The Trump Dossier Timeline, A Democrat Disaster Looming by Publius Tacitus

When the entire episode about the creation of the Trump dossier (by former Brit spy, Christopher Steele) and its dissemination (by Steele and the Democrat hired contractor, FUSION GPS,) to the FBI and the press, is fully exposed, the American people will be confronted with the stark dilemma of how to deal with the fact that there was a failed domestic coup attempted by members of the U.S. intel and law enforcement community. The facts will show that the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the CIA and the FBI conspired and meddled in the 2016 Presidential election. They lied to a Federal judge about the origins of the dossier and used those lies to get permission to spy on Trump and members of his campaign staff.

Here are the facts as we know them now. (Please note, these facts are sourced and are not my opinion).

1. Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie (a Seattle based law firm) and sought an engagement to continue research it had started on Donald Trump. Perkins Coie retained Fusion GPS on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC in April 2016. (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4116755-PerkinsCoie-Fusion-PrivelegeLetter-102417.html). 
2. The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded the research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin. (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4116755-PerkinsCoie-Fusion-PrivelegeLetter-102417.html, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clinton-campaign-dnc-paid-for-research-that-led-to-russia-dossier/2017/10/24/226fabf0-b8e4-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?utm_term=.14d16b270afd).
3. Christopher Steele (Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd) was hired by Fusion GPS in May or June of 2016 (Glen Simpson testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee 0n 22 August 2017, p. 77)
4. The first report of the Dossier was dated 20 June 2017 and made the following allegations:
   1. Russian regime had been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years.
   2. TRUMP declined various business deals offered him in Russia but accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.
   3. Russian intelligence officer claims FSB has material to blackmail TRUMP.
   4. The Russians had a dossier on Clinton but "nothing embarrassing."
5. Christopher Steele tells Glen Simpson that he wants to take the info in the 20 June report to the FBI (this conversation occurred late June/early July  according to Glen Simpson testimony before Senate Judiciary Committee, p. 161, 165
6. July 2016, Christopher Steele meets with FBI (name of contact unknown) and passes on content from the 20 June memo.
7. Third report, dated 19 July 2016, claims that TRUMP advisor Carter PAGE held secret meetings in Moscow with SECHIN and senior Kremlin Internal Affairs official, DIVYEKIN. (See dossier).
   1. But U.S. officials have since received intelligence reports that during that same three-day trip, Page met with Igor Sechin, a longtime Putin associate and former Russian deputy prime minister who is now the executive chairman of Rosneft, Russian’s leading oil company, a well-placed Western intelligence source tells Yahoo News.
8. 15 August 2016 FBI Agent Strzok’s text about the meeting in McCabe’s office is dated August 15, 2016. . . According to Agent Strzok, with Election Day less than three months away, Page, the bureau lawyer, weighed in on Trump’s bid: “There’s no way he gets elected.”
9. According to David Corn, Christopher Steele was sending all of his subsequent reports to the FBI:
   1. The response to the information from the FBI, he recalled, was “shock and horror.” After a few weeks, the bureau asked him for information on his sources and their reliability and on how he had obtained his reports. He was also asked to continue to send copies of his subsequent reports to the bureau. These reports were not written, he noted, as finished work products; they were updates on what he was learning from his various sources.
10. 27 August 2016. Senate and House leaders briefed by "intelligence community" on the contents of the Steele memos--A letter from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, dated 27 August 2017 states:
    1. "I have recently become concerned that the threat of the Russian government tampering in our presidential election is more extensive than widely known and may include the intent to falsify official election results. The evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump's presidential campaign continues to mount. . ."
    2. Michael Isikoff referenced those briefings: "The activities of Trump adviser Carter Page, who has extensive business interests in Russia, have been discussed with senior members of Congress during recent briefings about suspected efforts by Moscow to influence the presidential election, the sources said. After one of those briefings, Senate minority leader Harry Reid wrote FBI Director James Comey, citing reports of meetings between a Trump adviser (a reference to Page) and “high ranking sanctioned individuals” in Moscow over the summer as evidence of “significant and disturbing ties” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin that needed to be investigated by the bureau."
11. September 2016. FBI used the Steele memos as part of the basis for requesting a FISA warrant according to reports by the NY Times and the Washington Post:
    1. We do not know exactly when the FISA warrant was granted, but the New York Times and the Washington Post have reported, citing U.S. government sources, that this occurred in September 2016 (see here, here, and here).
       
       
       1. After Mr. Page, 45 — a Navy veteran and businessman who had lived in Moscow for three years — stepped down (26 September 2016) from the Trump campaign in September, the F.B.I. obtained a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing the authorities to monitor his communications on the suspicion that he was a Russian agent.

       2. The Justice Department obtained a secret court-approved wiretap last summer on Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, based on evidence that he was operating as a Russian agent, a government official said Wednesday. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued the warrant, the official said, after investigators determined that Mr. Page was no longer part of the Trump campaign, which began distancing itself from him in early August.

       3. The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials.
       4. Loretta Lynch, Attorney General under President Obama, approved the FISA application. (Note--federal law requires that the attorney general approve every application to the FISA court.)
12. End of September--Steele revealed in a London court filing earlier this year that he was directed by Fusion GPS to brief reporters at outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Yahoo! News and Mother Jones about his Trump findings.
13. End of September--Steele informs Simpson (i.e. Fusion GPS) that the FBI wants to meet him in Rome. (Senate Judiciary Committee 0n 22 August 2017, p. 171)
     
14. 8 November 2016, Senator John McCain, accompanied by David Kramer (a Senior Director at Senator McCain's Institute for International Leadership), met in London with an Associate of Orbis, former British Ambassador Sir Andrew Wood, to arrange a subsequent meeting with Christopher Steele in order to read the now infamous Steele Dossier. 
15. David Kramer and Christopher Steele met in Surrey on 28 November 2016, where Kramer was briefed on the contents of the memos.
16. Once Senator McCain and David Kramer returned to the United States, arrangements were made for Fusion GPS to provide Senator McCain hard copies of the memoranda.
17. 13 December 2016, Christopher Steele prepares, on his own, the 17th report in the dossier and sends it to Senator McCain via David Kramer.
18. 6 January 2017--FBI Director Comey briefs Trump on the Steele dossier, which Comey describes as "salacious and UNVERIFIED.":
    1. The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect; and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing. (Comey's statement before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 8 June 2017)

 One of the more interesting developments in the dossier case came as a result of depositions and testimony in the defamation case that Aleksej Gubarev filed against Christoper Steele in the United Kingdom last year. When pressed to defend the authenticity and accuracy of the dossier and the allegations against President Trump, Christopher Steele became a British version of Michael Jackson and moon-walked backwards. Andy McCarthy describes the situation beautifully:

Describing his reports in the Mother Jones interview, Steele asserted, “This was something of huge significance, way above party politics.” Things changed, though, when Steele was sued for libel after the dossier was published in early 2017. Suddenly, when he was in a forum where it was clear to him that making exaggerated or false claims could cost him dearly, he decided his allegations were not of such “huge significance” after all . . . .According to Steele’s courtroom version, the dossier is merely a compilation of bits of “raw intelligence” that were “unverified” and that he passed along because they “warranted further investigation” — i.e., not because he could vouch for their truthfulness.  (kudos to Rowan Scarborough who initially broke the story).

 There are some very interesting unanswered questions. Here are some that I believe are most relevant:

1. Why does a former MI-6 officer reach out on his own to the FBI when the normal point of contact would be the CIA?
2. Who did Steele contact at the FBI?
3. Who at the FBI asked Steele to travel to Rome in October 2016? [Note--this request is quite odd given the fact that the FBI has a very large presence in London and, if the purpose was simply to inform the FBI about possible nefarious Russian activity, could have easily walked over to the US Embassy at Grosvenor Square rather than travel to Rome.]

The failure of the FBI and the CIA to disclose to members of Congress and the President that the information they briefed from the dossier had been paid for by the Clinton campaign is much more than gross negligence and incompetence. It is prima facie evidence of collusion and meddling in a U.S. domestic election. Only the culprits weren't the Russians. As Pogo once said, "we have met the enemy and he is us." 

Comments

[LondonBob]

Was Brennan just an approving onlooker is the CIA just better at covering their tracks and/or protecting themselves institutionally? The focus seems to be just on the cabal at the FBI and DoJ.

[turcopolier]

TTG

"Quebecois?" What is the Northway? pl

[Morongobill]

Any thoughts on Patrick Fitzgerald being appointed as special prosecutor for this investigation being discussed here, if it happens?

[GeneO]

Interstate 87?

[DC]

Comey did NOT, in fact, testify that the entire Dossier was unverified:

"So this latest argument that the FBI relied on a document that Comey has already testified was wholly unverified seems to conflate one claim in the dossier with the entire dossier." --

https://www.redstate.com/patterico/2018/01/02/comey-really-testify-entire-steele-dossier-unverified/

[blue peacock]

LondonBob

What we know is that both Brennan and Clapper were very active in selling the "narrative", in particular after the election. We also know that Clapper recommended firing Admiral Rogers in November 2016.

What role, if any, they played earlier in the timeline, is yet to be known?

The only reason we know about the FBI/DOJ cabal is because the IG released that information. Consequently we shouldn't conclude they are the only actors in this story. I am willing to bet that both Clapper and Brennan played a significant role. Where in the timeline is more difficult to guess with the limited information that we have.

[blue peacock]

Yes, Patrick Fitzgerald will be an excellent choice as the second special counsel investigating the national security apparatus. He prosecuted Scooter Libby at the height of the dominance of W, Cheney & Karl Rove in DC.

[Lee A. Arnold]

You could make your own case better if you start from the fact that law enforcement has had Trump on its radar for decades before 2016. He kept showing up in the vicinity of questionable real estate transactions and known money launderers. The question then would be, how could the FBI ignore the dossier? You are putting yourself through contortions to prove that the dossier was started by Hillary Clinton, and that the dossier put the chain of events in motion, and that "unverified" means "false", and that Comey would have stated in public testimony if there were verifications. All wrong.

This may not be some "Deep State" conspiracy, but the wheels of justice finally creaking around to catch a bad guy.

You're right I'm no fan of Trump, but I'm no fan of Clinton either. I wrote in comments here not long after the election that the Democrats will end up happier by getting a new slate of people while Trump destroys the Republicans. I predicted that Trump would make the Obama-Hillary foreign policy more warlike, Trump would let Wall Street gouge the middle class again, and Trump would surrender foreign trade and the economic future of the U.S. to China. I took heat here for these comments, and I upset both my Democratic friends and my Republican friends with these predictions. And a year later, I am still right about every one of these.

[blue peacock]

US agencies are obviously aware of all this but the US does things differently. Anywhere else Steele's dossier would have been chucked in the bin.

Unless the Steele dossier was the collaborative work product with partisan elements at the highest levels of US law enforcement & the IC. I suggest those interested in this story focus on the timeline and in particular the period of March/April 2016. The Steele dossier only started to show up around June 2016. The ball got rolling earlier.

[Richardstevenhack]

That is precisely William Binney's point (the ex-NSA tech director who developed many of the NSA's programs during his time there.)

NSA was able to claim in the Sony hacking case that they directly observed North Korean hackers inside Sony (begging the question of why didn't the NSA intervene).

The fact that NSA in the January 2017 report on "Russian meddling" could only claim "moderate confidence" in the conclusions clearly shows they don't have any data on the alleged "DNC hack".

Based on Craig Murray's statements, whoever was the leaker of the DNC emails may or may not have transferred them across the Internet. They could have been transferred manually via flash drive or hard disk. In that case, the NSA wouldn't have any data on it.

Based on Sy Hersh's audio tape, if Seth Rich was the leaker he apparently used a Dropbox account to which Wikileaks had access. In that case, the NSA could establish the movement of files from that server to Wikileaks IF that server was used in that manner.

In either case, that fact that NSA has nothing concrete to say indicates they don't know. They could easily claim they do without revealing any sources or methods, but they haven't.

[Richardstevenhack]

Seymour Hersh in his audio tape explicitly said that Russiagate is entirely a CIA disinformation operation being run by Brennan.

Clearly the CIA has been getting help from the FBI - or perhaps Brennan has explicitly used - with their cooperation - the FBI as the "patsy" in this to cover his agency's butt.

[Publius Tacitus]

Just try reading the actual testimony of Comey rather than pretend to be some OCD Hasidic Rabbi parsing the Torah.

[blue peacock]

....I was worried very much about being in kind of a J. Edgar Hoover-type situation.

What did Comey mean by a J. Edgar Hoover-type situation in response to a question by Sen. Collins that Lee A. Arnold posted above?

[ex-PFC Chuck]

People here might like to know that Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel is at the investigation from the PoV of whether anything shows whether Trump or any of his associates is vulnerable. Her post yesterday offers a pretty good summary of the state of play in that regard.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/01/12/incidental-collection-under-section-702-has-probably-contributed-to-trumps-downfall-too/

[Greco]

It's a great credit to PT for his meticulousness and sense on the matter. And it's fine to raise questions and to debate it. That said, this discussion is going in circles when we can simply explain this away as a sham.

Rationalizing the Russian collusion narrative is like rationalizing Birtherism. Both are ridiculous theories backed without a shred of hard evidence that would have us believe a foreign agent occupies the Oval Office. And both theories stipulate that once the candidate's illegitimacy is proven, we would have constitutional crisis resulting in a new election: in other words, Hillary Clinton would be president. It's a fantasy for people who can't come terms with the election of a president they find disagreeable. And as far as I can tell, the only ones conspiring to do anything malicious are the ones who continue to perpetuate these frauds.

[The Twisted Genius]

pl,

The Northway is I-87 from Albany, NY to Montreal. It's named the Adirondack Northway. SWMBO worked at Macys in Albany while in college. She and her coworkers always complained about all the visiting Quebecois trying to pass their money off as equal in value to our dollar. When they were told to go to customer service to exchange their money, they got pissy in a most French way.

[mariner]

'the role of Alexander Downer'

The information obtained by Downer was overt not covert and would've been reported and processed in the overt stream. It is, apparently, information that somebody wants us to know. Standard gossip for diplomatic drinkiepoos. Of far more interest is Alexander's beguiling, trustworthy, hermaphroditic honey-trap like countenance - you can lean into me George. This must be studied and weaponised. The term for Papadopoulos is Spion Melayu. George thinks he's just bedded the most beautiful woman in the world and simply must tell someone, anyone.

"Sweet creature!" said the spider, "you're witty and you're wise;
How handsome are your gauzy wings; how brilliant are your eyes!
I have a little looking-glass upon my parlor shelf;
If you'd step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself."

The Spider And The Fly

[J]

Uncomfortable questions such as what the FBI thought of the credibility of a 'report' from a 'British agent', with no classification, unlimited distribution, and not conforming to any format, and disclosing high level Russian sources by name ?
I would suggest that the only reason they did not push it out of the window with a broom was because they were ordered to treat it as credible.

[J]

"..unless the Steele dossier was the collaborative work product with partisan elements at the highest levels of US law enforcement & the IC".
That may be a possibility, but the document contains such dross that I doubt anyone at that level would author it. I suggest that it was something that escaped into the wild by accident, or that Hillary herself was the author, thus presenting all with a fait accompli :)

[J]

Integer, yes, Alexander Downer is, shall we say, not the sharpest tool in the shed ? If he had a drunken conversation with someone he may have lodged an unclassified report on it, which therefore found it's way to US agencies. I doubt he actually understood the significance of the conversation.

[turcopolier]

TTG

My wife who is 100% French Canadian in heritage would like to know what "pissy in a very French way" means. pl

[DianaLC]

I try not to comment here, as I am just a rube when it comes to the twisted working of our national government, but give me a break.

Bernie doesn't even have the intelligence to live like a true socialist. Does anyone with any intelligence--especially in regard to human nature--really believe that socialism and/or communism would ever work for the long run of any government. Please, study some history to discover what became of many of those attempts and what it's like living in the ones still existing.

His young followers are probably the most uneducated/mis-educated generation I have ever dealt with as a teacher.

My bias against Bernie's stated idea of governance is personal, as my great-grandparents and grandparents were smart enough to escape the Bolshevicks to come here.

Why go after Bernie--it would have been a waste of time, money, and effort. His followers would have had a hard time really figuring out how to register to vote or tearing themselves away from their useless endeavors to occupy their time to find out where and how to vote.

[blue peacock]

Papadapoulos is at best a peripheral player in the Trump campaign. There is a possibility that he was a plant. Apparently he sent out an email as he became an advisor to the campaign about setting up meetings with Putin's advisor's in Russia. No different than Natalia Veselnitskaya who met with Glenn Simpson before and after her meeting at Trump Tower with Don Jr, which now seems like an attempt to ensnare Trump associates to further bolster the Russia collusion narrative.

In any case, IMO, when looking at the timeline, all the minutiae around these later events are less important than the period of February/March 2016 when the FISA violations took place. IMO, Russiagate began then. Trump had already won a third of the delegates to the GOP nomination and he was looking strong in the upcoming Ohio and Florida primaries. An insurance policy was needed.

Knowing who the players were then including the subcontractors, why there were these 702 violations, what were these 702 queries that triggered Admiral Rogers full compliance review, will aid the understanding of the genesis of Russiagate.

Since this is all so sensitive from the perspective of the national security apparatus, the drive to obfuscate must be intense. That is why there will be a lot of resistance both in Congress and at the DOJ to appoint someone like Patrick Fitzgerald as a special counsel to investigate this.

[J]

Thus implying that George is less bright, or was a great deal drunker, than Alexander. Of far more interest still is the fact that a large number of people are actually congratulating Downer on his brilliant intel coup.

[Adrestia]

Maybe TTG meant like this? They were always very able of big tantrums, especially the gendarmerie.

But to be honest, the last decades they've grown more and more mellow. Except when its time for protest and to meet and greet the politician or member of management or just because they oppose government policy