Steele Dossier Timeline – Just the Facts

• Christopher Steele drafted 17 memorandum that were compiled into a 35 page document commonly referred to by the media as “the Russia Dossier,” “the Trump Dossier,” and “the Steele Dossier.”
• The Steele Dossier has been used to secure Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) warrants, to validate House and Senate investigations, and to justify the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the president’s ties to Russia.
• Today, there remains no credible evidence substantiating the primary allegations made within the dossier.

The Steele Dossier, also known as the Russia Dossier, has been at the heart of the political drama in Washington D.C. for more than a year. Immense confusion surrounds the development and release of this dossier. What is it? What does it allege? How did the government get involved? And how did it become public?

• During the Republican presidential primary contest, The Washington Free Beacon hired Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research on multiple candidates, including Donald Trump.^[1] Knowing that the law firm Perkins Coie represented the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie and offered to continue the opposition research on Donald Trump that it had begun with The Washington Free Beacon.^[2] Together, the DNC and the Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS $1.02 million for those services via Perkins Coie.^{[3], [4]}

• In June of 2016, Fusion GPS hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and his London-based firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, to investigate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.^[5] Working for Fusion GPS between June and November of 2016,^[6] and relying upon information from Russian contacts, Steele drafted 17 memoranda that were compiled into a 35 page document commonly referred to by the media as “the Russia Dossier,” “the Trump Dossier,” and “the Steele Dossier.”^[7]

• Published June 20,^[8] Steele’s first memorandum alleged that the “Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years”; that Trump has “accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals”; and the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB, formerly KGB) has “compromised TRUMP through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him.”^[9] Among these are “perverted sexual acts which have been arranged/monitored by the FSB.”^[10] Also, the Russian Intelligence Services had compiled a dossier on Hillary Clinton comprised mostly of bugged conversations and intercepted phone calls. This “dossier is controlled by Kremlin spokesman, PESKOV, directly on PUTIN’s orders.”^[11]

• On July 5—the same day as then-FBI Director James Comey’s news conference exonerating Hillary Clinton—Christopher Steele provided his research to an FBI contact in Europe.^[12] He also presented his research to British intelligence.^[13] Later that month, then-Deputy Head of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok began supervising a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election process, including possible collusion with the Trump campaign.^{[14], [15]}

• On July 29, Steele authored a memorandum alleging that Trump foreign-policy advisor Carter Page secretly met Russian officials in Moscow to discuss the lifting of sanctions against Russia over Ukraine and the possible release of Russia’s compromising dossier on Hillary Clinton.^[16] In another memorandum, Steele alleged that a Trump associate “acknowledged that the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to the WikiLeaks platform.”^[17] Also, a Trump associate “admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and the Russian leadership. This was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate’s campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT, who was using foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries.”^[18]

• Also in July, Steele “gave off the record briefings to a small number of journalists,”^[19] and word of the dossier began to spread through political circles.^[20] Chatter appeared on social media, and Republican strategist Rick Wilson told The New York Times that he was asked about it by an investigative reporter for a major news network.^[21]

• In August, then-FBI Director James Comey was briefed on the dossier, and wanting to alert the public to revelations that Russia was likely interfering with the presidential election, Comey drafted an opinion piece on the matter that would likely be published in The New York Times.^[22] However, the White House did not approve his plan.^[23]

• Also in August, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid who subsequently published an open-letter to James Comey, saying, “It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government – a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States.”^[24]

• In September, Steele wrote a memorandum alleging, “TRUMP had paid bribes there [in Russia] to further his interests”. Additionally, all direct witnesses of Trump’s “sex parties” in Russia had “recently been ‘silenced’ i.e. bribed or coerced to disappear.”

• Following instructions from Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS Co-founder Glenn Simpson briefed journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo News, The New Yorker, and CNN.^{[25], [26], [27]} Yahoo News then published an article by Michael Isikoff based upon the dossier, saying that U.S. officials had received “intelligence reports” alleging that Trump foreign-policy advisor Carter Page secretly met with Russian officials in Moscow in July of 2016.^{[28], [29]}

• Also in September, Steele met with then-State Department official Jonathan Winer, allowing him to review the dossier. Winer then created a two-page summary that was shared with Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland who encouraged Winer to share the information with the Secretary of State.^[30]

• In October, Steele received from Jonathan Winer a memorandum that was authored by freelance journalist, controversial political activist, and friend of the Clintons known as “Mr. Fixer,” Cody Shearer.^{[31], [32], [33], [34]} It is had been relayed from Shearer to Winer via journalist and former Clinton White House Senior Advisor Sidney Blumenthal.^{[35], [36], [37]} The memorandum spoke of an FSB source who alleged that Trump had financial ties to influential Russians, and the FSB had compromising evidence of Trump.^{[38], [39]} Despite Steele’s acknowledgement that he had “no means of verifying the sources or the information”, Steele considered it to be “collateral” information and relayed it to the FBI, incorporating it into his dossier.^{[40], [41], [42]}

• Steele published a memorandum alleging that Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, travelled to the Czech Republic to secretly meet with Kremlin officials in an effort to “cover up scandal of MANAFORT and exposure of PAGE”.^{[43], [44]}

• Also in October, Christopher Steele—at the direction of Fusion GPS—and Glenn Simpson again met with journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Yahoo News.^{[45], [46]} Steele also briefed a journalist from Mother Jones via Skype—again at the direction of Fusion GPS^{[47], [48]}—resulting in an article by David Corn titled, “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump.”^[49] The article described the dossier, it’s origin, and it’s significance without publishing the salacious details, and this resulted in the FBI suspending, and then terminating, Steele as an FBI source for “unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI.”^[50] Prior to this, the FBI had authorized payments to Steele and expressed interest in paying him to continue his research on Trump after Election Day.^{[51], [52], [53]}

• Although the contract between the DNC, Hillary’s campaign, Fusion GPS, and Steele ended with the elections in November of 2016, Christopher Steele and Glenn Simpson continued their investigation, believing it to be “very important work.”^{[54], [55]} It is not known if they are being paid for this work or who may be paying them.^[56] The last known memorandum was published on December 13, 2016, alleging that Russian tech executive Aleksej Gubarev used his companies to hack into the DNC’s email systems, and that “the operatives involved had been paid by both TRUMP’s team and the Kremlin”.^{[57], [58]}

• After the election, Christopher Steele “decided to share his intelligence with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Senator John McCain (R-AZ) via an emissary” with the purpose of alerting the U.S. national security community to an attack by a hostile foreign power—something Fusion GPS helped him accomplish.^[59] In August, Steele had informed his friend and former British diplomat Andrew Wood of the contents of the dossier, and in November, Wood “approached Steele to discuss whether they needed to take further steps to ensure the U.S. government was aware of his information”.^[60]

• At the “instruction” of Christopher Steele, Andrew Wood contacted David Kramer, a former State Department assistant secretary and scholar at Senator John McCain’s think tank in Arizona.^{[61], [62]} Kramer arranged for Wood to privately meet with Senator McCain during the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada, and Senator McCain ordered Kramer to travel to England where he was briefed by Steele.^[63] When Kramer returned to Washington D.C., he was given a copy of the dossier by Glenn Simpson, which he then relayed to Senator McCain.^[64] Not realizing that the FBI already had this information, Senator John McCain met with then-FBI Director James Comey on December 9 to handoff the dossier.

• Shortly before Inauguration Day, on January 6, 2017, Comey briefed President Barack Obama and President-Elect Donald Trump on the contents of the dossier. This briefing was reported by CNN on January 10. Specific details of the dossier were omitted, but a credible British intelligence operative was reported to be the author of a series of memos that alleged Russian operatives had compromising personal and financial information on President-Elect Trump. The report also spoke of allegations of “a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.”^[65]

• On January 10, BuzzFeed cited CNN’s report as justification for publishing the entirety of the “unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations” in the Steele Dossier.^[66]

The Steele Dossier has been used to secure Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) warrants, to validate House and Senate investigations, and to justify the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the president’s ties to Russia. Despite this, there remains no credible evidence substantiating the primary allegations made within the dossier.

• According to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence memorandum, “After Steele was terminated [as an FBI source] a source validation report conducted by an independent unit within FBI assessed Steele’s reporting as only minimally corroborated.”^[67]

• Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in a statement, “The IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable”.^[68]

• During testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8, 2017, former FBI Director James Comey told Congress that during his briefing of President-Elect Donald Trump on January 6, 2017, Comey considered the Steele Dossier to contain “salacious and unverified material”.^[69]

• In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson “told investigators he never spoke to the underlying sources of the document, never traveled to Russia and did not verify the dossier beyond comparing the claims to ‘open source’ media reporting.”^{[70], [71]}

From what we know at this time, the Steele Dossier is based upon a loose thread of unsubstantiated accusations. If we are to stand firm amid the swirling mix of assertions coming from every perspective, it is vital that we do not fall prey to undocumented commentary. It is incumbent up on us to discern what is taking place in our nation, and to do our part in exposing lies and in propagating truth.