A sordid conspiracy: Christopher Steele defiant on dossier, says Trump still 'potential' threat

Politics | Washington, US Christopher Steele, the former British MI6 intelligence officer behind the "Steele Dossier" that claimed Russian officials held compromising information on former President Donald Trump, defended the claims made in the dossier, despite its existence never having been proven, in an interview with ABC News. Retired British spy Christopher Steele is stepping out of the shadows to discuss his so-called "Steele dossier" for the first time publicly, describing his efforts as apolitical and defending his decision to include the most explosive and criticized claims about Donald Trump contained in his controversial 2016 report. "I stand by the work we did, the sources that we had, and the professionalism which we applied to it," Steele said in a wide-ranging exclusive interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos about how he gathered his intelligence, and the life-altering events that ensued after his work and identity were made public. The dossier's contents, laid out in 17 memos, upended Washington and quickly ricocheted across the globe after BuzzFeed News published the bombshell reports in early 2017 -- 10 days before Donald Trump was sworn into office. The salacious mix of sex, spies, and scandal made for an irresistible political drama. But the real-world implications of its claims, even though unproven, exacerbated an already fraught moment in American history.

EXCLUSIVE: @GStephanopoulos presses ex-British spy Christopher Steele on claims in his disputed dossier: “Do you think there’s a chance that the Russians played you?”

‘Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier’ is NOW STREAMING only on @Hulu: https://t.co/t1lFeEn1AP pic.twitter.com/1XlnCZ0I6Z
— ABC News (@ABC) October 18, 2021

Steele says he wants to “set the record straight” on his role in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US election. “I think the first and most important (reason) is that the problems that we identified in 2016 have not disappeared, and have undoubtedly worsened, and I thought it was important to come and set the record straight, ”he said in the preamble. "The problems we identified in 2016 have undoubtedly worsened" The Steele case has become one of the most controversial aspects of the FBI's investigation into Trump and Russia that led to Special Advisor Robert Mueller's investigation. It had substantiated "many links - that is, contacts - between Trump campaign officials and people with ties to the Russian government" but not all of Steele's allegations. The former MI6 agent reported several very compromising information for Donald Trump, including information exchanges for nearly a decade with the Kremlin, or the existence of a sexual video , filmed in 2013. Trump spoke about the rumor again on Thursday before the National Republican Senate Committee in Palm Beach. “The golden showers are not my thing,” he exclaimed out of the blue in front of his donors. A direct reference to this so-called "pee tape" whose existence could not be independently proven: in 2013, while visiting Moscow, Trump allegedly watched two prostitutes urinating on a bed in the Ritz-Carlton in the capital Muscovite, a spectacle that would have pleased him all the more since the Obama couple had slept in this bed during an official visit to Russia. State Security reportedly filmed the scene in secret, and by the time of the 2016 U.S. campaign the information was allegedly used, along with others, to force Trump to soften his temper in the face of the Kremlin. Mueller's report concluded that this information was inaccurate, just as it denied that former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague in 2016 to meet with Russian officials. On Sunday night, Steele stood by his claims. "I am ready to accept that everything in the file is not 100% correct" but "I have not yet been convinced" that the Prague affair is one of those inaccurate facts, he said. he assures. If the former spy admitted that no evidence had come to corroborate his assertions, he noted that "very little" of elements had come to contradict them. "I maintain the work that we have done, the sources that we had and the professionalism that we have applied to it", he still affirmed. Asked by ABC, Michaël Cohen, who has collaborated with American justice , for his part quipped: "I am impatiently awaiting his next secret file which proves the existence of Bigfoot (a kind of North American yeti, Editor's note), the Loch Ness Monster and Elvis is still alive. " A sordid conspiracy Christopher Steele penned his reports between June and December of 2016 for a law firm that represented Democrats and the campaign of party nominee Hillary Clinton. His reporting was initially meant to be internal work for the firm conducting opposition campaign research. Over seven months, the memos laid out a series of damning claims alleging that the Russians were attempting to influence the campaign in Trump's favor, that members of the Trump campaign had various connections and communications with Kremlin officials, that the campaign had coordinated with Kremlin officials and accepted a flow of anti-Clinton information, and, most alarmingly, that the Kremlin perhaps had materials with which it could blackmail or exercise leverage over Trump. Steele said that as he worked on the report, he grew increasingly alarmed by the picture it was painting. "It meant that, for the first time, there was a potentially serious situation of 'kompromat' against a presidential candidate. And therefore, it became much more of serious issue than we had expected," Steele recalled. "I was surprised and shocked." Even before the dossier surfaced publicly on Jan. 10, 2017, the FBI and several news outlets had already seen Steele's intelligence reports and had attempted to corroborate their contents, but could not. Within days of its publication, some allegations fell apart quickly. Reports that Trump's personal attorney and self-described fixer Michael Cohen had relatives who maintained ties to Putin were swiftly debunked. ___

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