Thread by @benjaminwittes

Piece of advice to my dear friend @jon_rauch: don’t let @ByronYork drag you into an argument about the Steele material. Unless you made arguments about the Trump-Russia scandal based on it, it’s just a sideshow related to Cater Page and some botched FISAs. It’s irrelevant…

https://twitter.com/ByronYork/status/1475834701378207744

…to the Mueller findings and to the facts we have learned about Trump and his minions’ long engagements with the Russians, his many lies about it, and his frankly criminal efforts to obstruct investigation of the matters.

So here’s an interesting fact about the Steele material: I don’t believe a single article on @lawfareblog relies on it for anything. We ran one article in which Chuck Rosenberg and @segrant39 tried to evaluate its claims based on what was public at the time.

But I think it is literally true that ZERO of anyone’s claims on @lawfareblog for any matter related to Trump’s relationship with Russia—and we were pretty attentive to the matter—relied on the Steele Dossier for anything.

My point is that if @ByronYork is harping on the Steele Dossier, he is not engaging with the facts of what was found about Russian interference in the election or what people like us or Mueller were concerned about.