While the Senate Intelligence Committee would have the public believe that former MI-6 agent Christopher Steele, author of the sensational dossier on Donald Trump's Russian ties, has been uncooperative, special prosecutor Robert Mueller seems to have had no problem arranging a meeting with Steele in which I for one hope Steele spilled his guts and provided information that will lead to verification of the explosive allegations. Der Trumpenführer, who knows whether the allegations are in fact true, cannot be happy and it's a good bet that he will unleash more batshitery as a means to distract the media (Trump must be secretly relishing the media's fixation on the Las Vegas tragedy which has lead to far less reporting on Puerto Rico and Russiagate). Hopefully, CNN's reporting on the Mueller/Steele meeting will get the media back on the trail of possible Trump/Russia collusion. Here are highlights from CNN:
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators met this past summer with the former British spy whose dossier on alleged Russian efforts to aid the Trump campaign spawned months of investigations that have hobbled the Trump administration, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Information from Christopher Steele, a former MI-6 officer, could help investigators determine whether contacts between people associated with the Trump campaign and suspected Russian operatives broke any laws.
CNN has learned that the FBI and the US intelligence community last year took the Steele dossier more seriously than the agencies have publicly acknowledged. James Clapper, then the director of national intelligence, said in a January 2017 statement that the intelligence community had "not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable." The intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, and the FBI took Steele's research seriously enough that they kept it out of a publicly-released January report on Russian meddling in the election in order to not divulge which parts of the dossier they had corroborated and how.
This contrasts with attempts by President Donald Trump and some lawmakers to discredit Steele and the memos he produced. . . . In a series of tweets earlier this year, Trump said the memos were written by a "failed spy" who had relied on "totally made-up facts by sleazebag political operatives."
While the most salacious allegations in the dossier haven't been verified, its broad assertion that Russia waged a campaign to interfere in the election is now accepted as fact by the US intelligence community. CNN also reported earlier this year that US investigators have corroborated some aspects of the dossier, specifically that some of the communications among foreign nationals mentioned in the memos did actually take place. A representative for Steele did not respond to a request for comment. The special counsel's office declined to comment. But the intelligence community had bigger concerns, sources tell CNN. The classified version of the report would be disseminated beyond then-President Barack Obama and the President-elect to other officials including members of Congress. And if that report included the dossier allegations, the intelligence community would have to say which parts it had corroborated and how. That would compromise sources and methods, including information shared by foreign intelligence services, intelligence officials believed.
In the end, the decision was made that the FBI and Comey personally would brief the incoming President on the allegations. That briefing occurred January 6 in a one-on-one conversation following a broader intelligence briefing on Russian meddling provided to then-President-elect Trump and his key staff. Trump later told The New York Times in July that he took Comey's briefing on the dossier to be an attempt to hold it as leverage over the new President. "In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there," Trump said. Exactly what Comey feared had come to pass.
My personal thoughts? I suspect the allegations in the dossier are true. One need only look at the last 30 or more years of Trump's life to see that he has no qualms about dealing with the Russian mob and underworld figures to further his personal interests. The man is amoral and his behavior toward women suggests, at least to me, that even the most salacious elements of the dossier could well be true. Trump is simply a foul and horrible person. When it comes to Trump, believe the worst and you are probably right. That Trump continues to be embraced by evangelical Christians tells the world all that it needs to know about these equally morally bankrupt individuals.
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