That Trump dossier? It’s turning out to be accurate…
… according to an article by Evan Osnos, David Remnick, and Joshua Yaffa posted to The New Yorker this evening.
Two weeks before the Inauguration, intelligence officers briefed both Obama and Trump about a dossier of unverified allegations compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer. The thirty-five-page dossier, which included claims about Trump’s behavior during a 2013 trip to Moscow, had been shopped around to various media outlets by researchers opposed to Trump’s candidacy. The dossier concluded that Russia had personal and financial material on Trump that could be used as blackmail. It said that the Russians had been “cultivating, supporting, and assisting” Trump for years. According to current and former government officials, prurient details in the dossier generated skepticism among some members of the intelligence community, who, as one put it, regarded it as a “nutty” product to present to a President. But, in the weeks that followed, they confirmed some of its less explosive claims, relating to conversations with foreign nationals. “They are continuing to chase down stuff from the dossier, and, at its core, a lot of it is bearing out,” an intelligence official said. Some officials believe that one reason the Russians compiled information on Trump during his 2013 trip was that he was meeting with Russian oligarchs who might be stashing money abroad—a sign of disloyalty, in Putin’s eyes.
