With the revelation by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz that the FBI not only relied entirely on the discredited dossier gathered by Christopher Steele for their FISA application to conduct surveillance on Carter Page but that the primary sub-source of that dossier cast doubt upon the claims that President Trump colluded with the Russians in the 2016 election, a liberal narrative has finally been buried.
So will the many mainstream media outlets who were hyping the validity of the Steele dossier now apologize? If so, The New Yorker magazine should be at the front of the apology line since they strongly hyped that dossier in both print and even in a video podcast in which their editor, David Remnick, bonded with James Comey in validating the now discredited dossier.
In fact, Remnick even led off his questioning of Comey by noting that their own Jane Mayer wrote on March 5, 2018 a "very comprehensive piece" in the New Yorker about "Christopher Steele, The Man Behind The Trump Dossier."
Steele’s sources claimed that the F.S.B. could easily blackmail Trump, in part because it had videos of him engaging in “perverted sexual acts” in Russia....
According to people familiar with the matter, as Steele began to assemble the first of seventeen memos, which became the dossier, Burrows expressed reservations about including the golden-showers allegation. He had a cautious temperament, and worried about the impact that the sensational item might have. But Steele argued that it would be dishonest and distorting to cherry-pick details, and that the possibility of a potential American President being subject to blackmail was too important to hide. “That’s classic Steele,” his longtime friend told me. “He’s so straight.”
In a fateful decision, Steele chose to include everything. People familiar with the matter say that Steele knew he could either shred the incendiary information or carry on. If he kept investigating, and then alerted officials who he thought should know about his findings, he feared that his life—and, indeed, the life of anyone who touched the dossier—would never be the same.
Wow! It reads like a salacious thriller novel...and as we found out from Horowitz, just as fictitious.
For those who enjoyed watching 2016 election meltdowns, Mayer provides this tidbit:
On November 8, 2016, Steele stayed up all night, watching the U.S. election returns. Trump’s surprise victory hit Orbis hard. A staff memo went out forgiving anyone who wanted to stay home and hide under his duvet. The news had one immediate consequence for Steele. He believed that Trump now posed a national-security threat to his country, too. He soon shared his research with a senior British official. The official carefully went through the details with Steele, but it isn’t clear whether the British government acted on his information.
And now with Orange Man Bad heading for the White House the zero percent accuracy Steele dossier was more important than ever.
Finally Mayer made an assertion about the Steele dossier and the FISA application that this week was shot down by Horowitz:
But did Steele lie? The Justice Department has not filed charges against him. The most serious accusation these critics make is that the F.B.I. tricked the FISA Court into granting a warrant to spy on Trump associates on the basis of false and politically motivated opposition research. If true, this would be a major abuse of power. But the Bureau didn’t trick the court—it openly disclosed that Steele’s funding was political. Moreover, Steele’s dossier was only part of what the fisa warrant rested on. According to the Democrats’ Intelligence Committee report, the Justice Department obtained information “that corroborated Steele’s reporting” through “multiple independent sources.”
One wonders what Mayer was thinking this week when Horowitz revealed that the FISA application did indeed relied "enitirely" on Steele's sources.
Among those who need to join Mayer on the apology line, along with her boss David Remnick, is her New Yorker colleague Amy Davidson Sorkin, who mocked Congressman Devin Nunes (subsequently proven right by Horowitz) on February 2, 2018:
The memo says that the dossier formed an “essential part” of the application for the warrant. Democrats on the committee dispute this, suggesting that there was plenty of other material on Page. In the context of FISA, it wouldn’t have taken much to get a warrant, with or without Steele, especially given Page’s business relations in Russia.
...The Nunes Memo is shoddy and slanted, but it is not explosive. Nothing in it diminishes, for example, the relevance of the larger Mueller investigation. Page is not even, to borrow the memo’s word, “essential” to it.
As icing on the cake, Jane Meyer asserted less than a month ago on November 25, that the Steele dossier was valid including this gem:
Despite the fact that the fabled pee tape has never surfaced and Trump immediately denied its existence, Simpson and Fritsch write that Steele remains confident that his reports are neither a fabrication nor the “hoax” of Trump’s denunciations. Trump’s defenders have claimed that Steele fell prey to Russian disinformation, and, therefore, it is he, not Trump, who has been a useful idiot for the Russians. But Steele tells the authors, “These people simply have no idea what they’re talking about.” He emphasizes that his network of sources “is tried and tested” and has “been proven up in many other matters.” He adds, “I’ve spent my entire adult life working with Russian disinformation. It’s an incredibly complex subject that is at the very core of my training and my professional mission.”
Yup! his network of sources is "tried and tested" and proven wrong as we found out from Michael Horowitz this week.
