Anti-Trump Dossier Creator Does 180 After Being Slapped With Lawsuit

Anti-Trump Dossier Creator Does 180 After Being Slapped With Lawsuit

By Cillian Zeal
December 21, 2017 at 10:57pm

When asked in October about the provenance and reliability of the allegations he’d assembled in the infamous Trump dossier, former MI6 spy Christopher Steele said he shared his information with the FBI because he claimed, “My track record as a professional is second to no one.”
Indeed, the interviewer from liberal Mother Jones magazine said the former spy “appeared confident about his material.”
Steele even bragged to the magazine that he helped start the Mueller investigation, according to the Washington Times.
Now that he’s going to be appearing in a British courtroom, however, Steele is doing a 180 with his confidence in the material.
In London court filings related to a suit from a Russian entrepreneur named in the unconfirmed dossier, Steele called the intelligence in it “limited” and said there was only “possible coordination” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
In the original dossier, Steele said rather unequivocally that there was an “extensive conspiracy between Trump’s campaign team and the Kremlin.”
However, in a libel complaint brought by Russian entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev — himself accused of being pressured by Russian intelligence to take part in hacking against the Democrats — Steele sounded significantly less sure about his intelligence.
In a filing for the lawsuit earlier this year just revealed by the Washington Times, Steele was asked about briefings he gave to those in the American media about the dossier during the campaign — something he did at the behest of his employer, Democrat-linked opposition research firm Fusion GPS.
“The briefings involved the disclosure of limited intelligence regarding indications of Russian interference in the U.S. election process and the possible coordination of members of the Trump’s campaign team and Russian government officials,” Steele’s answer read.
Well, that certainly sounds a bit different than what Steele said in the dossier, at least when it comes to confidence.
Of course, when it comes to this “limited intelligence” and “possible coordination,” Steele was more than willing to brief CNN, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post and Yahoo News in person, and the aforementioned Mother Jones via Skype.
And where is the media on this now? Pretty much nowhere.
Now that Steele has to defend his dossier against British libel law, he sounds a lot less confident in what he was peddling — and for good reason.
For all of the crowing about Trump-Russia collusion and the Steele dossier in the media, which of the allegations have you seen proven?
For all of the talking about the Mueller investigation and what it might uncover, what parts of the dossier have been verified?
It’s not surprising that Steele would do a 180. After all, just look at the strength of the material.
The only surprise is that it took him so long.