Dossier

During the Trump campaign, starting in June of 2016 the claim was made that Trump was a Russian agent. A document called the Steele dossier was the only written source for the claim. A research firm called Fusion GPS was hired to find dirt, using what is called opposition research, on Trump. Fusion then hired the law firm of Perkins and Coie to conduct the research. The firm was paid by the Clinton campaign and the DNC. The first report in June of 2016 said there was an conspiracy between Trump and Russia going back to 2011. During the months leading up to the election the press did not do much with the dossier story because they did not have enough evidence except for Michael Isikoff a reporter for Yahoo. In September of 2016 he published a story about Carter Page who worked for Trump as having contacts with the Kremlim. Just a week before the election David Corn published a story in Mother Jones but that was the extent of it before the election. One of the reasons for the apparent lack of interest was that the press assumed Trump would lose. That all changed once he won starting right after the election before Trump took office. Shortly after Trump took office James Comey met secretly with Trump to inform him about the dossier. Soon that meeting was leaked to CNN and next Buzz Feed published the dossier. The FBI offered Steele $1 million dollars if he could verify the information in the dossier but he could not. The press kept reporting on the dossier because the FBI did not inform them that it was unverified. The Trump/Russia collusion story was kept alive. First the FBI briefs congress and then congress leaks snippets of the story and the press prints it saying, persons familiar with. During the four years of the Trump presidency the New York Times used that phrase over 1,000 time with no written document but only hear say. This led to the appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller to investigate between May 2017 to March 2019. This was followed up with the first Trump impeachment which began on December 2019. Jul 22, 2022 A New York Times columnist has published an article detailing his “wrong” and regretful reporting of Donald Trump voters before the 2016 election – admitting the Russia collusion story was “bogus” and a “hoax”.