Steele dossier

Steele dossier
Screenshot of the first page of the Steele Dossier
Location	USA
Author(s)	Christopher Steele
Media type	Unfinished Doc
Subject	Controversial political opposition research report

The Steele dossier is a collection of unsubstantiated allegations of salacious misconduct, conspiracy, and collusion between Donald Trump, his presidential campaign, and the Russian government. Christopher Steele compiled the information using low-level sources as part of his opposition research against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. The 35-page dossier contains handwritten notes and raw intelligence sourced from rumors, hearsay, and third-party gossip. Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that the only "verified" information within the dossier was already available from public sources. Funding for this opposition research came from Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Convention (DNC), facilitated through their attorney of record, Marc Elias of Perkins Coie. Fusion GPS, an open-source intelligence firm, was hired by Perkins Coie, which subsequently contracted Steele, a former MI-6 spy, to conduct the investigation. This investigative effort lasted from June to December 2016.

It was noted in the Mueller report, and subsequent Durham report, that the material in the dossier compiled by Steele is "deeply flawed", "largely unverified" and ultimately "largely discredited". Vladimir Putin did favor Trump over Hillary Clinton, and stated publicly that he wanted Trump to win the election because "he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal." There was no evidence of any conspiracy, collusion or alleged nefarious meetings between Russian officials and Trump or his campaign officials relative to the 2016 presidential campaign. The Associated Press summarized that, "according to Durham, the FBI rushed into the probe without having any evidence that anyone from the Trump campaign had had any contact with any Russian intelligence officers." Durham's contention is that the "FBI fell prone to 'confirmation bias,' repeatedly ignoring, minimizing or rationalizing away evidence that undercut the premise of collusion, including a conversation in which Papadopoulos vigorously denied knowing about any cooperative relationship between Russia and the Trump campaign." Investigators did not find a "single substantive allegation" to be true in a dossier of opposition research that was funded by the Democrats.

In an ABC interview televised on October 18, 2021, Steele said, "I stand by the work we did, the sources that we had, and the professionalism which we applied to it." In October 2022, during the criminal trial of Igor Danchenko, a primary source for the Steele dossier, testimony by FBI supervisory analyst Brian Auten revealed that just prior to the 2016 election, "the FBI offered Steele 'up to $1 million' to prove the explosive allegations in his dossier about Donald Trump". Auten's testimony further confirmed that Steele never received the money because he was unable to “prove the allegations.”

The dossier was leaked by BuzzFeed News in January 2017, without its author's permission. In November 2021, The Washington Post corrected and removed parts of two articles they published that identified a Belarusian American businessman as a key source of the Steele dossier, a collection of unverified reports about Russia and then-candidate Donald Trump. The newspaper said it could no longer stand by the accuracy of the articles, which identified the businessman as Sergei Millian. The Post amended the articles' headlines, removed sections identifying Millian as the source, and added an editor's note explaining the changes. A Wall Street Journal review May 9, 2022 reported that many of the key details Steele included in his dossier originated from gossip among a few people "brought together over a minor corporate publicity contract." Prosecutors involved in the indictment of Danchenko for lying to the FBI pinpointed one of his key sources to be Chuck Dolan, a Washington-based public-relations executive, adviser to the Clintons, and Democratic Party operative. Danchenko was cleared of the charge of lying to the FBI based in part on the fact that while he exchanged emails with Dolan, he never actually spoke or met with him in-person.

Opposition research produces dossier

With its roots in the 2016 United States presidential election, the Steele dossier was commissioned as opposition research by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign, seeking to gather potentially damaging information about their political opponent, Donald Trump. The dossier was meant to be a comprehensive investigation into Donald Trump's business dealings, potential ties to Russia, and allegations of compromising information, commonly referred to as "kompromat." The resulting document contained a series of memos with detailed but unverified claims about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, along with salacious allegations related to Trump's personal life.

As the 2016 presidential campaign unfolded, the Steele Dossier became a source of significant controversy and speculation. It was eventually made public in early 2017, leading to intense media scrutiny and political debate. Some viewed it as crucial evidence pointing to collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, while others dismissed it as politically motivated opposition research. The credibility and accuracy of the Steele dossier have been subjects of ongoing debate, investigations, and legal proceedings.

The Durham Report surmized that the FBI had no evidence that anyone with the Trump campaign had any contact with Russian intelligence officers, and that the FBI had a propensity toward "confirmation bias", and repeatedly ignored, minimized, or rationalized evidence in a way that "undercut the premise of collusion" including the vigorous denials by Papadopoulos being aware of "any cooperative relationship between Russia and the Trump campaign." The report also stated not a "single substantive allegation" in the dossier compiled by Steele was corroborated by investigators, yet they cited the dossier in their FISA Court applications to eavesdrop on former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page.

The dossier's role in broader investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election, including the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, underscores its significance in contemporary political history. The Wall Street Journal reported that when Danchenko was interviewed by the FBI in 2017, the IG's office said he "expressed surprise at how specific and conclusive some of the information he gave Mr. Steele looked later in the dossier," and explained that "some of the dossier’s assertions were based on “word of mouth and hearsay” or “conversation that he had with friends over beers.” Danchenko also told the FBI that Steele advised him that taking notes was a security risk, so he only kept "scribbles" or "chicken scratch notes here and there," and gave "verbal debriefs" to Steele.

On August 9, 2020 the Senate Judiciary Committee released a declassified FBI document indicating the FBI misled the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2018 about the dossier's primary sub-source. Their report states: "The FBI did to the Senate Intelligence Committee what the Department of Justice and FBI had previously done to the FISA Court: mischaracterize, mislead and lie. The characterizations regarding the dossier were completely out of touch with reality in terms of what the Russian sub-source actually said to the FBI."

The Funding

The Clinton Campaign and DNC funded the research indirectly by working through their attorney of record, Marc Elias of Perkins Coie. Perkins Coie contracted Fusion GPS, a private, Washington-based opposition research firm, to conduct the investigation. Fusion GPS in turn subcontracted Orbis Business Intelligence, a private firm in the UK. Co-founder of Orbis, Christopher Steele, took the lead as a former British spy for MI6 with expertise in Russian matters. Prior to his work on the dossier, Steele had been a paid informant for the FBI. Steele’s main source for the dossier was Igor Danchenko, a Ukrainian-born resident of the United States who worked as a research analyst for the Brookings Institution, a D.C. based liberal think tank. At the time, Strobe Talbott, was president of Brookings, and "a long-time friend and ally of Hillary Clinton". According to Fox News Gregg Jarrett, "Talbott helped fuel the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. But it was Danchenko who supplied Steele with most of the false stories contained in the dossier."

Perkins Coie paid Fusion GPS $1.02 million in fees and expenses, of which Fusion GPS paid Orbis $168,000 to produce the dossier. The DNC and Clinton campaign improperly disclosed the total amount paid to Perkins Coie on campaign finance reports. On August 1, 2018, the Coolidge Reagan Foundation filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) accusing the Clinton Campaign, the DNC, and their respective lawfirms of misreporting payments to obscure spending during the 2016 campaign.

"By intentionally obscuring their payments through Perkins Coie and failing to publicly disclose the true purpose of those payments” the campaign and DNC “were able to avoid publicly reporting on their statutorily required FEC disclosure forms the fact that they were paying Fusion GPS to perform opposition research on Trump with the intent of influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” the initial complaint had read. ~The Guardian

In March 2022, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the DNC $105,000 and the Clinton campaign $8,000 for misreporting those fees and expenses as "legal services" and "legal and compliance consulting" rather than "opposition research".

Donald Trump, who has consistently criticized the dossier, welcomed the settlement and once again characterized it as "a Hoax funded by the DNC and the Clinton Campaign." A DNC spokesperson downplayed the significance of the decision, referring to the complaints as "aging and trivial" and related to "purpose descriptions" in their FEC report.

Steele produced 17 reports

From June to November 2016, Steele produced 16 reports, with a 17th report added in December. The reports were based on gossip and various notes provided by Steele's sources, and were not released as fully vetted, or corroborated and verified information. Steele believes 70–90% of the dossier is accurate, a view shared by Simpson, despite their inability to validate any of the key allegations of conspiracy and collusion against Trump and his campaign.

The FBI received the first report by Steele in August 2016, and requested "all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources". In October 2016, Steele "described the sources' access, but did not provide names" to the FBI. However, by August 22, 2017, Steele did provide names of the sources for the allegations in the dossier. It wasn't until October 2022, during the criminal trial of Igor Danchenko, that testimony by FBI supervisory analyst Brian Auten revealed "the FBI offered Steele 'up to $1 million' to prove the explosive allegations in his dossier about Donald Trump" prior to the 2016 election. Auten's testimony further confirmed that Steele never received the money because he was unable to “prove the allegations.”

What the DNC, Clinton campaign, and Steele knew

According to Fusion GPS's co-owners, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, they did not tell Steele who their ultimate clients were, only that Steele was "working for a law firm", and they "gave him no specific marching orders beyond this basic question: 'Why did Mr. Trump repeatedly seek to do deals in a notoriously corrupt police state that most serious investors shun?'" In testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Simpson said that "it was Fusion GPS's idea to pursue overseas ties—that research was not directed by Perkins Coie, the DNC, or the Clinton Campaign".

Jane Mayer reported that when the Clinton campaign "indirectly employed" Steele, Elias created a "legal barrier" by acting as a "firewall" between the campaign and Steele. Thus, any details were protected by attorney–client privilege and work-product privileges. In its application for a FISA warrant to survey Carter Page, the Department of Justice told the FISC that Simpson had not informed Steele of the motivation behind the research into Trump's ties with Russia. Steele testified to Congress that he did not know the Clinton campaign was the source of the payments "because he was retained by Fusion GPS". By "late July 2016", "several months" after signing the contract with Fusion GPS, Steele became aware that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were the ultimate clients.

A spokesperson for the DNC, said neither Tom Perez nor "the new leadership of the DNC were ... involved in any decision-making regarding Fusion GPS, nor were they aware that Perkins Coie was working with the organization." A spokesperson for Perkins Coie said the campaign and the DNC were unaware Fusion GPS "had been hired to conduct the research". The Washington Post reported that it is not clear how much of the research Elias received from Fusion GPS he shared with the campaign and the DNC. It is also not clear who in those organizations knew about the roles of Fusion GPS and Steele, but one person "close to the matter" said the organizations were "not informed by the law firm of Fusion GPS's role". The New York Times revealed that earlier in 2017, "Mr. Elias had denied that he had possessed the dossier before the election."

Post-election events

After Trump's election on November 8, 2016, the Democratic client stopped paying for the investigation, but Steele continued working on the dossier for Fusion GPS. According to The Independent, at that time, Simpson "reportedly spent his own money to continue the investigation". According to The New York Times, after the election, Steele's dossier became one of Washington's "worst-kept secrets", and journalists worked to verify the allegations.

It took half a decade of legal inquiries, court cases, and congressional investigations to expose the weaknesses of the dossier. The larger picture became clear in 2019 when a Justice Department watchdog report was released. The report revealed Danchenko's retractions during his FBI interviews and showcased mixed opinions within the FBI regarding Steele's character. Some saw him as a person of integrity, while others noted his lack of self-awareness and poor judgment, even if he was well-intentioned.

Additionally, the report stated that the CIA considered Steele's information to be akin to "Internet rumors."

A bipartisan Senate report from the previous year criticized the dossier's craftsmanship, deeming it subpar compared to US intelligence community standards. This extensive 966-page report also raised concerns about potential Russian disinformation within Steele's memos.

These revelations had a detrimental impact on Steele's credibility and sparked renewed scrutiny and criticism, particularly from the right-wing, regarding how various news outlets, including CNN, had covered the dossier story.

Briefings of Obama and Trump

On January 5, 2017, the chiefs of four U.S. intelligence agencies briefed President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden about the Russian interference in the election and the existence of the dossier and its allegations.

On the afternoon of January 6, 2017, President-elect Trump and his transition team received a similar briefing in Trump Tower. All four of the top intelligence chiefs met with Trump and his transition team. They were Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers. They informed Trump of the Russian election interference, and Comey told them of "a piece of Steele's reporting that indicated Russia had files of derogatory information on both Clinton and the President-elect".

Then, according to a pre-arranged plan, Brennan, Clapper, and Rogers left, and Comey then asked to speak with Trump alone. Comey then informed Trump of the dossier and its allegations about salacious tapes held by the Russians. Comey later reported he was very nervous. The previous day, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security told Comey to "be very careful", "choose your words carefully", and then "get outta there". Trump became very defensive, and Comey described the meeting as "really weird". Trump later expressed that he felt James Comey was trying to blackmail him at the meeting in Trump Tower, held two weeks before the inauguration. In April 2018, Comey said he did not inform Trump the dossier was partly funded by Democrats because that "wasn't necessary for my goal, which was to alert him that we had this information".

The Mueller Report, published on April 18, 2019, contains a footnote that suggests that Trump may have heard that Russia had incriminating tapes of his behavior. On October 30, 2016, Michael Cohen had received a text from Giorgi Rtskhiladze reporting that he had successfully stopped the "flow of tapes from Russia". Rtskhiladze told investigators that these were compromising tapes of Trump, and Cohen told investigators he had spoken to Trump about the issue. Rtskhiladze later told investigators "he was told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen".

On December 14, 2018, the FBI released a document called "Annex A", that was "part of [the] Russia dossier summary" used to brief Trump and Obama. The FBI withheld parts of the synopsis on the grounds that it remained classified and "because it pertains to ongoing investigations or court proceedings, originated with a confidential source or describes confidential investigative techniques or procedures".

Two days after the publication of the dossier on January 10, 2017, James Clapper issued a statement describing the leaks in the press about their Trump Tower meeting with Trump as damaging to U.S. national security. The statement also included the non-committal wording that the U.S. intelligence community "has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions". This contradicted Trump's previous claim that Clapper had said the information in the dossier was false; Clapper's statement actually said the intelligence community had made no judgment on the truth of the information.

James Comey had disagreed with Clapper's wording, but Clapper's wording remained unchanged. Comey later told the Office of the Inspector General of his concerns at that time, because he believed the dossier to be more reliable than indicated in Clapper's non-committal statement:

... I worry that it may not be best to say "The IC has not made any judgment that the information in the document is reliable." I say that because we HAVE concluded that the source [Steele] is reliable and has a track record with us of reporting reliable information; we have some visibility into his source network, some of which we have determined to be sub-sources in a position to report on such things; and much of what he reports in the current document is consistent with and corroborative of other reporting included in the body of the main IC report. That said, we are not able to sufficiently corroborate the reporting to include in the body of the [ICA] report. (p. 181)

Publication by BuzzFeed News

BuzzFeed was harshly criticized by several mainstream media outlets for releasing the draft dossier without verifying its allegations. Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan called it "scurrilous allegations dressed up as an intelligence report meant to damage Donald Trump", while The New York Times noted that the publication sparked a debate centering on the use of unsubstantiated information from anonymous sources. BuzzFeed's executive staff said the materials were newsworthy because they were "in wide circulation at the highest levels of American government and media" and argued that this justified public release. A judge in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia agreed with this reasoning when he threw out a libel suit against Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence.

The draft dossier's publication by BuzzFeed has always been defended by Jack Shafer, Politico's senior media writer, as well as by Richard Tofel of ProPublica and the Columbia Journalism Review. Shafer defended the public's right to know about the allegations against Trump, and saw a parallel in Judge Ungaro's ruling in the defamation suit filed by Aleksej Gubarev. The judge ruled that the BuzzFeed "was legally protected in publishing the document." Gubarev was among those who were "outraged" by what was described as 'explosive but unverified allegations'. BuzzFeed later redacted Gubarev's name from their online document.

The founders of Fusion GPS have defended the fact that they and Steele used intermediaries to pass dossier content to the authorities, but, regarding the publication by BuzzFeed, if it had been up to them, "Steele's reporting never would have seen the light of day." They were also alarmed that the leak of the draft dossier would endanger sources, and Glenn Simpson immediately phoned Ken Bensinger at BuzzFeed: "Take those fucking reports down right now! You are going to get people killed!"

Steele wrote:

I wonder if BuzzFeed have reflected on the lives and livelihoods they put at risk by publishing the dossier, or the shutter it has drawn down on any further collection efforts on this issue and others by anybody or any government agency. In my view BuzzFeed did the Kremlin's work for them because they were determined not to lose the scoop entirely after CNN broke the original story. One of the most irresponsible journalistic acts.

Authorship and sources

The dossier is based on information from witting and unwitting anonymous sources known to Christopher Steele. Some of those sources were later revealed.

Christopher Steele

When CNN reported the existence of the dossier on January 10, 2017, it did not name the author of the dossier, but revealed that he was British. Steele concluded that his anonymity had been "fatally compromised", and, realizing it was "only a matter of time until his name became public knowledge", fled into hiding with his family in fear of "a prompt and potentially dangerous backlash against him from Moscow". His friends later reported that he feared assassination by Russians. The Wall Street Journal revealed Steele's name the next day, on January 11. Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, that Steele co-founded and worked for at the time he compiled the dossier, and its director Christopher Burrows, a counterterrorism specialist, would neither confirm nor deny that Orbis produced the dossier. On March 7, 2017, some members of the U.S. Congress expressed an interest in hearing testimony from Steele. After weeks in hiding, Steele appeared publicly on camera, and stated: "I'm really pleased to be back here working again at the Orbis's offices in London today."

Steele was regarded as having a solid reputation as a retired British spy and "highly regarded Kremlin expert". His solid reputation along with the dossier's central allegations that "Trump conspired with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election and that Russia had compromising information on him" initially gave the dossier "a veneer of credibility."

Steele's biases and motivations toward Trump appear to have changed over time. Starting in 2007, many years before he started his opposition research on Trump, he repeatedly met Ivanka Trump over several years, had a "friendly relationship" with her, and was "favorably disposed" to the Trump family. They even discussed the possibility of the Trump Organization using the services of Orbis Business Intelligence, but no arrangements were made. Simpson has also confirmed that "there was no pre-existing animus toward Trump by Steele or Fusion".

Later, as Steele was preparing the dossier before the 2016 election, Bruce Ohr said Steele told him he "was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president", attitudes that have been described by Julian Sanchez as "entirely natural, not suggestive of preexisting bias", considering Steele believed his own reporting. Steele has disputed Ohr's statement, and he told interviewers for Inspector General Horowitz that Ohr's wording was a paraphrase of his sentiments and not an exact quote, and the IG Report continues: "Steele told us that based on what he learned during his research he was concerned that Trump was a national security risk and he had no particular animus against Trump otherwise." Steele told the FBI that he "did not begin his investigation with any bias against Trump, but based on the information he learned during the investigation became very concerned about the consequences of a Trump presidency."

Steele first became a confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI in 2013 in connection with the investigation in the 2015 FIFA corruption case, but he considered the relationship as contractual. He said the relationship "was never really resolved and both sides turned a blind eye to it. It was not really ideal." Later, the Inspector General report on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation discusses "divergent expectations about Steele's conduct in connection with his election reporting", as Steele considered his first duty to his paying clients, and not to the FBI. The Inspector General's report states that "Steele contends that he was never a CHS for the FBI but rather that his consulting firm had a contractual relationship with the FBI." Steele said "he never recalled being told that he was a CHS and that he never would have accepted such an arrangement, ..." This divergence in expectations was a factor that "ultimately resulted in the FBI formally closing Steele as a CHS in November 2016 (although ... the FBI continued its relationship with Steele through Ohr)."

On May 3, 2021, The Daily Telegraph reported that Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence, using new sources not used for the original dossier, continued to supply the FBI with raw intelligence during the Trump presidency. During an interview with the FBI in September 2017, Steele informed the FBI that Orbis had "four discrete, 'hermetically-sealed' main agent networks". His Primary sub-source for the dossier was no longer "active" at the time of the interview with FBI agents, but that another "main agent network is up and running and is now starting to get good information". This resulted in "a second dossier for the FBI on Donald Trump". It included further claims of Russian election meddling; "alleged Russian interference linked to Mr Trump and his associates"; claims about the "existence of further sex tapes"; and "further details of Mr Manafort's alleged Russian contacts".

Risk of contamination with Russian disinformation considered

The Inspector General's investigative team examined how seriously the FBI Crossfire Hurricane team had considered "whether Steele's election reports, or aspects of them, were the product of a Russian disinformation campaign". Bill Priestap explained to the OIG that by May 2017, after examining several possibilities for how disinformation could affect Steele's reporting, the FBI "didn't have any indication whatsoever that the Russians were running a disinformation campaign through the Steele election reporting". Priestap further explained that "the Russians ... favored Trump, they're trying to denigrate Clinton ... [and] I don't know why you'd run a disinformation campaign to denigrate Trump on the side." The IG Report said Steele explained how sophisticated the Russians were at planting and controlling misinformation, but Steele "had no evidence that his reporting was 'polluted' with Russian disinformation". The inspector general's report ultimately concluded "that more should have been done to examine Steele's contacts with intermediaries of Russian oligarchs in order to assess those contacts as potential sources of disinformation that could have influenced Steele's reporting".

Steele's sources

See also: § Discrepancies between sources and their allegations

The Inspector General's report stated that "Steele himself was not the originating source of any of the factual information in his reporting." Instead, the report found that Steele relied on a "Primary Sub-source", later revealed as Igor Danchenko, who "used a network of [further] sub-sources to gather the information that was relayed to Steele".

In an Alfa-Bank lawsuit, Steele revealed that he "did not rely on Danchenko alone, instead obtaining information from "one main source and a couple of subsidiary sources". According to Steele: "The dossier was comprised of intelligence obtained from 3 sources and approximately 20 sub-sources."

BBC correspondent Paul Wood, writing in The Spectator, wrote: "Steele had '20 to 30' sources for the dossier and in two decades as a professional intelligence officer he had never seen such complete agreement by such a wide range of sources."

Simpson has said that, to his knowledge, Steele did not pay any of his sources. According to investigative reporter Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, Orbis has a large number of paid "collectors" (also called subsources) whose information came from a network of often unwitting sub-subsources. Since payment of these sub-subsources can be seen as bribery or might encourage exaggeration, they are unpaid. Steele testified that these sub-subsources "were not paid and were not aware that their information was being passed to Orbis or Fusion GPS".

Igor Danchenko

In January 2017, the Primary Sub-source, later identified as Ukrainian-born and Russian-trained attorney Igor Danchenko, was contacted by the FBI for an interview. About a week and a half later, in exchange for legal immunity, he agreed to answer questions about his working relationship with Steele, as well as his opinion on the accuracy of the Steele dossier. He was interviewed for three days by the FBI and said that Steele misstated or exaggerated certain information. Danchenko has said "he did not know who Mr. Steele's client was at the time and considered himself a nonpartisan analyst and researcher".

The FBI found that he was "truthful and cooperative", but the FBI's Supervisory Intel Analyst said that "it was his impression that the Primary Sub-source may not have been 'completely truthful' and may have been minimizing certain aspects of what he/she told Steele". He also "believed that there were instances where the Primary Sub-source was 'minimizing' certain facts but did not believe that he/she was 'completely fabricating' events". He added that he "did not know whether he could support a 'blanket statement' that the Primary Sub-source had been truthful". Starting in March 2017, Danchenko became a paid confidential human source for the FBI. During this time he lied to the FBI several times during interviews and was terminated in October 2020.

In July 2020, Danchenko was unmasked after declassification of the interview report by Attorney General William P. Barr, who "has repeatedly been accused of abusing his powers to help Mr. Trump politically". Lindsey Graham had also "asked the F.B.I. to declassify the interview report". Immediately after Barr's unmasking of Danchenko, Graham posted it to the Senate Judiciary Committee's web site. The declassification order was criticized by former law enforcement officials as an unmasking that could endanger other sources and make the FBI's work harder. About two weeks after he was unmasked, Danchenko received a subpoena from Alfa-Bank, and his lawyer revealed that his client "fears for his life", since Russian agents are known to kill such informers.

Information about Danchenko's network of sources was provided to the FISA court:

Ultimately, the initial drafts provided to [Justice Department] management, the read copy, and the final application submitted to the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] contained a description of the source network that included the fact that Steele relied upon a Primary Sub-source who used a network of sub-sources, and that neither Steele nor the Primary Sub-source had direct access to the information being reported. The drafts, read copy, and final application also contained a separate footnote on each sub-source with a brief description of his/her position or access to the information he/she was reporting.

The outing of Danchenko also brought to light an inaccuracy in the dossier that describes him as a "Russian-based" source. In fact, although he traveled to Russia in 2016 to gather information, and his source network is mostly in Russia, he is a Ukrainian-born and Russian-trained lawyer, researcher, and expert in Russian politics who lives in the United States.

Danchenko has defended his sources: "I have a longstanding relationship with most of my sources ... and have no reason to believe that any of them fabricated information that was given to me. More importantly, I have yet to see anything credible that indicates that the raw intelligence I collected was inaccurate."

Arrest and indictment

On November 4, 2021, Danchenko was arrested and charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI on five separate occasions regarding the sources of material he provided for the Steele dossier. These included Danchenko having allegedly obscured his relationship with Charles Dolan Jr. and having allegedly fabricated contacts with Sergei Millian. In November 2021, CNN's Marshall Cohen stated that recent "revelations about Dolan, Millian and Galkina raise grave questions about where Danchenko got his information, or if he perhaps made some of it up". On October 14, 2022, the judge dropped one charge, and four days later, Danchenko was acquitted of the other four charges.

Right-wing columnist and attorney Andrew C. McCarthy reacted to what he described as the "if not irrational, then exaggerated" reactions by Trump supporters to these reports of arrests. He urged them to be cautious as John Durham's "indictments narrowly allege that the defendants lied to the FBI only about the identity or status of people from whom they were getting information, not about the information itself."

Value as FBI source

During his trial, two FBI officials revealed that Danchenko was "an uncommonly valuable" confidential human source for several years whose role went far beyond the Steele dossier:

Helson testified that Danchenko's reports as a confidential informant were used by the FBI in 25 investigations and 40 intelligence reports during a nearly four-year period from March 2017 to October 2020.... Danchenko, the FBI agent said, was considered 'a model' informant and 'reshaped the way the U.S. even perceives threats.' Helson said that none of his previous informants had ever had as many sub-sources as Danchenko and that others at the FBI have continued to ask in recent months for Danchenko's assistance amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Olga Galkina

Olga Galkina, labelled by the FBI as "Source 3", was alleged to be an unwitting sub-source in Danchenko's network of sources and "stood as the dossier's most important contributor". She is an old friend of Danchenko and a middle school classmate. On October 28, 2020, The Wall Street Journal described her as a Russian public-relations executive with many past jobs in government and the private sector that enabled her to build a "vast network" of sources.

Galkina stated in an affidavit that "she had no idea Danchenko had used 'private discussions or private communications' as dossier material. 'I believe that Mr. Danchenko identified me as Sub-Source 3 to create more authoritativeness for his work'."

According to the Wall Street Journal, she was Steele's source for the hacking accusations against Webzilla; the source of the allegations about a secret meeting in Prague involving Michael Cohen and three colleagues.

Sergei Millian

Sergei Millian was alleged to be an unwitting sub-source in Danchenko's network of sources. He was described in the IG Report as sources D and E, and "Person 1". As an unwitting source, he was alleged to have confided in a compatriot, who then passed that information on to Steele. That information was used in Reports 80, 95, and 102. He denies being a dossier source. Although Steele told the FBI that Person 1 was a "boaster" and "egoist" who "may engage in some embellishment", the FBI omitted these "caveats about his source" from the FISA application.

In November 2021, Millian's alleged involvement as a source was brought into question. Igor Danchenko is alleged to have lied to Steele about Millian's involvement: "Danchenko told the FBI that he knew Steele believed that he had direct contact with Millian and that he 'never corrected' Steele about that 'erroneous belief'." On November 12, 2021, following the November 4 indictment of Igor Danchenko, The Washington Post corrected and removed the "parts of two stories regarding the Steele dossier" that identified Millian as a source. CNN reported that "Millian has since said he was 'framed' by Danchenko and has publicly denied that they ever spoke, though there is no indication in the indictment that Millian ever denied it to the FBI or under oath." In October 2022, judge Anthony Trenga cast doubt on Millian and two 2020 emails he wrote denying he talked to Danchenko: The "emails lack the necessary 'guarantees of trustworthiness' as the government does not offer direct evidence that Millian actually wrote the emails, and, even if he did, Millian possessed opportunity and motive to fabricate and/or misrepresent his thoughts."

Charles Dolan Jr.

Dolan, who was "well-known among Russia experts," was another unwitting source for Danchenko. He was a public relations executive and Democratic party operative who had been active in Bill and Hillary Clinton's campaigns. While working for Ketchum, a PR firm in New York, he "helped handle global public relations for the Russian Federation for eight years ending in 2014". He also became acquainted with Danchenko and allegedly "fed the dossier before he fought against it". Danchenko had also introduced Olga Galkina, another one of Danchenko's sources, to him. The two had regular interactions "including in ways that indicated they supported Mrs. Clinton's campaign".

Dolan's involvement as an unwitting source for Danchenko came to light in connection with Danchenko's indictment. Danchenko is accused of lying to the FBI by stating that "he did not discuss information in the dossier with the individual" [Dolan], "when in fact, the indictment claims, some of the material was 'gathered directly' from" him.

Information allegedly from Dolan that ended up in the dossier were "rumors about Paul Manafort's dismissal as Trump's campaign chairman...Two days later, the indictment alleges, that information appeared in one of Steele's reports." Both men had also met in Moscow in June 2016, where Dolan had stayed at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and toured the presidential suite where Trump had stayed in 2013. According to the Danchenko indictment, "a hotel staff member told [Dolan] that Mr. Trump had stayed there — but Mr. Dolan and another person on the tour told the F.B.I. that the staff member did not mention any salacious activity." After meeting in Moscow, Danchenko flew "to London to provide information that would later appear in the dossier, the indictment claims, setting forth the timeline of these encounters without stating that Dolan was the source for specific claims about the purported tape."

Dolan later stated "that he believed the analyst [Danchenko] 'worked for FSB'... Dolan later admitted to the FBI... that he had 'fabricated' the basis of certain details he had provided to Danchenko. He also reportedly said he was unaware of the specifics of Danchenko's work, or that the information they were trading would be transmitted to the FBI. Dolan's 'historical and ongoing involvement in Democratic politics,' the indictment asserts, 'bore upon' his 'reliability, motivations, and potential bias as a source of information' for Steele’s reports."

Dolan told authorities that Clinton campaign officials "did not direct, and were not aware of" his contacts with Danchenko. Journalist Stanley-Becker stated "new allegations make Dolan one of the most mysterious figures in the saga of the Steele dossier".

Discrepancies between sources and their allegations

One of the findings of the 2019 Inspector General's report related to conflicting accounts of sourced content in the dossier. When Steele's Primary Sub-source was later interviewed by the FBI about the allegations sourced to them, he gave accounts that conflicted with Steele's renderings in the dossier and implied that Steele "misstated or exaggerated" their statements. FBI agent Peter Strzok wrote that "Recent interviews and investigation, however, reveal Steele may not be in a position to judge the reliability of his subsource network."

The IG found it difficult to discern the causes for the discrepancies between some allegations and explanations later provided to the FBI by the sources for those allegations. The IG attributed the discrepancies to three possible factors:

These included miscommunications between Steele and the Primary Sub-source, exaggerations or misrepresentations by Steele about the information he obtained, or misrepresentations by the Primary Sub-source and/or sub-sources when questioned by the FBI about the information they conveyed to Steele or the Primary Sub-source. (p. 189)

Another factor was attempts by sources to distance themselves from the content attributed to them:

FBI documents reflect that another of Steele's sub-sources who reviewed the election reporting told the FBI in August 2017 that whatever information in the Steele reports that was attributable to him/her had been "exaggerated" and that he/she did not recognize anything as originating specifically from him/her. The Primary Sub-source told the FBI that he/she believed this sub-source was "one of the key sources for the 'Trump dossier'" and the source for allegations concerning Michael Cohen and events in Prague contained in Reports 135, 136, and 166, as well as Report 94's allegations concerning the alleged meeting between Carter Page and Igor Divyekin. (p. 192-193)

The Supervisory Intel Analyst believed this key sub-source (not the Primary Sub-source) "may have been attempting to minimize his/her role in the [dossier's] election reporting following its release to the public".

The FBI's Supervisory Intel Analyst said that "it was his impression that the Primary Sub-source may not have been 'completely truthful' and may have been minimizing certain aspects of what he/she told Steele". He also "believed that there were instances where the Primary Sub-source was 'minimizing' certain facts but did not believe that he/she was 'completely fabricating' events". He added that he "did not know whether he could support a 'blanket statement' that the Primary Sub-source had been truthful".

False, misleading, unproven allegations

Legally, anyone accused of wrongdoing, be it public officials accused of conspiracy to commit fraud or corruption or a John Doe accused of theft, an accusation or allegation is not a statement of fact, and cannot simply transform into a fact without evidence to support it. The act of piling on one allegation over another simply creates multiple allegations, not facts necessary to prove something is true. The following list of allegations which comprise the Steele dossier have not been verified or proven true. In the U.S., allegations are subject to the burden of proof.

President Donald Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin

Trump and Putin have repeatedly denied the allegations against them in the dossier; Trump has referred to it as "discredited", "debunked", "fictitious", and "fake news".

DNC email hack, leaks, and misinformation

See also: § Kremlin's "Romanian" hackers and use of WikiLeaks, and Trump campaign reaction; and § Cohen and alleged Prague visit

• ... that Russia was responsible for the DNC email hacks and the recent appearance of the stolen DNC emails on WikiLeaks, and that the reason for using WikiLeaks was "plausible deniability". (Report 95)
• ... that "the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of TRUMP and senior members of his campaign team". (Report 95)
• ... that after the emails had been forwarded to WikiLeaks, it was decided to not leak more, but to engage in misinformation: "Rather the tactics would be to spread rumours and misinformation about the content of what already had been leaked and make up new content." (Report 101)
• ... that Page had "conceived and promoted" the idea of [the Russians] leaking the stolen DNC emails to WikiLeaks during the 2016 Democratic National Convention. (Reports 95, 102)
• ... that Page had intended the email leaks "to swing supporters of Bernie SANDERS away from Hillary CLINTON and across to TRUMP". (Report 102)
• ... that the hacking of the DNC servers was performed by Romanian hackers ultimately controlled by Putin and paid by both Trump and Putin. (Report 166)
• ... that Cohen, together with three colleagues, secretly met with Kremlin officials in the Prague offices of Rossotrudnichestvo in August 2016, where he arranged "deniable cash payments" to the hackers and sought "to cover up all traces of the hacking operation", as well as "cover up ties between Trump and Russia, including Manafort's involvement in Ukraine". (Reports 135, 166)

Paul Manafort

In August of 2018, Paul Manafort, a prominent political figure, was convicted in a federal court in Virginia on charges including two counts of bank fraud, five counts of tax fraud, and one count of failure to disclose an offshore bank account. These charges were directly linked to Manafort's involvement in political consulting for a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine. However, the jury remained deadlocked on ten additional fraud charges, with one juror expressing reasonable doubts. It is noteworthy that all charges against Manafort were distinct from his role within the Trump campaign; he had resigned as the campaign's chairman three months prior to the 2016 election amidst scrutiny for his lobbying and political consulting activities.

Carter Page

In January 2021, Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI lawyer, was sentenced to probation after admitting to falsifying an internal FBI email crucial for maintaining government surveillance on Carter Page, a central figure in the Mueller investigation. Clinesmith's alteration of the email occurred as he sought approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to extend surveillance on Page, a former adviser to the Trump campaign. The approval of this warrant has been a contentious issue for critics of both the FBI and the Mueller investigation.

During the sentencing, Page himself addressed the court, detailing the repercussions he faced due to the disclosure of the investigation, including receiving death threats and living as an international fugitive for years. Meanwhile, Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that Clinesmith's modification of the email misrepresented Page's relationship with another U.S. intelligence agency, the CIA, for which Page claimed to be a source. Additionally, while the inspector general affirmed the legitimacy of the FBI's investigation into Russian election meddling, he criticized the FBI for serious and repeated errors in seeking authorization under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to surveil Page, citing inaccuracies and inadequacies in the FBI's submissions to the court.

Russian interference

On January 6, 2017, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released the intelligence community assessment of the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It stated that Russian leadership favored Trump over Clinton, and that Putin personally ordered an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's electoral chances and "undermine public faith in the US democratic process", as well as ordering cyber attacks on the Democratic and Republican parties. John Brennan and James Clapper testified to Congress that Steele's dossier played no role in the intelligence community assessment, testimony that was reaffirmed by an April 2020 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report. The committee found that the Steele dossier was not used by the assessment to "support any of its analytic judgments". In a December 2020 interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News, Brennan said: "The Steele dossier was not used in any way to undergird the judgments that came out of the intelligence community assessment about the Russian actions in the 2016 election... There was so much other evidence and intelligence to support those judgments."

The Mueller Report backed "Steele's central claim that the Russians ran a 'sweeping and systematic' operation ... to help Trump win". James Comey said:

The bureau began an effort after we got the Steele dossier to try and see how much of it we could replicate. That work was ongoing when I was fired. Some of it was consistent with our other intelligence, the most important part. The Steele dossier said the Russians are coming for the American election. It's a huge effort. It has multiple goals ... And that was true.

Newsweek said "the dossier's main finding, that Russia tried to prop up Trump over Clinton, was confirmed by" the ODNI assessment. ABC News stated that "some of the dossier's broad implications—particularly that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an operation to boost Trump and sow discord within the U.S. and abroad—now ring true."

On April 26, 2016, George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor, held a meeting with Joseph Mifsud, a man described by James B. Comey as a "Russian agent". Mifsud, who claimed "substantial connections to Russian officials", told Papadopoulos the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton in the form of thousands of her emails. This occurred concurrently with the Hillary Clinton email controversy, but before the hacking of the DNC computers had become public knowledge, and Papadopoulos later bragged "that the Trump campaign was aware the Russian government had dirt on Hillary Clinton". According to John Sipher, "court papers show he was, indeed, told by a Russian agent that the Kremlin had derogatory information in the form of 'thousands of e-mails'."

In February 2019, Michael Cohen implicated Trump before the U.S. Congress, writing that in late July 2016, Trump had knowledge that Roger Stone was communicating with WikiLeaks about releasing emails stolen from the DNC in 2016. Stone denied this and accused Cohen of lying to Congress. Stone was later convicted before being pardoned by Trump, and it was confirmed that Stone had been in contact with WikiLeaks.

Papadopoulos sent emails about Putin to at least seven Trump campaign officials. Trump national campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis encouraged Papadopoulos to fly to Russia and meet with agents of the Russian Foreign Ministry, who reportedly wanted to share "Clinton dirt" with the Trump campaign. When Donald Trump Jr. learned of the offer, he welcomed it by responding: "If it's what you say, I love it ..." Later, on June 9, 2016, a meeting in Trump Tower was held, ostensibly for representatives from Russia to deliver that dirt on Clinton. Instead, the meeting was used to discuss lifting of the Magnitsky Act economic sanctions that had been imposed on Russia in 2012, a move favored by candidate Trump.

At the Helsinki summit meeting in July 2018, Putin was asked if he had wanted Trump to win the 2016 election. He responded "Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal."

Manafort's and others' co-operation with Russian efforts

See also: Mueller report § Conspiracy or coordination vs collusion

Dossier source(s) allege that Manafort, who had worked for Russian interests in Ukraine for many years, "managed" a "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership". The "conspiracy" is not proven, but the "co-operation" is seen as proven.

While the Mueller investigation did not "produce enough evidence" to prove the existence of a formal written or oral "conspiracy", some consider the actions of Manafort, Trump's welcoming of Russian help, and the myriad secret contacts between other Trump campaign members and associates with Russians to be the alleged "co-operation" with the Russian's "'sweeping and systematic' operation in 2016 to help Trump win", that The Guardian's Luke Harding and Dan Sabbagh describe as "Steele's central claim".

CNN described Manafort's role in its report of intercepted communications among "suspected Russian operatives discussing their efforts to work with Manafort ... to coordinate information that could damage Hillary Clinton's election prospects ... The suspected operatives relayed what they claimed were conversations with Manafort, encouraging help from the Russians."

These reported intercepts are considered "remarkably consistent with the raw intelligence in the Steele Dossier ... [that] states that the 'well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership ... was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate's campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT'."

Kompromat and "golden showers" allegations

Dossier source(s) allege that Trump "hated" Obama so much that when he stayed in the Presidential suite of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow, he employed "a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show in front of him" in order to defile the bed used by the Obamas on an earlier visit. The alleged incident from 2013 was reportedly filmed and recorded by the FSB as kompromat. The 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report assessed the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow as a "high counterintelligence risk environment" with Russian intelligence on staff, "government surveillance of guests' rooms", and the common presence of prostitutes, "likely with at least the tacit approval of Russian authorities". A Marriott executive told the committee that after Trump's 2013 stay at the hotel, he overheard two hotel employees discussing what to do with an elevator surveillance video they said showed Trump "with several women" whom one of the employees "implied to be 'hostesses.'" Committee investigators interviewed the two employees, but they said they could not recall the video.

Thomas Roberts, the host of the Miss Universe contest, confirmed that "Trump was in Moscow for one full night and at least part of another. (November 8–10). According to flight records, Keith Schiller's testimony, social media posts, and Trump's close friend, Aras Agalarov, Trump arrived by private jet on Friday, November 8, going to the Ritz-Carlton hotel and booking into the presidential suite, where the "golden showers" incident is alleged to have occurred. The next day, Facebook posts showed he was at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. That evening he attended the Miss Universe pageant, followed by an after-party. He then returned to his hotel, packed, and flew back to the U.S.

James Comey wrote in his book A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership that Trump asked him to have the FBI investigate the pee tape allegation "because he wanted to convince his wife that it wasn't true". Comey did not know if the "golden showers" allegation was true, but he came to believe it was possible.

Regarding the "golden showers" allegation, Michael Isikoff and David Corn have stated that Steele's "faith in the sensational sex claim would fade over time. ... As for the likelihood of the claim that prostitutes had urinated in Trump's presence, Steele would say to colleagues, 'It's 50–50'." The book Russian Roulette says that Steele's confidence in the truth of "the Ritz-Carlton story was 'fifty-fifty'. He treated everything in the dossier as raw intelligence material—not proven fact." In their 2019 book, the founders of Fusion GPS report that Steele received the "hotel anecdote" from seven Russian sources.

Slate journalist Ashley Feinberg investigated a 25-second video of the purported occurrence (that she described as a 'pee tape'). She concluded that the tape was "fake", but it was "very far from being an obvious fake". A key "discrepancy", according to Feinberg, was that the video apparently showed the presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow as it appeared post-renovation in February 2016, despite the purported occurrence being in November 2013, before the renovation occurred. The video had been in circulation since at least January 25, 2019.

A footnote in the Mueller Report suggests that Trump may have heard that Russia had incriminating tapes of his behavior. On October 30, 2016, Michael Cohen exchanged a series of text messages with Giorgi Rtskhiladze, a businessman who had worked with Cohen on Trump's real estate projects. Rtskhiladze reported that he had successfully stopped the "flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there's anything else. Just so you know ..." Rtskhiladze told investigators that these were compromising tapes of Trump. Cohen told investigators he spoke to Trump about the issue. Rtskhiladze later told investigators "he was told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen." Rolling Stone reported that "Rtskhiladze's description of the tapes' content tracks with the unverified information included in the Steele dossier".

The Senate Intelligence Committee Report indicated that "Cohen has testified that he became aware of allegations about a tape of compromising information in late 2013 or early 2014...related to Trump and prostitutes." Cohen then "asked a friend, Giorgi Rtskhiladze, to see if Rtskhiladze could find out if the tape was real". The Report added that "Cohen...would have been willing to pay...to suppress the information if it could be verified, but Cohen was never shown any evidence."

On June 15, 2013, five months before the 2013 Miss Universe contest in Moscow, Trump was accompanied on a visit to the Las Vegas nightclub "The Act" by Crocus Group owner Aras Agalarov, his son Emin, Ike Kaveladze, Rob Goldstone, Michael Cohen, Keith Schiller, and others, where Trump was photographed and the group stayed "for several hours". The club featured "risque performances" and, according to Cohen, Trump watched a golden showers performance "with delight".

The Agalarovs were also linked to several other events involving Trump, including the invitation to share "dirt" on Clinton at the Trump Tower meeting and knowledge of Trump's alleged sexual activities in Russia, both in St. Petersburg and the Moscow Ritz Carlton. The dossier's sources reported that Aras Agalarov "would know most of the details of what the Republican presidential candidate had got up to" in St. Petersburg. In 2013, when Trump stayed at the Ritz Carlton hotel, "multiple sources" reported that the offer to "send five women to Trump's hotel room that night" came from a Russian who was accompanying Emin Agalarov". A footnote in the Mueller Report describes how Giorgi Rtskhiladze reported that he had successfully stopped the "flow of ... compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group" [owned by Agalarov].

Trump viewed as under Putin's influence

The press conference at the 2018 summit in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16, 2018 (English version) 46 minutes

Dossier source(s) allege that the Russians possess kompromat on Trump that can be used to blackmail him, and that the Kremlin promised him the kompromat will not be used as long as he continues his cooperation with them. Trump's actions at the Helsinki summit in 2018 "led many to conclude that Steele's report was more accurate than not. ... Trump sided with the Russians over the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Moscow had waged an all-out attack on the 2016 election ... The joint news conference ... cemented fears among some that Trump was in Putin's pocket and prompted bipartisan backlash."

At the joint press conference, when asked directly about the subject, Putin denied having any kompromat on Trump. Even though Trump was reportedly given a "gift from Putin" the weekend of the pageant, Putin argued "that he did not even know Trump was in Russia for the Miss Universe pageant in 2013 when, according to the Steele dossier, video of Trump was secretly recorded to blackmail him."

In reaction to Trump's actions at the summit, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) spoke in the Senate: "Millions of Americans will continue to wonder if the only possible explanation for this dangerous and inexplicable behavior is the possibility—the very real possibility—that President Putin holds damaging information over President Trump."

Several operatives and lawyers in the U.S. intelligence community reacted strongly to Trump's performance at the summit. They described it as "subservien[ce] to Putin" and a "fervent defense of Russia's military and cyber aggression around the world, and its violation of international law in Ukraine" which they saw as "harmful to US interests". They also suggested he was either a "Russian asset" or a "useful idiot" for Putin, and that he looked like "Putin's puppet". Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wondered "if Russians have something on Trump", and former CIA director John Brennan, who has accused Trump of "treason", tweeted: "He is wholly in the pocket of Putin."

Former acting CIA director Michael Morell has called Trump "an unwitting agent of the Russian federation", and former CIA director Michael V. Hayden said Trump was a "useful fool" who is "manipulated by Moscow". House Speaker Nancy Pelosi questioned Trump's loyalty when she asked him: "[Why do] all roads lead to Putin?"

According to former KGB major Yuri Shvets, Trump became the target of a joint Czech intelligence services and KGB spying operation after he married Czech model Ivana Zelnickova and was cultivated as an "asset" by Russian intelligence since 1977: "Russian intelligence gained an interest in Trump as far back as 1977, viewing Trump as an exploitable target."

Trump was not viewed as an actual agent (spy) but as an asset: "We're talking about Trump being a self-interested businessman who's happy to do a favour if it works to his own best interests."

Ynet, an Israeli online news site, reported on January 12, 2017, that U.S. intelligence advised Israeli intelligence officers to be cautious about sharing information with the incoming Trump administration, until the possibility of Russian influence over Trump, suggested by Steele's report, has been fully investigated.

Max Boot described what he sees as more "evidence of Trump's subservience to Putin", and he tied it to new government confirmations of rumors about Trump's alleged "dalliances with Russian women during visits to Moscow" that leave "him open to blackmail", rumors mentioned in the 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report: While the Senate Intelligence Committee report extensively explored the possibility of Russian kompromat, much of the discussion was redacted in the public version of the report. Ultimately, the Senate Intelligence Committee "did not establish" that Russia had kompromat on Trump.

Kremlin's "Romanian" hackers and use of WikiLeaks, and Trump campaign reaction

Dossier source(s) allege that "Romanian hackers" controlled by Putin hacked the DNC servers and that the Trump campaign cooperated with Russia.

Russian hackers used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and claimed to be Romanian, like the Romanian hacker who originally used that identity.

The Mueller Report confirmed that the dossier was correct that the Kremlin was behind the appearance of the DNC emails on WikiLeaks, noting that the Trump campaign "showed interest in WikiLeaks's releases of documents and welcomed their potential to damage candidate Clinton". It was later confirmed that Roger Stone was in contact with Wikileaks.

Thirteen Russian nationals and three companies have been charged for their efforts to interfere in the 2016 election and to support Trump's campaign. According to an indictment cited by The New York Times, "The Russians stole the identities of American citizens, posed as political activists and used the flash points of immigration, religion and race to manipulate a campaign in which those issues were already particularly divisive," beginning in 2014. By 2016, they were "supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump" and denigrating Clinton, concluded the U.S. government.

According to CNN, "former top Trump campaign officials have corroborated special counsel Robert Mueller's finding that the Trump campaign planned some of its strategy around the Russian hacks, and had multiple contacts with Kremlin-linked individuals in 2016."

On February 19, 2020, numerous sources revealed that lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Westminster Magistrates' Court Trump had Dana Rohrabacher visit Assange at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London on August 16, 2017. There, he made a quid pro quo offer of a presidential pardon to Assange, in exchange for Assange covering up Russian involvement by declaring that "Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks": "[Lawyer] Edward Fitzgerald ... said he had evidence that a quid pro quo was put to Assange by Rohrabacher, who was known as Putin's favorite congressman."

Page met with Rosneft officials

Carter Page (2017)

Igor Sechin (2016)

On November 2, 2017, Carter Page testified, without a lawyer, for more than six hours before the House Intelligence Committee that was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. He testified about his five-day trip to Moscow in July 2016. According to his testimony, before leaving he informed Jeff Sessions, J. D. Gordon, Hope Hicks, and Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager, of the planned trip to Russia, and Lewandowski approved the trip, responding: "If you'd like to go on your own, not affiliated with the campaign, you know, that's fine."

Dossier source(s) allege that Page secretly met Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin on that July trip. Page denied meeting Sechin or any Russian officials during that trip, but he later admitted under oath that he met with Sechin's senior aide, Andrey Baranov, who was Rosneft's chief of investor relations. According to Harding, Baranov was "almost certainly" "relaying Sechin's wishes". David Corn and Michael Isikoff wrote that the FBI was not able to find evidence that Page met with Sechin or was offered a 19 percent stake in the giant energy conglomerate in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions and that "Mueller's report noted that his 'activities in Russia ... were not fully explained'". Newsweek has listed the claim about Page meeting with Rosneft officials as "verified".

Jane Mayer said this part of the dossier seems true, even if the name of an official may have been wrong. Page's congressional testimony confirmed he met with Andrey Baranov, who was Rosneft's chief of investor relations, and Page conceded under questioning by Adam Schiff that the "potential sale of a significant percentage of Rosneft" might have been "briefly mentioned". However, Page insisted that "there was never any negotiations, or any quid pro quo, or any offer, or any request even, in any way related to sanctions".

CNN noted that his admissions to the House Intelligence Committee did confirm the Steele dossier was right about Page attending high-level meetings with Russians and possibly discussing "a sale of a stake in Rosneft", even though he denied doing so at the time. In April 2019, the Mueller Report concluded that their investigation did not establish that Page coordinated with Russia's interference efforts.

On February 11, 2021, Page lost a defamation suit he had filed against Yahoo! News and HuffPost for their articles that described his activities mentioned in the Steele dossier. According to Jeff Montgomery in Law360: "Judge Craig A Karsnitz ruled that the articles ... were either true or protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act." Mike Leonard, writing for Bloomberg Law, wrote that the judge said that Page admitted the articles about his potential contacts with Russian officials were essentially true.

Brokerage of Rosneft privatization

Dossier source(s) allege that Sechin "offered PAGE/TRUMP's associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft" (worth about $11 billion) in exchange for Trump lifting the sanctions against Russia after his election.

According to Harding, Sechin and Divyekin set this offer up as a carrot and stick scheme, in which the carrot was the brokerage fee ("in the region of tens and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars"), and the stick was blackmail over purported "damaging material on Trump" held by the Russian leadership.

About a month after Trump won the election, according to The Guardian, Carter Page traveled to Moscow "shortly before the company announced it was selling a 19.5% stake" in Rosneft. He met with top Russian officials at Rosneft, but denied meeting Sechin. He also complained about the effects of the sanctions against Russia.

On December 7, 2016, Putin announced that a 19.5% stake in Rosneft was sold to Glencore and a Qatar fund. Public records showed the ultimate owner included "a Cayman Islands company whose beneficial owners cannot be traced", with "the main question" being "Who is the real buyer of a 19.5 percent stake in Rosneft? ... the Rosneft privatization uses a structure of shell companies owning shell companies."

Michael Horowitz's 2019 inspector general report "said Steele's claims about Page 'remained uncorroborated' when the wiretaps ended in 2017".

Trump's attempts to lift sanctions

The dossier says Page, claiming to speak with Trump's authority, had confirmed that Trump would lift the existing sanctions against Russia if he were elected president. On December 29, 2016, during the transition period between the election and the inauguration, National Security Advisor designate Flynn spoke to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, urging him not to retaliate for newly imposed sanctions; the Russians took his advice and did not retaliate.

Within days after the inauguration, new Trump administration officials ordered State Department staffers to develop proposals for immediately revoking the economic and other sanctions. One retired diplomat later said, "What was troubling about these stories is that suddenly I was hearing that we were preparing to rescind sanctions in exchange for, well, nothing." The staffers alerted Congressional allies who took steps to codify the sanctions into law. The attempt to overturn the sanctions was abandoned after Flynn's conversation was revealed and Flynn resigned. In August 2017, Congress passed a bipartisan bill to impose new sanctions on Russia. Trump reluctantly signed the bill, but then refused to implement it. After Trump hired Manafort, his approach toward Ukraine changed; he said he might recognize Crimea as Russian territory and might lift the sanctions against Russia.

Among those sanctioned were Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska, "who is linked to Paul Manafort", parliament member Konstantin Kosachev, banker Aleksandr Torshin, and Putin's son-in-law. Preparation for the sanctions started already before Trump took office. In January 2019, Trump's Treasury Department lifted the sanctions on companies formerly controlled by Deripaska. Sanctions on Deripaska himself remained in effect.

Cohen and alleged Prague visit

Dossier source(s) allege that Cohen and three colleagues met Kremlin officials in the Prague offices of Rossotrudnichestvo in August 2016, to arrange for payments to the hackers, cover up the hack, and "cover up ties between Trump and Russia, including Manafort's involvement in Ukraine". McClatchy reported in 2018 that a phone of Cohen's was traced to the Prague area in late summer 2016. The April 2019 Mueller Report states "Cohen had never traveled to Prague". The December 2019 Horowitz Report stated that the FBI "concluded that these allegations against Cohen" in the dossier "were not true".

In April 2018, McClatchy DC Bureau, citing two sources, reported that investigators working for Mueller "have traced evidence that Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany, apparently during August or early September of 2016", a claim that The Spectator reported in July 2018 was "backed up by one intelligence source in London".

In August 2018, The Spectator reported that "one intelligence source" saying "Mueller is examining 'electronic records' that would place Cohen in Prague." In December 2018, McClatchy reported that a phone of Cohen's had "pinged" cellphone towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, citing four sources, leading to foreign intelligence detecting the pings. McClatchy also reported that during that time an Eastern European intelligence agency had intercepted communications between Russians, one of whom mentioned that Cohen was in Prague.

The Washington Post sent a team of reporters to Prague in an attempt to verify that Cohen had been there for the purposes alleged in the Dossier. According to reporter Greg Miller in November 2018, they "came away empty".

In April 2019, The New York Times reported that when the FBI attempted to verify the dossier's claims, the Prague allegation "appeared to be false", as "Cohen's financial records and C.I.A. queries to foreign intelligence services revealed nothing to support it."

Also in April 2019, the Mueller Report mentioned that "Cohen had never traveled to Prague" and presented no evidence of the alleged Prague meeting, thus contradicting the dossier and the McClatchy report. Glenn Kessler, fact-checker for The Washington Post, has said that "Mueller does not indicate he investigated whether Cohen traveled to Prague; he simply dismisses the incident in Cohen's own words". McClatchy responded to the Mueller Report by stating that it did not refer to evidence that Cohen's phone had pinged in or near Prague. McClatchy stood by its December 2018 reporting, stating that there was a "possibility that Cohen was not there but one of the many phones he used was".

The Associated Press described a December 2019 Horowitz Report mention of an inaccuracy in the dossier regarding Michael Cohen that may have been the Prague allegation. Matt Taibbi wrote that news reports of the Cohen-Prague allegation were "either incorrect or lacking factual foundation". CNN interpreted the Horowitz Report as saying that the dossier's Cohen-Prague allegation was untrue.

In August 2020, the testimony of David Kramer was publicized, where he said Steele was uncertain about the "alleged Cohen trip to Prague". Kramer said: "it could have been in Prague, it could have been outside of Prague. He also thought there was a possibility it could have been in Budapest ... [but Steele] never backed off the idea that Cohen was in Europe."

Republican position on Russian conflict with Ukraine and related sanctions

In 2015, Trump had taken a hard line in favor of Ukraine's independence from Russia. He initially denounced Russia's annexation of Crimea as a "land grab" that "should never have happened", and called for a firmer U.S. response, saying "We should definitely be strong. We should definitely do sanctions."

With the hirings of Paul Manafort and Carter Page, Trump's approach toward Ukraine reversed. Manafort had worked for Russian interests in Ukraine for many years, and after hiring Manafort as his campaign manager, Trump said he might recognize Crimea as Russian territory and might lift the sanctions against Russia. At the time Trump appointed Carter Page as a foreign policy advisor, Page was known as an outspoken and strongly pro-Russian, anti-sanctions person whose views aligned with Trump's, and who had complained that his own, as well as his Russian friends', business interests were negatively affected by the sanctions imposed on Russia because of its aggression in Ukraine and its interference in the 2016 elections.

Dossier source(s) allege that "the Trump campaign agreed to minimize US opposition to Russia's incursions into Ukraine". Harding considers this allegation to have been confirmed by the actions of the Trump campaign: "This is precisely what happened at the Republican National Convention last July, when language on the US's commitment to Ukraine was mysteriously softened." The Washington Post reported that "the Trump campaign orchestrated a set of events" in July 2016 "to soften the language of an amendment to the Republican Party's draft policy on Ukraine." In July 2016, the Republican National Convention did make changes to the Republican Party's platform on Ukraine: initially the platform proposed providing "lethal weapons" to Ukraine, but the line was changed to "appropriate assistance".

NPR reported that "Diana Denman, a Republican delegate who supported arming U.S. allies in Ukraine, has told people that Trump aide J.D. Gordon said at the Republican Convention in 2016 that Trump directed him to support weakening that position in the official platform." J. D. Gordon, who was one of Trump's national security advisers during the campaign, said he had advocated for changing language because that reflected what Trump had said. Although the Trump team denied any role in softening the language, Denman confirmed that the change "definitely came from Trump staffers".

Kyle Cheney of Politico sees evidence that the change was "on the campaign's radar" because Carter Page congratulated campaign members in an email the day after the platform amendment: "As for the Ukraine amendment, excellent work." Paul Manafort falsely said that the change "absolutely did not come from the Trump campaign". Trump told George Stephanopoulos that people in his campaign were responsible for changing the GOP's platform stance on Ukraine, but he denied personal involvement.

Relations with Europe and NATO

Vladimir Putin (2017)

Dossier source(s) allege that, as part of a quid pro quo agreement, "the TRUMP team had agreed ... to raise US/NATO defense commitments in the Baltics and Eastern Europe to deflect attention away from Ukraine, a priority for PUTIN who needed to cauterise the subject." Aiko Stevenson, writing in HuffPost, noted that some of Trump's actions seem to align with "Putin's wish list", that "includes lifting sanctions on Russia, turning a blind eye towards its aggressive efforts in the Ukraine, and creating a divisive rift amongst western allies." During the campaign Trump "called NATO, the centrepiece of Transatlantic security, 'obsolete', championed the disintegration of the EU, and said that he is open to lifting sanctions on Moscow." Harding adds that Trump repeatedly "questioned whether US allies were paying enough into Nato coffers". Jeff Stein, writing in Newsweek, described how "Trump's repeated attacks on NATO have ... frustrated ... allies ... [and] raised questions as to whether the president has been duped into facilitating Putin's long-range objective of undermining the European Union." Trump's appearances at meetings with allies, including NATO and G7, have frequently been antagonistic; according to the Los Angeles Times, "The president's posture toward close allies has been increasingly and remarkably confrontational this year, especially in comparison to his more conciliatory approach to adversaries, including Russia and North Korea."

Spy withdrawn from Russian embassy

Dossier source(s) allege that "a leading Russian diplomat, Mikhail KULAGIN" [sic] participated in U.S. election meddling, and was recalled to Moscow because the Kremlin was concerned his role in the meddling would be exposed. The BBC later reported that U.S. officials in 2016 had identified Russian diplomat Mikhail Kalugin as a spy and that he was under surveillance, thus "verifying" a key claim in the dossier. Kalugin was the head of the economics section at the Russian embassy. He returned to Russia in August 2016. McClatchy reported that the FBI was investigating whether Kalugin played a role in the election interference. Kalugin has denied the allegations.

Dossier's veracity and Steele's reputation

See also: § Discrepancies between sources and their allegations

Steele and the dossier became "the central point of contention in the political brawl raging around" the Special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Russian intelligence agencies may have sought to create doubt about the veracity of the dossier. Those who believed Steele considered him a hero who tried to warn about the Kremlin's meddling in the election, and people who distrusted him considered him a "hired gun" used to attack Trump. Glenn Kessler described the dossier as "a political Rorschach test. Depending on your perspective, it's either a hoax used to defame a future president or a credible guide to allegations about Trump's involvement with Russia."

Following the dossier's release, Steele completely avoided on-camera interviews until he participated in an ABC News documentary that was aired on Hulu on October 18, 2021. In that documentary, Steele maintained that his sources were credible and that it was typical in intelligence investigations to "never get to the point where you're 99% certain of the evidence to secure a conviction". Steele also acknowledged that one of his sources had faced repercussions; he confirmed that the source was still alive, but he would not provide further details.

The dossier's "broad assertion that Russia waged a campaign to interfere in the election is now accepted as fact by the US intelligence community." With the passage of time and further revelations from various investigations and sources, it is becoming clearer that the overall thrust of the dossier was accurate:

Some of the dossier's broad threads have now been independently corroborated. U.S. intelligence agencies and the special counsel's investigation into Russian election interference did eventually find that Kremlin-linked operatives ran an elaborate operation to promote Trump and hurt Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, as the dossier says in its main narrative.

— Jeff Donn, "Some Questions in Trump–Russia Dossier Now Finding Answers", Associated Press (June 29, 2018)

Shepard Smith said: "Some of the assertions in the dossier have been confirmed. Other parts are unconfirmed. None of the dossier, to Fox News's knowledge, has been disproven." In some cases, public verification is hindered because information is classified.

According to Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff, a major portion of the dossier's content is about Russian efforts to help Trump, and those allegations "turned out to be true".

After the Mueller Report was released, Joshua Levy, counsel for Fusion GPS, issued this statement:

The Mueller Report substantiates the core reporting and many of the specifics in Christopher Steele's 2016 memoranda, including that Trump campaign figures were secretly meeting Kremlin figures, that Russia was conducting a covert operation to elect Donald Trump, and that the aim of the Russian operation was to sow discord and disunity in the US and within the Transatlantic Alliance. To our knowledge, nothing in the Steele memoranda has been disproven.

The Inspector General investigation by Michael E. Horowitz, published December 9, 2019, expressed doubts about the dossier's reliability and sources:

The FBI concluded, among other things, that although consistent with known efforts by Russia to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections, much of the material in the Steele election reports, including allegations about Donald Trump and members of the Trump campaign relied upon in the Carter Page FISA applications, could not be corroborated; that certain allegations were inaccurate or inconsistent with information gathered by the Crossfire Hurricane team; and that the limited information that was corroborated related to time, location, and title information, much of which was publicly available. (p. 172)

Adam Goldman and Charlie Savage described the dossier as "deeply flawed". They have also described it as a "compendium of rumors and unproven assertions". Ryan Lucas described it as an "explosive dossier of unsubstantiated and salacious material about President Trump's alleged ties with Russia".

Reputation in the U.S. intelligence community

The process of evaluating Steele's information has been explained by Bill Priestap, at the time the Assistant Director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division:

We did not ever take the information he provided at face value ... We went to great lengths to try to independently verify the source's credibility and to prove or disprove every single assertion in the dossier ... We absolutely understood that the information in the so-called dossier could be inaccurate. We also understood that some parts could be true and other parts false. We understood that information could be embellished or exaggerated. We also understood that the information could have been provided by the Russians as part of a disinformation campaign. (p. 102)

On January 11, 2017, Paul Wood, of BBC News, wrote that the salacious information in Steele's dossier was also reported by "multiple intelligence sources" and "at least one East European intelligence service". They reported that "compromising material on Mr. Trump" included "more than one tape, not just video, but audio as well, on more than one date, in more than one place, in both Moscow and St. Petersburg". While also mentioning that "nobody should believe something just because an intelligence agent says it", Wood added that "the CIA believes it is credible that the Kremlin has such kompromat—or compromising material—on the next US commander in chief" and "a joint taskforce, that includes the CIA and the FBI, has been investigating allegations that the Russians may have sent money to Mr Trump's organisation or his election campaign".

On January 12, 2017, Susan Hennessey, a former National Security Agency lawyer now with the Brookings Institution, said: "My general take is that the intelligence community and law enforcement seem to be taking these claims seriously. That itself is highly significant. But it is not the same as these allegations being verified. Even if this was an intelligence community document—which it isn't—this kind of raw intelligence is still treated with skepticism." Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes wrote that "the current state of the evidence makes a powerful argument for a serious public inquiry into this matter".

On March 30, 2017, Paul Wood reported that the FBI was using the dossier as a roadmap for its investigation. On January 13, 2019, Sonam Sheth reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee was also using it as a roadmap for their investigation into Russia's election interference.

On April 18, 2017, CNN reported that, according to U.S. officials, information from the dossier had been used as part of the basis for getting the FISA warrant to monitor Page in October 2016. The Justice Department's inspector general revealed in 2019 that in the six weeks prior to its receipt of Steele's memos, the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team "had discussions about the possibility of obtaining FISAs targeting Page and Papadopoulos, but it was determined that there was insufficient information at the time to proceed with an application to the court." The IG report described a changed situation after the FBI received Steele's memos and said the dossier then played a central role in the seeking of FISA warrants on Carter Page in terms of establishing FISA's low bar for probable cause: "FBI and Department officials told us the Steele reporting 'pushed [the FISA proposal] over the line' in terms of establishing probable cause."

Mimi Rocah, Dan Goldman, and Barbara McQuade debunked three false arguments made by National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy against the FBI's use of the dossier when seeking a FISA warrant on Carter Page. They explained why the FBI was justified in doing so and would have been "derelict" if it had not: "[McCarthy] misses the point. Even if the specific details in the Steele dossier are not directly confirmed, the fact that other evidence unrelated to the dossier corroborates the dossier's main allegations is sufficient to support a finding of probable cause."

Officials told CNN this information would have had to be independently corroborated by the FBI before being used to obtain the warrant, but CNN later reported "it's now clear that this level of verification never materialized". Steele told the FBI that Person 1 was a "boaster" and "egoist" who "may engage in some embellishment", "caveats about his source" that the FBI omitted from its FISA application. In his testimony before Congress, Glenn Simpson "confirmed that the FBI had sources of its own and that whatever the FBI learned from Steele was simply folded into its ongoing work".

British journalist Julian Borger wrote on October 7, 2017, that "Steele's reports are being taken seriously after lengthy scrutiny by federal and congressional investigators", at least Steele's assessment that Russia had conducted a campaign to interfere in the 2016 election to Clinton's detriment; that part of the Steele dossier "has generally gained in credibility, rather than lost it".

On October 11, 2017, it was reported that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC), had said: "As I understand it, a good deal of his information remains unproven, but none of it has been disproven, and considerable amounts of it have been proven."

On October 25, 2017, James Clapper said that "some of the substantive content of the dossier we were able to corroborate in our Intelligence Community assessment which from other sources in which we had very high confidence."

On October 27, 2017, Robert S. Litt, a former lawyer for the Director of National Intelligence, was quoted as stating the dossier "played absolutely no role" in the intelligence community's determination that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

On November 15, 2017, Adam Schiff said much of the dossier's content is about Russian efforts to help Trump, and those allegations "turned out to be true", something later affirmed by the January 6, 2017, intelligence community assessment released by the ODNI.

On December 7, 2017, commentator Jonathan Chait wrote that as "time goes by, more and more of the claims first reported by Steele have been borne out", with the mainstream media "treat[ing] [the dossier] as gossip" whereas the intelligence community "take it seriously".

On January 29, 2018, a House Intelligence Committee minority report stated that "multiple independent sources ... corroborated Steele's reporting".

On January 29, 2018, Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said "little of that dossier has either been fully proven or conversely, disproven".

John Sipher, who served 28 years as a clandestine CIA agent, including heading the agency's Russia program, said investigating the allegations requires access to non-public records. He said "[p]eople who say it's all garbage, or all true, are being politically biased", adding he believes that while the dossier may not be correct in every detail, it is "generally credible" and "In the intelligence business, you don't pretend you're a hundred per cent accurate. If you're seventy or eighty per cent accurate, that makes you one of the best." He said the Mueller investigation would ultimately judge its merits. Sipher has written that "Many of my former CIA colleagues have taken the [dossier] reports seriously since they were first published."

During his April 15, 2018, ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos, former FBI Director James Comey described Steele as a "credible source, someone with a track record, someone who was a credible and respected member of an allied intelligence service during his career, and so it was important that we try to understand it, and see what could we verify, what could we rule in or rule out."

In May 2018, former career intelligence officer James Clapper believed that "more and more" of the dossier had been validated over time.

James Comey told the Office of the Inspector General that:

in his view, the "heart of the [Steele] reporting was that there's a massive Russian effort to influence the American election and weaponize stolen information." Comey said he believed those themes from the Steele reporting were "entirely consistent with information developed by the [USIC] wholly separate and apart from the [Steele] reporting", as well as consistent with what "our eyes and ears could also see". (p. 101)

When DOJ Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz issued a report in December 2019 on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the report noted that the "FBI Intel Section Chief told us that the CIA viewed the Steele reporting as 'internet rumor'".

Varied observations of dossier's veracity

Steele, the author of the dossier, said he believes that 70–90% of the dossier is accurate, although he gives the "golden showers" allegation a 50% chance of being true. In testimony to Congress, Simpson quoted "Steele as saying that any intelligence, especially from Russia, is bound to carry intentional disinformation, but that Steele believes his dossier is 'largely not disinformation'." Steele has countered the suggestion that the Russians deliberately fed his sources misinformation that would undermine Trump: "The ultimate Russian goal was to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming president, and therefore, the idea that they would intentionally spread embarrassing information about Trump—true or not—is not logical."

Other observers and experts have had varying reactions to the dossier. Generally, "former intelligence officers and other national-security experts" urged "skepticism and caution" but still took "the fact that the nation's top intelligence officials chose to present a summary version of the dossier to both President Obama and President-elect Trump" as an indication "that they may have had a relatively high degree of confidence that at least some of the claims therein were credible, or at least worth investigating further".

Vice President Joe Biden told reporters that, while he and Obama were receiving a briefing on the extent of election hacking attempts, there was a two-page addendum that addressed the contents of the Steele dossier. Top intelligence officials told them they "felt obligated to inform them about uncorroborated allegations about President-elect Donald Trump out of concern the information would become public and catch them off-guard".

On January 11, 2017, Newsweek published a list of "13 things that don't add up" in the dossier, writing that it was a "strange mix of the amateur and the insightful" and stating that it "contains lots of Kremlin-related gossip that could indeed be, as the author claims, from deep insiders—or equally gleaned" from Russian newspapers and blogs. Former UK ambassador to Russia Sir Tony Brenton said certain aspects of the dossier were inconsistent with British intelligence's understanding of how the Kremlin works, commenting: "I've seen quite a lot of intelligence on Russia, and there are some things in [the dossier] which look pretty shaky."

In his June 2017 Senate Intelligence Committee testimony, former FBI director James Comey said "some personally sensitive aspects" of the dossier were unverified when he briefed Trump on them on January 6, 2017. Comey also said he could not say publicly whether any of the allegations in the dossier had been confirmed.

Trump and his supporters have challenged the veracity of the dossier because it was funded in part by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, while Democrats assert the funding source is irrelevant.

In June 2019, investigators for Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz found Steele's testimony surprising and his "information sufficiently credible to have to extend the investigation".

In November 2019, the founders of Fusion GPS published a book about the dossier and had this to say about its veracity:

After three years of investigations, a fair assessment of the memos would conclude that many of the allegations in the dossier have been borne out. Some proved remarkably prescient. Other details remain stubbornly unconfirmed, while a handful now appear to be doubtful, though not yet disproven.

David A. Graham of The Atlantic has noted that in spite of Trump's "mantra that 'there was no collusion' ... it is clear that the Trump campaign and later transition were eager to work with Russia, and to keep that secret."

Adam Goldman and Charlie Savage of The New York Times have described the impact of some of the flaws in the dossier:

But its flaws have taken on outsized political significance, as Mr. Trump's allies have sought to conflate it with the larger effort to understand Russia's covert efforts to tilt the 2016 election in his favor and whether any Trump campaign associates conspired in that effort. Mr. Mueller laid out extensive details about Russia's covert operation and contacts with Trump campaign associates, but found insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy charges.

Subject of investigations and conspiracy theories

Investigations

The FBI Operation Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Russian interference, that started on July 31, 2016, was not triggered by the dossier, but the dossier is still the subject of the Russia investigation origins counter-narrative, a conspiracy theory pushed by Trump and Fox News.

In January 2018, ABC News described how the FBI would not open an investigation based on one document like Steele's unverified report but it still needed to investigate its allegations "rather than accept them as evidence". The Russian interference investigation was opened because of previously existing concerns: John Brennan testified he was already "aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns" and it was that knowledge that "served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred". ABC wrote that "For the FBI, the dossier was essentially just another tip" that must be investigated.

The Mueller Report, a summary of the findings of the Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, contained passing references to some of the dossier's allegations but little mention of its more sensational claims. It was a major subject of the Nunes memo, the Democratic rebuttal memo, and the Inspector General report on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

The investigations led to Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson being interviewed in August 2017 by Congress.

John Durham has been investigating whether FBI agents "mishandled classified information" about operation Crossfire Hurricane when they questioned Steele. The IG report documents that a case agent mentioned Papadopoulos to Steele. The FBI has no "established guidelines for how to address the disclosure of sensitive or classified information to sources", and the Inspector General "concluded that the case agent should not be faulted".

Durham sought to get more information by seeking access to evidence gathered in a British lawsuit filed by the founders of Alfa-Bank. A July 21, 2020, court filing shows that Durham has sought the lifting of "a protective order on evidence that had been gathered". Politico wrote that legal experts said this move was "highly unusual... and suggests the British government was not involved in, or cooperating with, Durham's criminal investigation".

Conspiracy theories

The Russia investigation origins counter-narrative is a right-wing alternative narrative, sometimes identified as a conspiracy theory, concerning the origins of the Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. These conspiracy theories have been pushed by Trump, Fox News, GOP politicians like Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Trump's Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. On November 2, 2020, the day before the presidential election, New York magazine reported that:

... there has been no evidence found, after 18 months of investigation, to support Barr's claims that Trump was targeted by politically biased Obama officials to prevent his election. (The probe remains ongoing.) In fact, the sources said, the Durham investigation has so far uncovered no evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden or Barack Obama, or that they were even involved with the Russia investigation. There 'was no evidence ... not even remotely ... indicating Obama or Biden did anything wrong,' as one person put it.

The conspiracy theory falsely claims the dossier triggered the Russia investigation and was used as an excuse by the FBI to start it. It also aims to discredit Steele and thus discredit the whole investigation. The real trigger for the July 31 opening of the investigation was two connected events: the July 22 release by WikiLeaks of Democratic National Committee emails stolen by Russian hackers and the July 26 revelation by the Australian government of the bragging by Papadopoulos of Russian offers to aid the Trump campaign by releasing those emails.

The dossier could not have had any role in the opening of the Russia investigation on July 31, 2016, as top FBI officials received the dossier the following September. Instead, it was the activities of George Papadopoulos that started the investigation. The investigation by Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz into Russian interference and alleged FISA abuses found that "none of the evidence used to open the [original Crossfire Hurricane FBI] investigation" came from the C.I.A. or Trump–Russia dossier. On February 4, 2018, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) affirmed that the Russia probe would have happened without the dossier: "So there's going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier." Also in February 2018, the Nunes memo stated: "The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok."

The dossier also figures as part of the Spygate conspiracy theory and conspiracy theories related to the Trump–Ukraine scandal. According to The Wall Street Journal, President Trump's actions in the Trump–Ukraine scandal stemmed from his belief that Ukraine was responsible for the Steele Dossier. Trump has insinuated that the dossier had its origins in Ukraine, that the Clintons were involved, that Hillary Clinton's email server is currently secreted in Ukraine, and that Clinton's deleted emails are in Ukraine.

The dossier is central to Republican assertions that Trump is the victim of an intelligence community conspiracy to take him down. Democrats see this focus on the dossier as conspiratorial. Congressman Devin Nunes, a staunch Trump defender, asserted as fact that the dossier originated in Ukraine during his questioning of EU ambassador Gordon Sondland during the Trump impeachment inquiry hearings in September 2019. Nunes also accused Hillary Clinton of colluding with Russia to get dirt on Trump. A fact-check by The Washington Post analyzed the claim and the role of the dossier. It found the claim to be false and gave it four Pinocchios.

According to Eric Lutz, Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan have pushed a conspiracy theory that the dossier was "based on Russian disinformation". The inspector general's report concluded "that more should have been done to examine Steele's contacts with intermediaries of Russian oligarchs in order to assess those contacts as potential sources of disinformation that could have influenced Steele's reporting".

David Frum also described a "suddenly red-hot media campaign to endorse Trump's fantasy that he was the victim of a 'Russia hoax.'" Frum argued that "anti-anti-Trump journalists want to use the Steele controversy to score points off politicians and media institutions that they dislike," and thus they "help him execute one of his Big Lies".

Heather Digby Parton described why we should "forget the Steele dossier" as a "reason for the Russia investigation": "No doubt there was some histrionic coverage of the Steele Dossier. But the truth is that virtually every news outlet that reported it made clear that it was unsubstantiated and no one reported that it was the only reason for the Russia investigation. Trump and his campaign's suspicious behavior was more than enough to set off alarms all over the world."

Denials of specific accusations

Michael Cohen

Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, says (at 8:50) Cohen was "never, ever" in Prague.

In 2016, Cohen told Mother Jones that he had visited Prague briefly 14 years before. The Wall Street Journal reported Cohen telling them (at an unspecified date) that he had been in Prague in 2001. Following the dossier's publication, as well as after subsequent reports, Cohen repeatedly denied having ever been to Prague. Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis said Cohen was "never, ever" in Prague, and that all allegations mentioning Cohen in the Steele dossier were false.

Cohen's passport showed that he entered Italy in early July 2016, and that he left Italy in mid-July 2016, from Rome, Italy. Buzzfeed News in May 2017 reported Cohen telling them that he was in Capri, Italy for the time period in question with his family, friends, and musician and actor Steven van Zandt, and that receipts would prove he had been on Capri, but he declined to provide them. Roger Friedman reported sources quoting van Zandt's wife, Maureen, as saying that she and Steven were in Rome, and never travelled to Capri. From this, Nancy LeTourneau of Washington Monthly commented that Cohen may have "lost his alibi", and thus doubted if he had really not travelled to Prague. A December 2018 statement from Steven van Zandt's Twitter said that he had met Cohen in Rome and not travelled together. In March 2019, The Washington Post reported that Cohen had been in Capri and Rome during his Italy trip, and that Cohen said he met Steven van Zandt in Rome.

Cohen has also stated that he was in Los Angeles between August 23 and 29, and in New York for the entire month of September.

Paul Manafort

Manafort has "denied taking part in any collusion with the Russian state, but registered himself as a foreign agent retroactively after it was revealed his firm received more than $17m working as a lobbyist for a pro-Russian Ukrainian party."

Carter Page

Page originally denied meeting any Russian officials, but his later testimony, acknowledging that he had met with senior Russian officials at Rosneft, has been interpreted as corroboration of portions of the dossier. On February 11, 2021, Page lost a defamation suit he had filed against Yahoo! News and HuffPost for their articles describing his activities mentioned in the Steele dossier. The judge said that Page admitted the articles about his potential contacts with Russian officials were essentially true.

Donald Trump

See also: § Kompromat and "golden showers" allegations

Trump addressed the "golden showers" allegation in January 2017, publicly stating: "Does anyone really believe that story? I'm also very much of a germaphobe, by the way."

According to FBI Director James Comey, in private conversations between him and Trump in early 2017, Trump denied the "golden showers" allegation, with one reason given being that he did not stay overnight in Moscow at the time of the Miss Universe contest in 2013, and another being that he assumed he was always being recorded when in Russia. Per flight records, Trump stayed overnight in Moscow the night before the pageant, then during the night of the pageant, he left Moscow at 3:58 a.m.

According to Comey, Trump's false denials on whether he had stayed overnight in Moscow, despite Comey not asking about it, exhibited behaviour that "tends to reflect consciousness of guilt", but this conclusion is "not definitive", said Comey.

Trump publicly disputed that he had issued such a denial to Comey: "He said I didn't stay there a night. Of course I stayed there ... I stayed there a very short period of time but of course I stayed."

Reactions to dossier

November 14, 2017 – House Intelligence Committee transcript of Glenn Simpson

August 22, 2017, Fusion GPS testimony transcript of Glenn Simpson

Trump

Donald Trump's first Twitter reaction to the dossier was a January 10, 2017, tweet: "FAKE NEWS—A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!", a view echoed the next day by the Kremlin: "absolute fabrication". Trump has repeatedly condemned the dossier and denied collusion with Russia, including in a December 26, 2017, tweet, in which he quoted from Fox & Friends.

Trump has called the dossier "fake news" and criticized the intelligence and media sources that published it. During a press conference on January 11, 2017, Trump denounced the dossier's claims as false, saying it was "disgraceful" for U.S. intelligence agencies to report them. In response to Trump's criticism, CNN said it had published "carefully sourced reporting" on the matter that had been "matched by the other major news organizations", as opposed to BuzzFeed's posting of "unsubstantiated claims".

The Wall Street Journal reported that the DNC and the Clinton campaign paid a total of $12.4 million to Perkins Coie for legal and compliance services during the 2016 campaign. This led Trump to claim the dossier had cost $12 million. The actual cost was far less. According to Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie paid them $1.02 million in fees and expenses, and Fusion GPS paid $168,000 to Steele's firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, to produce the dossier. Despite that, Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. continued to claim for more than a year that Steele was paid "millions of dollars" for his work.

A footnote in the Mueller Report revealed that Trump requested James Comey and James Clapper to publicly refute the dossier. The two men then exchanged emails about the request, with Clapper saying that "Trump wanted him to say the dossier was 'bogus, which, of course, I can't do'."

On July 11, 2020, Trump tweeted that Steele should be extradited.

Mueller Report

In July 2019, Special Agent in Charge David Archey briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee about certain aspects of the Special Counsel Office's (SCO) "investigative process and information management":

We [the SCO] were aware of the Steele dossier, obviously. We were aware of some of the efforts that went into its verification ... we did not include Steele dossier reporting in the report. ... [T]hose allegations go to the heart of things that were in our mandate—but we believed our own investigation. The information that we collected would have superseded it, and been something we would have relied on more, and that's why you see what we did in the report and not the Steele dossier in the report.

He "declined to provide further information on whether FBI or SCO attempted to verify information in the dossier, although he noted that the SCO did not draw on the dossier to support its conclusions."

Others

Russia has backed Trump by attacking the dossier and denying its allegations, calling it an "absolute fabrication" and "a hoax intended to further damage U.S.–Russian relations".

As Putin's press secretary, Peskov insisted in an interview that the dossier is a fraud, saying "I can assure you that the allegations in this funny paper, in this so-called report, they are untrue. They are all fake." Putin called the people who leaked the dossier "worse than prostitutes" and referred to the dossier itself as "rubbish". Putin went on to state he believed the dossier was "clearly fake", fabricated as a plot against the legitimacy of President-elect Trump.

Some of Steele's former colleagues expressed support for his character, saying "The idea his work is fake or a cowboy operation is false—completely untrue. Chris is an experienced and highly regarded professional. He's not the sort of person who will simply pass on gossip."

Among journalists, Bob Woodward called the dossier a "garbage document". Carl Bernstein said "It's not fake news, otherwise senior-most intelligence chiefs would not have done this." Ben Smith, editor of BuzzFeed, wrote: "The dossier is a document ... of obvious central public importance. It's the subject of multiple investigations by intelligence agencies, by Congress. That was clear a year ago. It's a lot clearer now."

Ynet, an Israeli online news site, reported on January 12, 2017, that U.S. intelligence advised Israeli intelligence officers to be cautious about sharing information with the incoming Trump administration, until the possibility of Russian influence over Trump, suggested by Steele's report, has been fully investigated.

On January 2, 2018, Simpson and Fritsch authored an op-ed in The New York Times, requesting that Republicans "release full transcripts of our firm's testimony" and further wrote that, "the Steele dossier was not the trigger for the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling. As we told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump camp." Ken Dilanian of NBC News said a "source close to Fusion GPS" told him the FBI had not planted anyone in the Trump camp, but rather that Simpson was referring to Papadopoulos.

On January 4, 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled on Trump's repeated tweets describing the dossier as "fake" or "discredited":

None of the tweets inescapably lead to the inference that the President's statements about the Dossier are rooted in information he received from the law enforcement and intelligence communities ... The President's statements may very well be based on media reports or his own personal knowledge, or could simply be viewed as political statements intended to counter media accounts about the Russia investigation, rather than assertions of pure fact.

On January 5, 2018, in the first known Congressional criminal referral resulting from investigations related to the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, Grassley made a referral to the Justice Department suggesting that they investigate possible criminal charges against Steele for allegedly making false statements to the FBI about the distribution of the dossier's claims, specifically possible "inconsistencies" in what Steele told authorities and "possibly lying to FBI officials". Senator Lindsey Graham also signed the letter. Both Grassley and Graham declared that they were not alleging that Steele "had committed any crime. Rather, they had passed on the information for 'further investigation only'." The referral was met with skepticism from legal experts, as well as some of the other Republicans and Democrats on the Judiciary committee, who reportedly had not been consulted.

On January 8, 2018, a spokesman for Grassley said he did not plan to release the transcript of Simpson's August 22, 2017, testimony before the SJC. The next day, ranking committee member Senator Dianne Feinstein unilaterally released the transcript.

On January 10, 2018, Fox News host Sean Hannity appeared to have advance information on the forthcoming release of the Nunes memo and its assertions about the dossier, saying "more shocking information will be coming out in just days that will show systemic FISA abuse". Hannity asserted that this new information would reveal "a totally phony document full of Russian lies and propaganda that was then used by the Obama administration to surveil members of an opposition party and incoming president," adding that this was "the real Russia collusion story" that represented a "precipice of one of the largest abuses of power in U.S. American history. And I'm talking about the literal shredding of the U.S. Constitution."

In April 2018, the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) gave The Merriman Smith Memorial Award to CNN reporters Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein. In January 2017, they reported that the intelligence community had briefed Obama and Trump of allegations that Russians claimed to have "compromising personal and financial information" on then-President elect Donald Trump. WHCA noted that "[t]hanks to this CNN investigation, 'the dossier' is now part of the lexicon".

As late as July 29, 2018, Trump continued to falsely insist the FBI investigation of Russian interference was initiated because of the dossier, and three days later White House press secretary Sarah Sanders repeated the false assertion. Fox News host Shepard Smith said of Trump's assertion: "In the main and in its parts, that statement is patently false."

Alan Huffman, an expert on opposition research, has compared the two forms of opposition research represented by the dossier and WikiLeaks. He didn't believe the dossier's intelligence gathering to be illegitimate, although "a little strange", while he was troubled by the large dump of documents from WikiLeaks that "may have been obtained in an illegal way".

In March 2020, Steele commented publicly on the dossier, stating: "I stand by the integrity of our work, our sources and what we did."