Mueller's team met with Russia dossier author

[sarahb 17,205]

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.

Ever since the dossier came to light in January, Trump and his allies have repeatedly insisted that it is a complete work of fiction. He told The New York Times this summer that the dossier "was totally made-up stuff." 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.

Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/05/politics/special-counsel-russia-dossier-christopher-steele/index.html

[sarahb 17,205]

Remember this is what is in the dossier:
"The 35-page dossier claims that Russia is in possession of damaging or embarrassing information about Trump which could be used for purposes of blackmail to get Trump to cooperate with the Russian government. The material includes allegations about Trump's sexual and financial dealings in Russia. The dossier further alleges that Trump has been cultivated and supported by Russia for at least five years, with Putin's endorsement, with the overall aim of creating divisions between Western alliances; that Trump has extensive ties to Russia; and that there had been multiple contacts between Russian officials and people working for Trump during the campaign."

This is also the same dossier that claims that Trump hired Russian prostitutes to pee on the same bed the Obama's slept on. Would not surprise me tbh 

Edit: I found the pdf and it's conveniently highlighted
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984/Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.pdf

[bumblebee 2,528]

Taking it with two grains of salt. 

First of all, the dossier was brought to the public eye by McCain who is not very sympathetic towards Trump from the beginning of his campaign. 

Secondly, it claims that the dossier was meant to engage Trump in closer cooperation with Russia. Yes so far under Trump's presidency sanctions against Russia have become a lot more stric than they were under Obama. Maybe the only area of the US foreign policy which has been warm towards Russia's action is the Syrian war.