Liberals continue to push the story that Donald Trump and his campaign colluded with the Russians during the 2016 election.
As evidence, they cite the Christopher Steele memo which alleged a conspiracy between Trump aides and Russian intelligence.
But there’s been a major break in the story and now everyone is questioning it.
Steele – an ex-British intelligence officer – prepared his memo as opposition research for Donald Trump’s political opponents.
It included unverified gossip about Trump, as well as sensational claims about secret meetings between Trump aides and shadowy Russians.
Buzzfeed published the document in full.
But that’s when the problems started.
Individuals – whose names were made public in the document – began to sue Steele over the false claims he made.
Steele’s memo alleged Aleksej Gubarev as a “rogue hacker.”
Gubarev sued Steele and his Orbis Business Intelligence firm for defamation of character.
Steele’s defense is that the claims in the memo were unverified and never meant to be made public.
The Washington Times reports:
“Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the infamous anti-Donald Trump dossier, acknowledges that a sensational charge his sources made about a tech company CEO and Democratic Party hacking is unverified.
In a court filing, Mr. Steele also says his accusations against the president and his aides about a supposed Russian hacking conspiracy were never supposed to be made public, much less posted in full on a website for the world to see on Jan. 10.
He defends himself by saying he was betrayed by his client and that he followed proper internal channels by giving the dossier to Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, to alert the U.S. government…
… Mr. Steele acknowledges that the part of the 35-page dossier that identified Mr. Gubarev as a rogue hacker came from “unsolicited intelligence” and “raw intelligence” that “needed to be analyzed and further investigated/verified.”
In his memo, Steele accused Gubarev of hacking the Democrat National Committee.
Steele’s defense is that the firm who hired him, Fusion GPS – which was backed by a Hillary Clinton supporter – made the information public and that Buzzfeed is at fault for publishing his memo.
The Washington Times also reports:
“In his final December dossier memo — his 16th — Mr. Steele accused Mr. Gubarev and his web-hosting companies of hacking the Democratic Party computer networks with pornography and bugging devices. Mr. Gubarev calls the charge fiction and filed a lawsuit in February.
Mr. Steele’s court filing portrays him as a victim of Fusion GPS — the Washington firm that hired him with money from a Hillary Clinton backer.
Fusion specializes in opposition research for Democrats and circulated the Steele dossier among reporters in an effort to injure the Trump candidacy and presidency. Mr. Steele said he never authorized Fusion to do that.
“The defendants did not provide any of the pre-election memoranda to media organizations or journalists. Nor did they authorize anyone to do so,” Mr. Steele said through his attorney. “Nor did they provide the confidential December memorandum to media organizations or journalists. Nor did they authorize anyone to do so.”
“At all material times Fusion was subject to an obligation not to disclose to third parties confidential intelligence material provided” by Mr. Steele and his firm Orbis, the court filing reads.”
When Buzzfeed published Steele’s memo – the media referred to it as a “dossier” to make it sound like an intelligence document as opposed to the political opposition research memo it really was – liberals’ hearts were set aflutter because they thought it was the smoking gun that would eventually take down Trump, proving he was in cahoots with the Russians.
But it turns out Steele’s memo was nothing more than what Donald Trump claimed it to be – fake news.
SF Source American Patriot Daily May 2017