Rim Country Gazette: What was in that Dossier report anyway -- besides the 'salacious claims'?

Saturday, August 26, 2017

What was in that Dossier report anyway -- besides the 'salacious claims'?

**If only the Senate Intel Committee -- had all of Trump's emails to pursue too.**

Now that the ‘Steel Dossier’ is getting a second read — largely due to the recent 10 hour testimony to the Senate Intel Committee by the report’s sponsor — I thought it would be worth taking a second look, into that “mother of all” Trump-Russia reports. Especially, at some of its “finer details” — that did not make the ‘salacious headlines’ news-feeds, the first time around ...

Mr Trump calls the memo 'fake news'

by Adam Withnall and Kim Sengupta, www.independent.co.uk — 12 January 2017

Russia has been “cultivating” Trump for at least five years
Speaking to a trusted compatriot in June 2016 sources A and B, a senior Russian foreign ministry figure and a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin respectively, the Russian authorities had been cultivating and supporting US Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump for at least 5 years. Source asserted that the Trump operation was both supported and directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This is a big deal. In so many ‘divided’ Loyalty-oath ways. And it may help explain why Trump has never uttered a harsh word about his overseas ‘sponsor’ Vlad.

Russia admitted it was responsible for the DNC email hacks
Inter alia, Source E, acknowledged that the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to the WikiLeaks platform. The reason for using WikiLeaks was "plausible deniability” and the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team. In return the Trump team had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue.

This is a big deal. Isn’t this what so many Trump-Russia Investigation’s are trying to prove — a direct Quid-pro-Quo.

Mr Trump’s attorney had a secret meeting with Kremlin officials in Prague in August 2016
[Michael] Cohen had been accompanied to Prague by three colleagues and the timing of the visit was either in the last week of August or the first week of September. According to [redacted], the agenda comprised questions on how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the Clinton campaign and various contingencies for covering up these operations and Moscow’s secret liaison with the Trump team more generally.

This is important. It shows the direct coordination between Trump representatives and the “inner workings” (and compensating) of the Russian sponsored hackers.

It kind of puts those Trump repeated debate claims of “Not Putin’s Puppet” — in a completely different light. Someone was pulling his strings, while those very denials were being over-emphatically and vehemently made.

These important “claims” (among 7 others) should NOW gain some new credibility considering that:

• “Glenn Simpson, a former WSJ reporter who was head of a company called Fusion GPS” … “was apparently commissioned by a group of wealthy Republicans to dig up damaging opposition research on Donald Trump”.
• “Christopher Steele, a form MI6 agent with British intelligence who has a strong reputation for detailed knowledge of the workings of Russian intelligence” … “has also given the Committee a list of his sources, that he used to compile his dossier report”.

This is important because the Trump crew has routinely dismissed the Dossier as ‘something funded by Hillary Clinton’. Also they have on the other hand claimed, that the report ‘lacked credibility because Steele used unnamed sources’.

Well NOW the Senate Committee has those source names A-Z. Let the Verification and Subpoenaing begin.

abcnews.go.com

"Mr. Simpson told Congress the truth and cleared the record on many matters of interest to congressional investigators,” Simpson’s attorney Josh Levy told reporters after the marathon session concluded.
He said the firm remains “proud” of the work and “stands by it.” [Simpson’s private research firm Fusion GPS]
[...]
“This investigation into Mr. Simpson began as a desperate attempt by the Trump campaign and its allies to smear Fusion GPS because of its reported connection to the Trump dossier, which Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste and others have said is a ‘roadmap for an investigation,’” Levy said.