How a Lurid, Unverified Dossier Became a Crisis for Donald Trump

[TomCADem]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by NancyBlueINOklahoma (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: MSN/NY Times

The story began in September 2015, when a wealthy Republican donor who strongly opposed Mr. Trump put up the money to hire a Washington research firm run by former journalists, Fusion GPS, to compile a dossier about the real estate magnate’s past scandals and weaknesses, according to a person familiar with the effort. The person described the opposition research work on condition of anonymity, citing the volatile nature of the story and the likelihood of future legal disputes. The identity of the donor who funded the effort is unclear.

Fusion GPS, headed by a former Wall Street Journal journalist known for his dogged reporting, Glenn Simpson, most often works for business clients. But in presidential elections, the firm is sometimes hired by candidates, party organizations or donors to do political “oppo” work — shorthand for opposition research — on the side.


* * *
Mr. Simpson hired Mr. Steele, a former British intelligence officer with whom he had worked before. Mr. Steele, in his early 50s, had served undercover in Moscow in the early 1990s and later was the top expert on Russia at the London headquarters of Britain’s spy service, MI6. When he stepped down in 2009, he started his own commercial intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.

The former journalist and the former spy, according to people who know them, had a similar dark view of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a former K.G.B. officer, and the varied tactics he and his intelligence operatives used to smear, blackmail or bribe their targets. As a former spy who had carried out espionage inside Russia, Mr. Steele was in no position to travel to Moscow to study Mr. Trump’s connections there. Instead, he hired native Russian speakers to call informants inside Russia and made surreptitious contact with his own connections in the country as well.


Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-a-lurid-unverified-dossier-became-a-crisis-for-donald-trump/ar-AAlMeuH

---

Interesting story on what lead to the dossier and how the research effort was originally financed by Republicans.

[Martin Eden]

1. What goes around comes around

Trump wields fake news like birtherism for his own political purposes, but is outraged when he's the target (whether it's fake news or not).

Regardless, it will bait him bigly. He fans the flames and makes the story bigger because he just can't help himself.

[question everything]

2. Interesting. The question now is whether the contact in Russia just spooled a story

to get his payment.

Either way, as Samantha Bee said earlier in her program - what a joy we had last night.

[mpcamb]

3. An extra...

That it's unverified.

...even tho it hard to believe that any dirt on him isn't true, or that the source isn't legit.

[.99center]

4. top expert on Russia, assisited the FBI in developling ties between Russian gangsters and FIFA.

And he's been doing this for nothing since December. It feels foolish to dismiss his work entirely.

"By then, the election was over, and neither Mr. Steele nor Mr. Simpson had a client to pay them, but they did not stop what they believed to be very important work. (Mr. Simpson declined to comment for this article, and Mr. Steele did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)"

[Cha]

5. How a Lurid, Unverified Dossier Became a Crisis for Donald Trump

Gawd yes.. I want it for my journal!

snip//

By all accounts, Mr. Steele has an excellent reputation with American and British intelligence colleagues and had done work for the F.B.I. on the investigation of bribery at FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. Colleagues say he was acutely aware of the danger he and his associates were being fed Russian disinformation. Russian intelligence had mounted a complex hacking and leaking operation to damage Mrs. Clinton, after all, and a similar operation against Mr. Trump was an obvious possibility.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-a-lurid-unverified-dossier-became-a-crisis-for-donald-trump/ar-AAlMeuH

Thank you, Tom

[OKNancy]

6. Locking - any article that has "how" or "why" in the title is obviously an analysis

this is not breaking news.