Skip to main content

The Steele Dossier

By



Just when the media had Trump on the hook, they got distracted and let him go.  Once again, we are back to Hillary.  This time in relation to the Steele Dossier, a report initially commissioned by Republican opposition in the primaries and eventually funded by Democratic opposition during the general election.

We knew about this dossier since at least October 2016 when Mother Jones ran a story on it, but news of this infamous report had been leaked to the press long before.  In it, Christopher Steele, a former MI6 intelligence officer, outlines how Russia had Donald Trump by the balls, to put it bluntly, but some of what was in the report seemed too far-fetched to use on the campaign trail and so the report was shelved.

Then in January 2017, shortly before Trump was inaugurated, Buzzfeed published the entire report, which was roundly criticized by the national media, claiming there was no substantiation to the allegations.  But, the FBI was interested in it anyway, and in August contacted Christopher Steele, who revealed some of his sources.

This spurred a so-called "independent watchdog group" to file a complaint against Hillary and the DNC for not reporting the funds allegedly provided Steele.  So now it is Hillary who is to blame for the Russian collusion charges that have haunted Trump since last October.

As expected, the media has gleefully run with the story, even the Washington Post, which Sarah Huck-huck-huckabee cited in her tweet on the "fake" dossier, after claiming that the Post itself was "fake news" at a press conference the same day. 

We all know that someone with links to the DNC paid for the report.  This was cited in the Mother Jones story back in October 2016.  The client wasn't necessarily a part of the Hillary campaign or the DNC itself.  TheWashington Post also points this out, but Sarah only read headlines.

It seems the dossier was privately funded, first by Republican backers and later by Democratic backers, looking to paint Trump into a corner.  How true any of the allegations in the dossier turn out to be is anyone's guess, but the Trump camp has found a way to spin it to once again put Hillary in the media cross hairs, while Donald plays another round of golf.

Sadly, this has been the pattern throughout his administration.  The media simply can't stay focused, and to a large degree that is because Trump appears to have a myriad of rabbit holes underneath the White House.  I'm beginning to worry he might just elude the media for the entirety of his administration because journalists are too busy chasing him down these rabbit holes rather than keeping their eyes trained on the White House.

Whether or not the DNC or the Hillary campaign paid for the dossier in part or whole is no concern.  Obviously, neither felt there was enough in it to use against Trump during the campaign.  He was too busy giving them juicy material, such as attacking Gold Star families, shitting on a former Miss Universe, and revealing himself on Access Hollywood, none of which made a dent in his campaign.  Even if he had this reported "golden shower" in a Moscow hotel room where the Obamas once slept, it is doubtful it would have had any impact either.  By October 2016, everyone knew what a shit Trump is, yet many Americans voted for him anyway.

For all we know Christopher Steele may have played disgruntled Republicans and Democrats in the same way Natalia Veselnitskaya and some Russian businessmen played Donnie Jr., by providing some juicy information that led nowhere.  It's one of those classic red herrings that leads sleuths off the trail.

One can only hope that what remains of our "independent media" gets back on the trail, and returns to Trump, who continues to drag the reputation of the United States into the sewer.  He has Senate leaders scrambling to resolve the crisis he created by not certifying the Iran nuclear deal, trying to come up with some plan to keep DACA, and hoping to find a bipartisan compromise on the ACA subsidies, all because of his impulsive need to rid the world of the Obama legacy.   These are far more important stories than the Steele Dossier.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more