the truths in the dossier that the BBC and independent journalists have now reported on at exhaustive length (reports ignored by Grueskin).

97/ Grueskin then adds—cruelly—that the dossier and any public mention of it "helped distract public attention from Trump’s actual misconduct." The clear implication here is that the dossier *identified no misconduct*. The dossier that revealed Manafort's now-confirmed collusion!

98/ The dossier that revealed a Kremlin plot we know Trump aided—via public statements in July 2016, by withholding critical info from the FBI in an August 2016 briefing, in ordering his team to get HRC emails from Russian hackers the same month, in hiding his WikiLeaks contacts!

99/ The dossier that revealed the dodgy Russian business deals Trump was hiding from U.S. voters as his pro-Russia policy was being written up by Kremlin agents! The dossier that revealed secret Trump-Russia contacts Trump and his campaign were complicit in hiding! And much more.

100/ By now it's clear to all Americans of good faith precisely who wanted journalists to shut up about the dossier and why; who lied about the dossier from Day 1; who failed to report accurately on the dossier; and what this new, dossier-themed anti-media campaign is about. /end

NOTE/ As I could have guessed beforehand, writing this thread not only took hours, but cost me hundreds of followers—and will now prompt days of trolling and threats. I'm happy to do this—and take that—for free. But if you do want to tip, Venmo and PayPal links are in my profile.

PS/ Everything in this thread comes from the Mueller Report, the Senate Report, or major-media reports cited in my books on the Trump-Russia scandal:

⬛️ Proof of Collusion (Simon & Schuster, 2018)
🟥 Proof of Conspiracy (Macmillan, 2019)
🟦 Proof of Corruption (Macmillan, 2020)