If you're looking for an analysis of Steele's dossier that's a year behind—current as of mid-January '17—this is your article. If you're looking for a current assessment, sadly it can only be found on social media. And I mean it: that's sad. But also true. washingtonpost.com/news/politics/…
2/ The idea the Agalarovs—known Kremlin agents—entered Trump's life in mid-2013 to recruit the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow, then popped up again only in June 2016 runs afoul of so many media reports that it's astounding the Washington Post would allow it to be (re-)published.
3/ Bloomberg, Forbes and others confirm it: after Trump met Putin's developer (Agalarov), banker (SVB) and permits man (Kozhin) in Moscow in November 2013, he signed a letter-of-intent to build Trump Tower Moscow (per Emin Agalarov). Aras Agalarov only backed out in February '17.
4/ At *least* eight witnesses confirm/bolster parts of the Steele dossier's account of what happened the night of November 9, 2013, including Schiller, Sarka, Klyushin, Rykov, a U.S. hotel guest at the Ritz Moscow, a Ritz Moscow employee, a Trump Org employee, and Trump himself.
5/ The idea that we've no evidence of a carrot-and-stick approach to Trump—on Putin's part—because Michael Cohen claims his six-month, in-campaign effort to secure a *second* Trump Tower Moscow deal failed when Putin's right-hand man wouldn't email him back is beyond laughable.
6/ The Agalarovs proved themselves Putin agents many times over: more than once passing the Trumps gifts from Putin, and transmitting messages, and of course in Agalarov being Putin's real estate developer and a winner (by Putin's hand) of one of Russia's highest civilian honors.
7/ After the Agalarovs (over-)paid Trump $20 million to leap-frog 19 nations and get the Miss Universe pageant, they and their posse hung with Trump in Moscow and apparently all left believing Trump was running for president—18 months before he told any Americans he was running.
8/ After November 2013, Ivanka, Don Jr. and Trump himself were in *repeated* telephonic *and* in-person contact with their new business partners, who they knew were Putin agents *and* had publicly promised Trump access to Putin. And Putin had blessed their building deal with him.
9/ So contra Bump (of The Washington Post), between the Agalarovs priming Trump at the Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas in mid-'13 and orchestrating the transmission of stolen property to the Trumps in June 2016 is literally *month after month* of Russian carrot-and-stick treatment.
10/ The same people who spent months a) under-reporting the Steele dossier because they put their self-image over journalism, and b) attacking anyone in the US or UK who'd actually researched the dossier, are now sagely telling American news consumers how "verified"—or not—it is.
PS/ The "salacious" pg. 1 claim made by the dossier is, apart from the witnesses I mentioned, *also* confirmed (per the BBC) by the CIA *and* two European intel agencies—the same sort of agencies the Post and others have repeatedly cited as critical to US intel on *other* issues.
NOTE/ Research into the dossier has so outstripped reporting by WaPo that I'm not going to do a lengthy thread pointing out all the ways it has—suffice to say WaPo and others have *contributed* to the current environment, in which Trump allies falsely call the dossier unreliable.
NOTE2/ All one has to do is read the HuffPost interview with Cohen on the 2015 Trump Tower Moscow deal—in which he says Trump spent a total of "4 minutes" over *six months* even *thinking* about the deal—to know not only is that BS but dramatic evidence of consciousness of guilt.
NOTE3/ And how unsophisticated do you have to be to misread Comey's "salacious and unverified" remark as a *dismissal* of a dossier the FBI's relying on? The dossier *is* salacious—it discusses lecherous behavior. And parts of it *are* still unverified—which *doesn't* mean false.
