It is a question that has had the country riveted for the the past two-and-a-half years: Just how many allegations within the so-called “Steele dossier” have proven accurate? How much of it is true? How much of it has been debunked?
For some reason, it doesn’t seem like many people have even attempted to find that answer, even after we’ve received the redacted version of the Mueller report.
Perhaps that’s because some people have already made up their minds, and because some other people, like Rep. Mark Meadows (who claims the “FBI knew the Steele dossier was a lie” long before they “spied on the Trump campaign”) would like it that way.
“[O]fficials at the FBI and (Department of Justice) DOJ were well aware the dossier was a lie — from very early on in the process all the way to when they made the conscious decision to include it in a FISA application,” Meadows said Tuesday in a statement to The Hill’s John Solomon. “The fact that Christopher Steele and his partisan research document were treated in any way seriously by our Intelligence Community leaders amounts to malpractice.”
Meadows’ statement came in response to a federal document recently unveiled by a Citizens United lawsuit — an email from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec, who met with Steele in October 2016 and recounted his desire to spread the lurid allegations of his since-debunked dossier on then-candidate Donald Trump. Solomon wrote on Tuesday.
Having pulled on this thread I found that the document referred to by Meadow’s is 98 percent redacted, and what is visible doesn’t support any of his claims that Steele was a “political partisan” rather than someone who was legitimately and seriously concerned that Trump may have been essentially a fully cultivated asset of Vladamir Putin’s.
Now that we have had access to the redacted Mueller report for a month, just what is the truth, as we can now assess it?
After doing well over 100 diaries as part of a Trump Russia Corruption Timeline I have drawn together those resources to analyze and compare Steele’s dossier with Mueller’s report and press reports which indicate that about 73 percent of his allegations have been either fully or partially confirmed — all of which is summarized at the end.
Before I delve into the details, I have to make some caveats. The first fact that needs to be admitted is that special Counsel Robert Mueller did not try to prove or disprove the allegations of the Steele memos. His focus was on identifying prosecutable crimes, and the counter-intelligence portion of the investigation largely remained within the normal FBI [wasn't done due to Rod Rosenstein] rather than part of his efforts. Therefore, there isn’t a perfect correlation between the two reports, but there is quite a bit of overlap. Where possible, I will refer to Mueller's findings; otherwise, I will rely on open-source press accounts, which appear largely credible.
To determine the overall results I scored one point for each confirmed allegation, one-half point for an allegation that seems to be circumstantially valid or consistent with other events but isn’t specifically confirmed, zero points for anything that remains unconfirmed, a negative one-half point for something that appears to be debunked but does have some apparent circumstantial validity, and -1 point for anything that is clearly and totally debunked.
Steele wrote his “dossier” as a series of memos with a summary and detailed section. For brevity, I have transcribed the summaries and will then address the details item-by-item.
Before I begin, I will also answer three key questions from the Mueller report.
1.) Did Russia attack our election in 2016 and try to sway the result for Donald J. Trump?
Mueller Report Page 2
The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion. Evidence of Russian government operations began to surface in mid-2016. In June, the Democratic National Committee and its cyber response team publicly announced that Russian hackers had compromised its computer network. Releases of hacked materials-hacks that public reporting soon attributed to the Russian government-began that same month. Additional releases followed in July through the organization WikiLeaks, with further releases in October and November.
[...]
Page 36
Beginning in March 2016, units of the Russian Federation' s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU) hacked the computers and email accounts of organizations, employees,and volunteers supporting the Clinton Campaign, including the email account of campaign chairman John Podesta. Starting in April 2016, the GRU hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The GRU targeted hundreds of email accounts used by Clinton Campaign employees, advisors, and volunteers. In total, the GRU stole hundreds of thousands of documents from the compromised email accounts and networks. 109 The GRU later released stolen ClintonCampaign and DNC documents through online personas, "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0," and later through the organization WikiLeaks. The release of the documents was designed and timed to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election and undermine the Clinton Campaign.
2.) Did the Trump campaign accept and invite this attack on our election for their own benefit without alerting any authorities?
Mueller report Page 5:
The presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump ("Trump Campaign" or "Campaign") showed interest in WikiLeaks' s releases of documents and welcomed their potential to damage candidate Clinton. Beginning in June 2016, [Redacted] forecast to senior Campaign officials that WikiLeaks would release information damaging to candidate Clinton. WikiLeaks' s first release came in July 2016. Around the same time, candidate Trump announced that he hoped Russia would recover emails described as missing from a private server used by Clinton when she was Secretary of State he later said that he was speaking sarcastically.
[...]
Page 61:
Throughout 2016, the Trump Campaign expressed interest in Hillary Clinton's private email server and whether approximately 30,000 emails from that server had in fact been permanently destroyed, as reported by the media. Several individuals associated with the Campaign were contacted in 2016 about various efforts to obtain the missing Clinton emails and other stolen material in support of the Trump Campaign. Some of these contacts were met with skepticism, and nothing came of them; others were pursued to some degree. The investigation did not find evidence that the Trump Campaign recovered any such Clinton emails, or that these contacts were part of a coordinated effort between Russia and the Trump Campaign.
3.) Did the Trump campaign and administration fully comply with the investigation?
Mueller Page 10:
The investigation did not always yield admissible information or testimony, or a complete picture of the activities undertaken by subjects of the investigation. Some individuals invoked their Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination and were not, in the Office's judgment, appropriate candidates for grants of immunity. The Office limited its pursuit of other witnesses and information-such as information known to attorneys or individuals claiming to be members of the media-in light of internal Department of Justice policies. See, e.g. , Justice Manual§§ 9-13.400, 13.410. Some of the information obtained via court process, moreover, was presumptively covered by legal privilege and was screened from investigators by a filter ( or"taint") team. Even when individuals testified or agreed to be interviewed, they sometimes provided information that was false or incomplete, leading to some of the false-statements charges described above. And the Office faced practical limits on its ability to access relevant evidence as well-numerous witnesses and subjects lived abroad, and documents were held outside the United States.
Further, the Office learned that some of the individuals we interviewed or whose conduct we investigated-including some associated with the Trump Campaign---deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature encryption or that do not provide for long-term retention of data or communications records. In such cases, the Office was not able to corroborate witness statements through comparison to contemporaneous communications or fully question witnesses about statements that appeared inconsistent with other known facts.
So to start, we know that Mueller has established that Russia attacked our election, that the Trump campaign welcomed that attack, and many of his people lied under oath and deleted relevant documents using encrypted applications when asked questions about their relationship with Russia.
Here are the summaries from Steele's memos one by one.
- June 20, 2016
- 1) Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for five years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits in western alliance.
- 2) So far Trump has declined sweetener real estate business deals offered him in Russia in order to further Kremlin’s cultivation of him. However, he and his inner circle have a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other rivals.
- 3) Former Top Russian Intelligence officer claims FSB has compromised TRUMP through his activities in MOSCOW sufficiently to blackmail him. According to several knowledgeable sources, his conduct in Moscow included several perverted acts which have been arranged and monitored by FSB.
- 4) A dossier of compromising material has been collected on Hillary Clinton, has been collated by Russian intelligence services over many years, and mostly comprises bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia rather than compromising conduct. The dossier is controlled by Russian spokesman PESKOV, directly on PUTIN’s orders. However it has not yet been distributed abroad including to Trump, Russian intentions for deployment are unclear.
With allegation No. 1, the apparent connection here seems to run through Felix Sater, a Russian immigrant with some ties to the Russian mob who had gained U.S. citizenship while also working as an informant for the FBI and an asset for the CIA with Russian spies. Sater became managing director for real estate firm Bayrock Group LLC in 2003, which had helped funnel deals with Trump-branded products and properties including 63 Russian oligarchs who leased, rented, or bought various Trump properties in South Florida, spending upward of $98.5 million on them between 2001 and 2007.
In 2005, the Trump Organization put together its third proposal for Trump Tower Moscow in coordination with BayRock LLC and in 2008, Trump sold a Palm Beach mansion to Russian oligarch Dimitry Rybolovlev for $95 million after purchasing it just two years previously for only $45 million. Cash-paying shell companies purchased $43 million worth of condos at the Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago, and at the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. That year Felix Sater left Bayrock after his criminal record was revealed and went to work for Trump, joining his childhood friend Michael Cohen within the organization.
2008 would start the clock on when Trump would potentially be a target of Russian intelligence, which is the same year that Sater began to work for him directly. In 2010 a racketeering case was filed against Bayrock, Sater and Bayrock owner Tevfik Arif alleged they had been “substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated.” Mobsters are frequently used by Russian intelligence to do their dirty work and fund blackbag operations. In 2011 the Trump Soho, a joint venture condo project by TrumpCo and Bayrock, was sued for defrauding buyers with their inflated sales claims—which is exactly five years before the Steele memos were written. The suit was settled with a payout of $3.19 million and a potential criminal case was avoided. In 2013 Russian mobsters renting property in Trump Tower just three floors below the penthouse suite were arrested for money laundering and running an illegal gambling ring at the end of a two-year investigation.
Let’s just say there’s a pretty large record for this particular allegation. Confirmed.
Allegation No. 2 appears to refer to multiple attempts to establish a Trump Tower Moscow deal, which was attempted again in 2013 through the Russian developer Aras Agalarov and his popstar son Emin, whom Trump had licensed his Miss Universe pageant to that year.
Mueller report Page 67.
The Trump Organization and the Crocus Group, a Russian real estate conglomerate owned and controlled by Aras Agalarov, began discussing a Russia-based real estate project shortly after the conclusion of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.291 Donald J. Trump Jr. served as_the primary negotiator on behalf of the Trump Organization; Emin Agalarov (son of Aras Agalarov) and Irakli "Ike" Kaveladze represented the Crocus Group during negotiations,292 with the occasional assistance of Rob Goldstone.293
In December 2013, Kaveladze and Trump Jr. negotiated and signed preliminary terms of an agreement for the Trump Tower Moscow project.294 On December 23, 2013, after discussions with Donald J. Trump, the Trump Organization agreed to accept an arrangement whereby the organization received a flat 3.5% commission on all sales, with no licensing fees or incentives.295 The parties negotiated a letter of intent during January and February 2014.
The apparent Trump Tower money-laundering ring leader, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, who remained at large was welcomed on the red carpet at the event for Miss Universe Moscow. While in Moscow, Trump reportedly met with several high-ranking oligarchs including board members from Sperbank with ties to Putin at the restaurant Nobu, and with the Agalarovs. Again, it’s quite possible that the “information flow” to and from Russia ran through Sater, who at this point had multiple contacts within the Russian mobster world as his father Michael Sheferofsky was reportedly a capo in the Mogilevich crime family with likely links to informants for the Kremlin. It’s even likely that Sater himself, who was apparently playing both sides in the intel game somewhat and may have been Steel’s source for this allegation itself. The details of what information may have been shared are unproven but the existence of these relationships are confirmed.
Starting in 2015, Sater worked with Michael Cohen on yet another Moscow Tower project, which the Mueller report describes as follows.
Mueller Report Page 69
In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately September 2015, Felix Sater, a New York based real estate advisor, contacted Michael Cohen, then-executive vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Donald J. Trump.304 Sater had previously worked with the Trump Organization and advised it on a number of domestic and international projects. Sater had explored the possibility of a Trump Tower project in Moscow while working with the Trump Organization and therefore knew of the organization's general interest in completing a deal there.305 Sater had also served as an informal agent of the Trump Organization in Moscow previously and had accompanied lvanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. to Moscow in the mid 2000s.306 Sater contacted Cohen on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (LC. Expert), a Russian real-estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov.307 Sater had known Rozov since approximately 2007 and, in 2014, had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City.308 Sater later contacted Rozov and proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which l.C. Expert would license the name and brand from the Trump Organization but construct the building on its own. Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another.employee of l.C. Expert.3
In November of 2015 Felix Sater emailed Michael Cohen about a new Trump Tower Moscow project saying “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected... I know how to play it and how to get this done. Buddy, our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it... I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.” And he did manage that process with Cohen, planning for him to travel to to St. Petersburg to meet wither Medvedev or Putin there right until the day in June of 2016 when it was first reported that the Russians had hacked and stolen emails from the DNC.
Allegation No. 2 seems to have a high probability of being correct, and portions of it are specifically confirmed by Mueller.
For allegation No. 3, which is the most salacious involving prostitutes at the Moscow Ritz Carlton when Trump was in town for the Miss Universe contest, Steele had several sources. Source D, an associate of Trump’s who had arranged several of his trips to Moscow (which would likely be Felix Sater), source E (likely Emin Agalarov) who performed the introduction of ethnic Russian prostitutes to the hotel staff, which included Source F (a female staffer at the Ritz Carlton who had confirmed the story). Source B—the top Russian intel official—stated that this wasn’t the only incident FSB had recorded with Trump over the years and that there was other incidents which had provided them with enough material to blackmail Trump if they wished.
In their book Russian Roulette, journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn have written that months before the pageant Trump and Emin Agalarov visited a “raunchy” Vegas nightclub called The Act which included live performers, some of whom participated in “golden showers” on stage.
After the dinner, part of the group headed to an after-party at a raunchy nightclub in the Palazzo mall called The Act. Shortly after midnight, the entourage arrived at the club. The group included Trump, Emin, Goldstone, Culpo, and Nana Meriwether, the outgoing Miss USA. Trump and Culpo were photographed in the lobby by a local paparazzi. The club’s management had heard that Trump might be there that night and had arranged to have plenty of Diet Coke on hand for the teetotaling Trump. (The owners had also discussed whether they should prepare a special performance for the developer, perhaps a dominatrix who would tie him up onstage or a little-person transvestite Trump impersonator—and nixed the idea.)
[...]
The Act was no ordinary nightclub. Since March, it had been the target of undercover surveillance by the Nevada Gaming Control Board and investigators for the club’s landlord—the Palazzo, which was owned by GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson—after complaints about its obscene performances. The club featured seminude women performing simulated sex acts of bestiality and grotesque sadomasochism—skits that a few months later would prompt a Nevada state judge to issue an injunction barring any more of its “lewd” and “offensive” performances. Among the club’s regular acts cited by the judge was one called “Hot for Teacher,” in which naked college girls simulate urinating on a professor. In another act, two women disrobe and then “one female stands over the other female and simulates urinating while the other female catches the urine in two wine glasses.” (The Act shut down after the judge’s ruling. There is no public record of which skits were performed the night Trump was present.)
On the night of the pageant in Moscow, both Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller and Sam Nunberg have confirmed that Emin Agalarov did attempt to send prostitutes to Trump’s room, only to have them turned away by Schiller. Schiller also stated that this proposition had occurred during dinner and that he did not spend all night standing outside Trump’s door that evening, so it’s possible Emin’s prostitutes could have come back later, after he departed. It is also a very interesting and strange coincidence that the Ritz Carlton allegation matches one of the regular performances from “The Act,” which was attended by both Trump and Emin together that same year.
At this point, this allegation remains unconfirmed. However, the KGB/FSB has a long history of using surveillance of sex acts for ‘kompromat’ and blackmail.
When the Soviet Union set up the Intourist hotel and travel company under Stalin, the bellboys, drivers, cooks and maids all worked for the NKVD, the secret police agency later known as the KGB. Also on the payroll were the prostitutes deployed to entrap and blackmail visiting foreign politicians and businessmen.
[...]
But, according to uncorroborated and highly defamatory memos prepared by a former British intelligence operative for a Washington political and corporate research firm, the Ritz has remained a place where foreign guests, including Donald Trump, can fall victim to the Russian art of “kompromat”, the collection of compromising material as a source of leverage.
[...]
A hotel spokeswoman declined to discuss the matter. “In line with our company standard to protect the privacy of our guests, we do not speak about any individual or group with whom we may have done business,” Irina Zaitseva, the hotel’s marketing and communication manager, said in an email.
Whatever did or did not happen in Trump’s hotel suite in 2013, when he visited Moscow to attend a Miss Universe contest, Russia has a long and well-documented record of using kompromat to discredit the Kremlin’s foes and to lean on its potential friends.
In summary, considering the fact that Trump has a documented history of infidelity with both Stormy Daniels and former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, it’s not really outside the realm of possibility that Emin’s prostitutes may have been able to avoid Keith Schiller and ultimately reach Trump that night and recreate the “Hot for Teacher” scene from “The Act,” as Steele describes.
Mueller’s report doesn't even attempt to address any of this, so allegation No. 3 receives a half point as highly likely, but not specifically confirmed other than tangentially by Schiller’s mention of the prostitutes offered by Emin on the same night as described by Steele.
It seems fairly obvious and likely that the Kremlin and Putin would keep a surveillance file on both Bill and Hillary Clinton, although this also has not been confirmed by the Mueller report. However on the second half of allegation No. 4 it does address that Trump (through his lawyer Michael Cohen) did have multiple contacts with Dmitri Peskov while he was working with Sater on the 2015 Moscow Tower project.
Page 5
2015. Some of the earliest contacts were made in connection with a Trump Organization real-estate project in Russia known as Trump Tower Moscow. Candidate Trump signed a Letter of lntent for Trump Tower Moscow by November 2015, and in January 2016 Trump Organization executive Michael Cohen emailed and spoke about the project with the office of Russian government press secretary Dmitry Peskov. The Trump Organization pursued the project through at least June 2016, including by considering travel to Russia by Cohen and candidate Trump.
The interesting thing is that Trump, Cohen and Peskov all lied about this contact and their efforts on the Trump Tower Moscow project for months. Years earlier in 2013 Trump had previously attempted to establish a tower in Moscow, using his contacts with the billionaire Agalarov family. This would be at least half confirmed.
Confirmed: 2. Partially confirmed: 2.
Score: 3 out of 4.
- July 19, 2016
- 5) Trump adviser Carter Page holds secret meetings in Moscow with SECHIN and senior Kremlin affairs official DIVYEKIN.
- 6) SECHIN raises issues of future bilateral U.S.-Russian energy cooperation and lifting of Russian sanctions over Ukraine. Page non-committal on response.
- 7) DIVYEKIN discusses release of Russian “kompromat” on Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton, but also hints at KREMLIN possession of such material on TRUMP.
Steele states he received this information for an associate of Sechin, and the information about Divyekin from an official allegedly close to Putin’s presidential administration head, S. Ivanov. [Sergei Ivanov is now special representative to Putin on Environmental Activities and Transport since August 2016, and before that was Putin’s chief of staff.]
Here’s what the Mueller report states about Carter Page:
On July 7, 2016, Page delivered the first of his two speeches in Moscow at NES. 566 In the speech, Page criticized the U.S. government's foreign policy toward Russia, stating that"Washington and other Western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change."567 On July 8, 2016, Page delivered a speech during the NES commencement.568 After Page delivered his commencement address, Russian Deputy Prime Minister and NES board member Arkady Dvorkovich spoke at the ceremony and stated that the sanctions the United States had imposed on Russia had hurt the NES. 569 Page and Dvorkovich shook hands at the commencement ceremony,and Weber recalled that Dvorkovich made statements to Page about working together in the future. 570
Page said that, during his time in Moscow, he met with friends and associates he knew from when he lived in Russia, including Andrey Baranov, a former Gazprom employee who had become the head of investor relations at Rosneft, a Russian energy company.572 Page stated that he and Baranov talked about "immaterial non-public" information.573 Page believed he and Baranov discussed Rosneft president Igor Sechin, and he thought Baranov might have mentioned the possibility of a sale of a stake in Rosneft in passing.574 Page recalled mentioning his involvement in the Trump Campaign with Baranov, although he did not remember details of the conversation.575 Page also met with individuals from Tatneft, a Russian energy company, to discuss possible business deals, including having Page work as a consultant.576 On July 8, 2016, while he was in Moscow, Page emailed several Campaign officials and stated he would send "a readout soon regarding some incredible insights and outreach I've received from a few Russian legislators and senior members of the Presidential Administration here. " 57
On July 9, 2016, Page emailed Clovis, writing in pertinent part:
Russian Deputy Prime minister and NES board member Arkady Dvorkovich also spoke before the event. In a private conversation, Dvorkovich expressed strong support for Mr.Trump and a desire to work together toward devising better solutions in response to the vast range of current international problems. Based on feedback from a diverse array of other sources close to the Presidential Administration, it was readily apparent that this sentiment is widely held at all levels of government
Under oath speaking to Congress and with the SCO, Carter Page admitted that he’s spoken with a top officer of Russian oil company Rosneft (head of investor relations Baronov instead of their CEO Igor Sechin) specifically about an upcoming sale of 19.5% of their stock, and that he’d also spoken with a top Russian government official (Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich instead of Putin’s Chief of internal policy Igor Divyekin). The conversations that Page admitted to are almost the same as what Steele reported, only they happened with slightly different people.
Page doesn’t mention that the stock sale was offered as any kind of bribe in exchange for dropping sanctions over Crimea and denied that he had been told that Russia had “kompromat/emails” linked to Hillary Clinton, although at this point in time it had already been publicly reported Russia had hacked the DNC servers and that both DCLeaks and WikiLeaks had released emails harvested from those hacks. So it wouldn’t really be a newsflash.
The really strange part of this is that exactly 19.5% of Rosneft stock actually was sold several months later, exactly as Steele described.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia published a government decree on Monday ordering the sale of a 19.5 percent stake in state-controlled oil giant Rosneft (ROSN.MM) in time for the proceeds to be received by the end of the year.
That stock was sold to the Qatar Sovereign Investment Fund (QIA) operated by Ahmed al-Rumahai, whose country was later caught in a political bind by Jared Kushner’s family, who wanted the QIA to invest in 666 Park Ave, which eventually they did.
Confirmation of this sale indicates that Steele’s source had access to the exact conversation that Page admitted he had with Baranov. One has to wonder why that conversation even took place, since at the time Rosneft was under sanctions over Crimea and there was literally nothing, legally, that Page or any other American could gain from this information. That is obviously very eerily on the nose, even if other details seem to be slightly different. It’s just as likely that Page and the Russians decided to lie about the details they thought were truly damaging, like discussing the kompromat on Clinton and Trump. But in one form or another Steele’s source here has clearly provided some credible information, even if not everything lined up with Page’s later testimony. Page did have a secret meeting with a Rosneft exec and a Kremlin official, they did discuss Russian-U.S. energy cooperation [the stock sale], but they don’t admit they talked about Russia having “dirt” on Hillary—which, frankly, they did have. This deserves at least a half point.
Confirmed: 0. Partially confirmed: 3.
Score: 1.5 out of 3.
- July 26, 2016
- 8) Russia has an extensive operation of state sponsored offensive cyber operations. External targets include foreign governments and big corporations, especially banks. FSB leads in cyber operations within Russian apparatus. Limited success with attacking top foreign targets like G7 governments, security services, and IFIs, but much more second tier ones through IT back doors, using corporate and other visitors to Russia.
- 9) FSB uses coercion and blackmail to recruit most capable cyber operatives in Russia in state sponsored programs. Heavy use also of CIS emigre working in western corporations and ethnic Russians employed by neighboring governments e.g. Latvia.
- 10) Agreed exchange of information in both directions. Trump’s team using moles within DNC and hackers in US as well as outside in Russia. PUTIN motivated by fear and hatred of CLINTON. Russians receiving intel from Trump’s team oligarch’s and their families in the U.S.
- 11) Mechanism for transmitting this intelligence involves “pension” disbursements to Russian emigres living inside the US as cover, using consular officials in New York, DC, and MIami.
- 12) Suggestion from source close to TRUMP and MANAFORT Republican campaign team is happy to have Russia as media boogeyman to mask more extensive corrupt business ties to China and other emerging countries.
Just one week after Trump’s inauguration, the Kremlin arrested FSB officials Sergei Mikhailov, his deputy Dmitry Dokuchaev, and Ruslan Stoyanov, the head of cybercrime investigations at Kaspersky Labs (who had previously paid Michael Flynn $11,500 in 2015) for treason and illegal hacking, apparently for sharing intel information with the CIA—and potentially Christopher Steele.
These are the latest in a series of developments regarding the FSB’s cybersecurity unit and Kaspersky Labs that has unfolded since the U.S. presidential election, colored as it was by the leaking of a dossier alleging the Russians had compromising information on Donald Trump (kompromat, if you will.) The idea is that the Russians could get Trump to do their bidding once he was elected. U.S. intelligence officials did summarize the dossier for Trump and President Barack Obama.
It is unclear if the people just arrested allegedly passed on the information in question directly, or worked with other individuals to do so (The Moscow Times has more on how the four allegedly worked together).
The reality, however, is that Dmitry Dokuchaev had been a hacker who had previously been arrested by the FSB and then converted into an asset who was used to track down other hackers and similarly put them in service of the government. Other hackers recruited by Dokuchaev have been indicted, extradited and prosecuted by the DOJ.
Karim Baratov, aka Kay, aka Karim Taloverov, aka Karim Akehmet Tokbergenov, 22, a Canadian national and resident, pleaded guilty today, to charges returned by a grand jury in the Northern District of California in February 2017. Baratov and three other defendants, including two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s domestic law enforcement and intelligence service, were charged with computer hacking and other criminal offenses in connection with a conspiracy to access Yahoo’s network and the contents of webmail accounts that began in January 2014. Baratov’s co-defendants, all of whom remain at large in Russia, are Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, 33, a Russian national and resident; Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, 43, a Russian national and resident; and Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan, aka Magg, 29, a Russian national and resident.
These arrests had the look of a “cleanup” operation to take members of the FSB, who had likely participated in the U.S. presidential operation, off the board and away from being accessible to the CIA and FBI for questioning.
Also, Mueller indicted 13 GRU hackers for their involvement in the attacks on the DNC and DCCC, which covers and confirms allegations No. 8 and 9.
Allegation No. 10 that there was two-way open communication between Trump associates is highly likely, considering the fact that Sater and Cohen were talking to Moscow about the Tower project, Michael Flynn had a $100 billion pending joint Russia-U.S. construction project to build nuclear power plants for Saudi Arabia, Manafort was keeping lines of communication open with Konstantin Kiliminick (who also had ties to the GRU), and obviously Don Jr. had by this point in time had his meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower.
Allegation No. 11 appears to refer to Mikail Kalugin, who worked in the Russian embassy and did work with pension funds, who was identified as a Russia spy by U.S. intel.
US officials have apparently confirmed a Russian diplomat who was working in Washington was actually an intelligence agent.
His name, Mikhail Kalugin, was misspelled in the report by former British intelligence officer,
Christopher Steele, which collected damning information suggesting the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
[...]
But insider sources told the BBC Mr Kalugin had been identified as a spy and was being monitored prior to his return to Russia in August 2016 – separately from Mr Steele’s report.
Mr Kalugin allegedly posed as head of the Economics Section at the Russian embassy while in fact working for Russian intelligence.
Mueller's report says nothing about Kalugin. Nonetheless, it appears to be independently confirmed by U.S. intel agencies.
Allegation #12 seems pretty obviously true considering how Trump is denying any subpoena into his financial matters, and particularly since immediately after winning the 2016 election Ivanka Trump was suddenly granted a group of patents of
16 trademarks for her branded product line by China.
Confirmed: 4. Partially confirmed: 1.
Score: 4.5 out of 5.
- July 30, 2016
- 13) Kremlin concerned that political fallout from DNC e-mail hacking operation is spiraling out of control. Extreme nervousness among TRUMP associates as a result of negative media attention/accusations.
- 14) Russians keen to cool situation and maintain ‘plausible deniability’ of existing existing/ongoing pro-TRUMP and anti-CLINTON operations. Therefore unlikely to be any ratcheting up of offensive plays plays in immediate future.
- 15) Source close to TRUMP campaign however confirms that regular exchange with KREMLIN has existed for at least 8 years, including intelligence fed back to Russia on ‘oligarch’ activities in the US.
- 16) Russians have chosen not to use ‘kompropmat’ they hold on TRUMP as leverage, given high levels of voluntary cooperation forthcoming from his team.
Allegations No. 13 and 14 seem obvious, but are generally about matters of how people are reacting to things generally, and can’t be confirmed unless that person openly admit to these feelings.
Allegation No. 15 is actually a repeat of allegation No. 1, but extends the timeframe to eight years, which tracks with when Felix Sater moved from Bayrock to working directly for the Trump organization.
Allegation No. 16 depends on allegation No. 3, which was granted a half point as being highly likely but not specifically confirmed. Half Point.
Confirmed: 1. Partially confirmed: 1. Unconfirmed: 2.
Score: 2 out of 4.
- August 5, 2016
- 17) Head of PA IVANOV laments Russian in US Presidential election and black PR against CLINTON and the DNC. Vows not to supply intelligence to Kremlin PR operatives [RT and Sputnik News]. Advocates now sitting tight and denying everything.
- 18) Presidential spokesman PESKOV the main protagonist in KREMLIN campaign to aid TRUMP and damage CLINTON. He is now scared and fears being made scapegoat by leadership for backlash in US. Problem compounded by his botched intervention in recent Turkish crisis.
- 19) Premier MEDVEDEV’s office is furious over DNC hacking and associated anti-Russian publicity. Want good relations with US and ability to travel there. Refusing to support and help cover up after PESKOV.
- 20) Talk now in KREMLIN of withdrawing from presidential race altogether, but this still wishful thinking by more Liberal elements in MOSCOW.
Allegations No. 17 to 20 are all essentially gossip about how people are reacting to things as they occur in real time. Again these all make sense but there is no outward evidence (other than their own admissions) available. However, Peskov is confirmed by Mueller as being directly involved in the Trump Moscow Tower project, and also lied about it.
Peskov confirmed that his office had located a copy of the email, which said the development deal wasn't moving forward and requested support.
He said the email was sent to the public "Press Office of the Kremlin" address -- which receives thousands of queries, relevant or otherwise -- and denied knowing Cohen personally.
While the Kremlin seeks to quickly answer queries related to the activities of the Russian president, Peskov said, those related to business are not normally responded to or passed up to Putin.
"This email said that a certain Russian company together with certain individuals is pursuing the goal of building a skyscraper in the 'Moscow City' district, but things aren't going well and they asked for help with some advice on moving this project forward," Peskov said. "But, since, I repeat again, we do not react to such business topics -- this is not our work -- we left it unanswered."
This lie shows a certain level of coordination between Moscow and Trump, because Peskov’s assistant did, in fact, respond to Michael Cohen’s email, and he then spent the next several months planning a trip to Russia to meet either Putin or Medvedev in St. Petersburg, all while the election was still going on.
Mueller report Page 77
Into the spring of 2016, Sater and Cohen continued to discuss a trip to Moscow in connection with the Trump Moscow project. On April 20, 2016, Sater wrote Cohen, " [t]he People. wanted to know when you are coming?"364 On May 4, 2016, Sater followed up:
I had a chat with Moscow. ASSUMING the trip does happen the question is before or after the convention. I said I believe, but don't know for sure, that' s it's probably after the convention. Obviously the pre-meeting trip (you only) can happen anytime you want but the 2 big guys where [sic] the question. I said I would confirm and revert. . . . Let me know about If I was right by saying I believe after Cleveland and also when you want to speak to them and possibly fly over.365
Cohen responded, "My trip before Cleveland. Trump once he becomes the nominee after the convention."366 The day after this exchange, Sater tied Cohen' s travel to Russia to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum ("Forum"), an annual event attended by prominent Russian politicians and businessmen. Sater told the Office that he was informed by a business associate that Peskov wanted to invite Cohen to the Forum.367 On May 5, 2016, Sater wrote to Cohen:
Peskov would like to invite you as his guest to the St. Petersburg Forum which is Russia's Davos it's June 16-19. He wants to meet there with you and possibly introduce you to either Putin or Medvedev, as they are not sure if 1 or both will be there.This is perfect. The entire business class of Russia wiU be there as well.He said anything you want to discuss including dates and subjects are on the table to discuss[. ]368
The following day, Sater asked Cohen to confirm those dates would work for him to travel; Cohen wrote back, "[w]orks for me.”
Peskov’s involvement here is confirmed, but the rest is largely gossip that can not be confirmed.
Confirmed: 1. Partially confirmed: 0. Unconfirmed: 3.
Score: 1 out of 4.
- August 10, 2016
- 21) Head of PA IVANOV assess KREMLIN intervention in US presidential election and outlines operational thinking on way forward.
- 22) No new leaks envisioned as too politically risky, but rather exploitation of Wikileaks material already disseminated to exacerbate division.
- 23) Educated to be targeted as protest (against CLINTON) and swing vote in attempt to turn them over to TRUMP.
- 24) Russian leadership, including Putin, celebrated perceived success to date in splitting US Hawks and elites.
- 25) Kremlin engaging with several high level US players STEIN, PAGE and (former DIA Director Michael Flynn), and funding their recent visits to Moscow.
Again, as much of the later memos display, allegations No. 21 and 24 are largely the internal thinking inside the Kremlin and their own gossip. No points on those. However, Allegation No. 22 seems to be confirmed by Mueller in that in August, there were no further dumps provided to WikiLeaks after the initial 1 GB archive which had been provided by Guccifer 2.0 in July.
Mueller Report Page 46.
The Office was able to identify when the GRU ( operating through its personas Guccifer 2.0and DCLeaks) transferred some of the stolen documents to WikiLeaks through online archives setup by the GRU. Assan e had access to the internet from the Ecuadorian Embass in London, England.
[Redacted]
On July 14, 2016, GRU officers used a Guccifer 2.0 email account to send WikiLeaks an email bearing the subject "big archive" and the message "a new attempt."163 The email contained an encrypted attachment with the name "wk dnc link I .txt.gpg."164 Using the Guccifer 2.0 Twitter account, GRU officers sent WikiLeaks an encrypted file and instructions on how to open it.165 On July 18, 2016, WikiLeaks confirmed in a direct message to the Guccifer 2.0 account that it had"the 1 Gb or so archive" and would make a release of the stolen documents "this week." 166 On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks released over 20,000 emails and other documents stolen from the DNC computer networks. 167 The Democratic National Convention began three days later.
More data to Wikileaks would not be provided until September, according to Mueller.
Allegation No. 23 would seem to be common knowledge, but it also happens to match a document published by a Putin-linked Russian thinktank on June 16 that made largely the same argument.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters.
They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was an intensive effort by Russia to interfere with the Nov. 8 election. U.S. intelligence officials acquired the documents, which were prepared by the Moscow-based Russian Institute for Strategic Studies [en.riss.ru/], after the election.
It recommended the Kremlin launch a propaganda campaign on social media and Russian state-backed global news outlets to encourage U.S. voters to elect a president who would take a softer line toward Russia than the administration of then-President Barack Obama, the seven officials said.
Allegation No. 25 is most interesting, since it seems to indicate the Green Party candidate Jill Stein was being treated by the Kremlin as an asset, as were Carter Page and Michael Flynn. Considering the pro-Kremlin talking points we’ve heard from Jill Stein over the last couple years, that seems likely.
Stein’s visit to Moscow, along with her other odd views, sent ripples of condemnation throughout Green Party and environmentalist circles in Russia and Europe. A pair of Russian environmental activists blasted Stein publicly, saying they were “shocked by the position [she] expressed during [her] visit in Moscow.” Or as Balthasar Glättli, a Swiss Green Party member, said, “Some of the points that Jill Stein makes are delusional, I have to say.”
[...]
For instance, Stein made the strange claim multiple times that NATO had “surrounded” Russia with nuclear weapons. As she told The Intercept, “This is the Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse, on steroids – in fact, on crack.” (Less than 10 percent of Russia’s land border touches any NATO member-states.) She also said last year that NATO is only fighting “enemies we invent to give the weapons industry a reason to sell more stuff.”
Likewise, Stein claimed that Ukraine’s 2014 revolution was, in reality, a “coup” that the U.S. “helped foment.” Only two other leaders have described Ukraine’s toppling of former president Viktor Yanukovych as a “coup”: Putin and Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose country remains a security ally of Russia. Stein even spent time last year saying that “Russia used to own Ukraine.”
As noted above, Michael Flynn and Page were already shown to be pretty much in Putin's pocket.
Confirmed: 3. Partially confirmed: 0. Unconfirmed: 2.
Score: 3 out of 5.
- 2nd memo for August 10, 2016
- 26) Trump campaign insider reports recent DNC e-mail leaks were aimed at switching SANDERS (protest) voters away from CLINTON and over to TRUMP.
- 27) Admits Republican campaign underestimated resulting negative reaction for US liberals, elites and media and forced to change course as a result.
- 28) Now need to turn tables on CLINTON’s use of PUTIN in bogeyman in election, although some resentment at Russian president’s perceived attempt to undermine USG and system over and above swinging presidential election.
Allegation No. 26, switching Sanders’ voters away from Clinton and over to Trump, seems to be exactly what happened as a result of claim that the DNC had sandbagged Sanders’ campaign. This view existed before WikiLeaks, but the emails they provided with DNC staffers criticizing and strategizing against Sanders seemed to confirm it, even though there’s no evidence that any dirty tricks against the Sanders campaign were actually implemented.
Mueller report Page 45
On July 6, 2016, WikiLeaks again contacted Guccifer 2.0 through Twitter's private messaging function, writing, "if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic]days prefab le [sic] because the DNC is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after." The Guccifer 2.0 persona responded, "ok ... i see." WikiLeaks also explained, "we think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary ... so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting." 161
Allegation No. 27 seems to explain why Trump has repeatedly said he had “nothing to do with Russia,” although he was still open to the Trump Tower Moscow project, right up until Election Day. Confirmed.
Allegation No. 28 sounds exactly like “No puppet, no puppet, you're the puppet,” as Trump stated during the October 19, 2016 debate. Confirmed.
Confirmed: 3.
Score: 3 out of 3.
- August 22, 2016
- 29) Ex-Ukranian President YANUKOVICH confides directly to PUTIN that he authorized kick-back payments to MANAFORT, as alleged in western media. Assures Russian President there is no documentary trail.
- 30) PUTIN and Russian leadership remain worried however and skeptical that YANUKOVICH has fully covered the traces of payments to TRUMP’s former campaign manager.
- 31) Close associate of TRUMP explains reasoning behind MANAFORT’s recent resignation. Ukraine revelations played a part but others wanted MANAFORT our for various reasons, especially LEWANDOWSKI who remains influential.
Yanukovich was wrong: there was an documentary trail, and Putin did have reasons to be skeptical.
Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
It would seem difficult to confirm exactly what Trump was thinking when he fired Manafort, but it happened just five days after the report about Yanakovich’s black ledger.
Weeks of sliding poll numbers and false starts had sapped Mr. Manafort’s credibility inside the campaign. A cooling relationship with Mr. Trump — who had taken to calling Mr. Manafort “low energy,” the epithet he once used to mock a former rival, Jeb Bush — turned hot last weekend when the candidate erupted, blaming Mr. Manafort for a damaging newspaper article detailing the campaign’s internal travails, according to three people briefed on the episode.
Then a wave of reports about Mr. Manafort’s own business dealings with Russia-aligned leaders in Ukraine, involving allegations of millions of dollars in cash payments and secret lobbying efforts in the United States, threw a spotlight on a glaring vulnerability for Mr. Trump: his admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Following Manafort's exit, Lewandowski became campaign manager. I would consider this allegation confirmed by observation.
Confirmed: 2. Partially confirmed: 1.
Score: 2.5 out of 3.
- September 14, 2016
- 32) Kremlin orders senior staff to remain silent in media and private on allegations of Russian interference in US presidential campaign.
- 33) Senior figure however confirms gist of allegations and reports IVANOV sacked as head of Head of Administration on account of giving PUTIN poor advice on the issue. VAINO selected as replacement partly because he wasn’t involved in pro-Trump anti-Clinton operation. [Steele notes that he received confirmation on the reason for IVANOV being sacked from a second source who had been a former Top Russian intelligence officer.]
- 34) Russians do have further ‘Kompromat’ on Clinton (emails) and considering disseminating it after DUMA (legistlative elections) in late September. Presidential spokesman PESKOV continues to lead on this.
- 35) However, equally important Kremlin objective is to shift policy consensus favorably to Russia in US post-Obama no matter who wins. Both presidential candidates opposition to TPP and TTIP viewed as a result in this respect.
- 36) Senior Russian diplomat [Mikail KULAGIN] withdrawn from Washington embassy on account of potential exposure in presidential election operation/s. [He was replaced by Andrei Bondarev who was “clean” on the operation.]
Allegation No. 32 seems likely, particularly since Peskov obviously lied. Half point.
For Allegation No. 33, Sergei Ivanov was fired as Putin’s chief of staff on August 12, just two days before this particular memo.
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin unexpectedly fired his longtime chief of staff on Friday, the latest in a series of high-profile Kremlin changes that have ushered out an older layer of Putin peers and replaced them with a younger generation of unquestioning loyalists.
“Putin is gravitating toward those who serve him, and distancing himself from those who, by virtue of their resources, attempt to rule alongside Putin,” wrote Tatyana Stanovaya, a political scientist, in a recent commentary for the Carnegie Moscow Center. “He does not need advice, he needs people who will carry out his orders with as little fuss as possible.”
As if on cue, after the announcement, pictures of Anton E. Vaino, 44, the relatively unknown aide promoted to chief of staff to replace Sergei B. Ivanov, suddenly popped up online. They showed Mr. Vaino shadowing Mr. Putin and even carrying an umbrella to protect the president from the rain.
Even this rather tame missive seems to indicate that Ivanov was fired for the advice that he gave, which is consistent with Steele’s memo. One-half Point.
Allegation No. 34 is particularly juicy because it is true that GRU had acquired another set of emails from John Podesta’s account, but these hadn't been released yet and hadn’t even been shared with WikiLeaks at this time. That didn’t happen until September, after the Kremlin apparently grew more desperate. Confirmed.
Mueller report Page 47.
Beginning on September 20, 2016, WikiLeaks and DCLeaks resumed communications in a brief exchange. On September 22, 2016, a DCLeaks email account dcleaksproject@gmail.com sent an email to a WikiLeaks account with the subject "Submission" and the message "Hi from DCLeaks." The email contained a PGP-encripted with the filename"wiki_mail.txt.gpg." 174 [Redated] The email, however, bears a number of similarities to the July 14, 2016 email in which GRU officers used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to give WikiLeaks access to the archive of DNC files. On September 22, 2016 (the sameday of DCLeaks' email to WikiLeaks), the Twitter account dcleaks sent a single message togWikiLeaks with the string of characters [Redacted]
The SCO however does not rule out the possibility that some of these files may have been passed to WikiLeaks manually.
The Office cannot rule out that stolen documents were transferred to WikiLeaks through intermediaries who visited during the summer of 2016.
This would seem to be a reference to the fact that reporters from RT went to the Ecuadorian embassy and interviewed Assange on August 2, and there is some suggestion that RT reporter Afshin Rattansi had connections to London resident and Hillary-hating American expat Ted Malloch. Malloch apparently contacted Roger Stone’s friend Jerome Corsi that same day, after which Corsi (who was on vacation in Europe for his 25th anniversary) responds to Stone via email:
Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.… Time to let more than [Podesta] to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton]. That appears to be the game hackers are now about. Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke -- neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus, setting stage for Foundation debacle.”
Corsi and Stone later concoct a cover story about all this.
Corsi testified that he and Stone hatched a plan in which Corsi would write a memo about the Podestas to allow Stone to cite it as the basis for his tweet. The revelation, if accurate, would undercut Stone’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee that opposition research on the Podesta brothers’ business activities was the catalyst for the tweet
As opposed to information he received from Corsi, which had been given to Malloch from RT reporter Rattansi.
Allegation No. 35 is speculative but not unreasonable. However, allegation No. 36 about Kalugin suddenly leaving the Russian embassy in DC was correct, as noted above in Allegation No. 11.
Confirmed: 2. Partially confirmed: 3.
Score: 3.5 out of 5.
- 2nd Memo for September 14, 2016
- 37) Top level Russian official confirm closeness of Alfa Group-Putin relationship. Significant favours tend to be done in both directions and [Mikail] FRIDMAN and [Petr] AVEN still giving informal advice to PUTIN particularly on the US.
- 38) Key intermediary in ALFA-Putin relationship identified as Oleg GOVORUN current head of Presidential Administration Department but thruout the 1990, the ALFA executive who delivered cash directly to PUTIN.
- 39) PUTIN personally unbothered but ALFA’s current lack of investment in Russia but under pressure from colleagues over this as a lever over ALFA interlocutors.
Mikail Fridman is chairman of the advisory board for Alfa Group, while Petr Aven is the chairman of the board for Alfa Bank. It doesn’t seem odd that prominent Russian billionaires would be giving advice to Putin. However, Alfa Group has come back up again in this story through oligarch German Khan, who is also on the board of Alfa Group and happens to be the father-in-law of Alex Van Der Zwaan, who was prosecuted by Mueller for lying about Rick Gates being in regular contact with Konstantin Kilimnick on behalf of Paul Manafort.
Van Der Zwaan, the son-in-law of Russian oligarch German Khan, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his work with two of President Trump's former campaign aides. He served 30 days in a low-security prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania.
He was released from prison on Monday and handed over to ICE custody, then he was removed from the U.S. He arrived Tuesday in the Netherlands, where he is a citizen, and was handed over to Dutch authorities, ICE said in a statement to USA TODAY.
Van Der Zwaan pleaded guilty in February and cooperated with investigators. While several others have been indicted and pleaded guilty in Mueller's ongoing probe examining Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Van Der Zwaan is the first and, so far, only person to serve any prison time.
In his plea, Van Der Zwaan admitted to deleting emails and lying to prosecutors about a conversation with Rick Gates, a former Trump aide, about work they'd done for a Ukrainian political party, which was aligned with Russia.
Yulia Tymoshenko's miraculous release at the weekend was from a seven-year prison sentence imposed for a non-existent crime. The former Ukrainian prime minister had done nothing wrong: the police, prosecutors and jurists who fabricated her offence were subservient to a state that wanted her eliminated. Whether or not Tymoshenko becomes president of her embattled country, Europe needs to find a way to deal with officials who are complicit in human rights abuses.
Tymoshenko was accused of abuse of office, because she made a deal with Vladimir Putin when he stopped gas supplies to Ukraine in the winter of 2009. This threatened a humanitarian disaster unless Ukraine agreed to pay a higher price for Russian gas. Under pressure from the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, and with her people dying from hypothermia, Tymoshenko gave in to Putin's demands. Some criticised her for not holding out for longer, and she narrowly lost the presidential election a few months later to Viktor Yanukovych.
Yanukovych appointed his crony Viktor Pshonka as prosecutor general, who set his deputy, Renat Kuzmin, to destroy Tymoshenko. This was easy in a former Soviet state that had embraced democracy but had not reformed the justice system, in which all-powerful prosecutors control the judges. Ukraine has "P-plate judges" provisionally appointed for five years with tenure confirmed only if their decisions have not upset the regime. This system has produced a conviction rate in Ukraine courts of 99.8% – an impossible statistic for any democratic country.
This doesn’t confirm allegation No. 37 and No. 38, but it does make connections between Alfa Group and Putin seem somewhat more likely. One-half point each.
There is nothing to confirm allegation No. 39.
Confirmed: 0. Partially confirmed: 2. Unconfirmed: 1.
Score: 1 out of 3.
- 3rd Memo for September 14th
- 40) Two knowledgeable St. Petersburg contacts claim TRUMP has paid bribes and engaged in sexual activities there but key witnesses silenced and evidence hard to obtain.
- 41) Both believe Azeri business associate of TRUMP, Araz AGALAROV will know the details.
BBC correspondent Paul Wood has reported that he was told there are possible Trump sex tapes from St. Petersburg by contacts inside the CIA.
I understand the CIA believes it is credible that the Kremlin has such kompromat - or compromising material - on the next US commander in chief. At the same time a joint taskforce, which includes the CIA and the FBI, has been investigating allegations that the Russians may have sent money to Mr Trump's organisation or his election campaign.
[...]
And the former MI6 agent is not the only source for the claim about Russian kompromat on the president-elect. Back in August, a retired spy told me he had been informed of its existence by "the head of an East European intelligence agency".
Later, I used an intermediary to pass some questions to active duty CIA officers dealing with the case file - they would not speak to me directly. I got a message back that there was "more than one tape", "audio and video", on "more than one date", in "more than one place" - in the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and also in St Petersburg - and that the material was "of a sexual nature".
It makes some sense that Agalarov would be familiar with this since again, according to Keith Schiller it was Emin Agalarov who offered to bring Trump prostitutes in Moscow during 2013.
Confirmed: 2. Partially confirmed: 0. Unconfirmed: 0.
Score: 2 out of 2.
- October 12, 2016
- 42) Buyers remorse sets in with Kremlin over TRUMP support operation in US presidential election. Russian leadership disappointed that leaked e-mails on CLINTON had not had greater impact on the campaign.
- 43) Russians have injected further anti-CLINTON material into the ‘plausibly deniable’ pipeline [Wikileaks] which will continue to surface, but best material already in public domain.
- 44) PUTIN angry with officials who “over promised” on TRUMP and further heads will roll as a result. Foreign minister LAVROV may be next.
- 45) TRUMP supported by KREMLIN because he’s seen as a divisive, anti-establishment candidate who would shake up current international status quo in Russia’s favor. Lead on TRUMP operations moved from Foreign Ministry to FSB, and then to Presidential Administration where it now sits.
Allegation No. 42 is worth one-half point since it’s mostly gossip and unknowable, but it is also consistent which how Russia seemed to back off the presidential project for some months as noted by No. 43 which is confirmed by Mueller, who noted that DCLeaks eventually attempted to reach out to WikiLeaks a second time to give them an archive of John Podesta emails on September 22, as noted in allegation No. 34 above. There is no way that Steele could have known that this was part of a second contact between GRU and WikiLeaks without having access to internal Russian intel officers. Allegation No. 44 is more gossip, but No. 45 seems fairly obviously accurate based on everything we’ve seen Trump do with NATO and Europe since he’s been in office. Whether the lead on the Trump operations moved from Foreign Ministry (who had initially reached out to Papadopoulos in April) to FSB (who ran the hacker operations with Dukochaev who was later arrested), to Putin’s office seems likely and consistent with other events. One point.
Confirmed: 2. Partially confirmed: 1. Unconfirmed: 1.
Score: 2.5 out of 4.
- October 18th, 2016
- 46) Close associate of SECHIN confirms his secret meeting in Moscow with PAGE in July. [Page was offered brokerage fees on the Rosneft stock sale and supposed confirmed that Trump would “drop sanctions” if elected.]
- 47) Substance included offer of large stake of Rosneft in return for lifting sanctions on Russia. PAGE confirms this [lifting sanctions] is Trump’s intention.
- 48) SECHIN continue to think TRUMP could win until October 17th, now looking to reorient his engagement with US.
- 49) Kremlin insider highlights importance of TRUMP’s lawyer Michael COHEN in overt relationship with Russia. COHEN’s wife is of Russian descent and her father is a leading property developer in Moscow.
Allegation No. 46 actually corrects and updates allegations No. 5 and 6 that shows instead of Carter Page meeting secretly with Igor Sechin, he instead likely met with someone else such as Andrey Baranov from Rosneft, as is confirmed by Page’s own testimony to Mueller and Congress.
Allegation No. 47 is confirmed because even after Michael Flynn was fired, some of his staff in the NSC attempted to immediately drop sanctions on Russia until two long-term State Department staffers alerted members of Congress and legislation was crafted to prevent this from happening without congressional approval.
In the early weeks of the Trump administration, former Obama administration officials and State Department staffers fought an intense, behind-the-scenes battle to head off efforts by incoming officials to normalize relations with Russia, according to multiple sources familiar with the events.
Unknown to the public at the time, top Trump administration officials, almost as soon as they took office, tasked State Department staffers with developing proposals for the lifting of economic sanctions, the return of diplomatic compounds and other steps to relieve tensions with Moscow.
[...]
“There was serious consideration by the White House to unilaterally rescind the sanctions,” said Dan Fried, a veteran State Department official who served as chief U.S. coordinator for sanctions policy until he retired in late February. He said in the first few weeks of the administration, he received several “panicky” calls from U.S. government officials who told him they had been directed to develop a sanctions-lifting package and imploring him, “Please, my God, can’t you stop this?”
Fried said he grew so concerned that he contacted Capitol Hill allies — including Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., the ranking minority member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — to urge them to move quickly to pass legislation that would “codify” the sanctions in place, making it difficult for President Trump to remove them.
Allegation No. 48 is speculative gossip, but No. 49 is absolutely true. Michael Cohen’s wife Laura Shusterman was born in soviet Ukraine and he has an ethanol business in the country. Michael Cohen’s father-in-law Fima Shusterman introduced him to Donald Trump in 2006 as he began using the money from his wife’s collection of taxi medallions for real estate, ultimately purchasing properties in Trump Palace, Trump Park Ave, and Trump World Center while still operating his law office from inside Simon Barber’s Queens taxi garage. Cohen soon after began working for Trump as his “fixer” and deal maker. Cohen is also life-long friends with Felix Sater and his family has ties to the Russian Mogelevich crime family through his uncle’s club El Caribe.
Cohen did have a covert relationship with Russia in relation to Dmitry Peskov and Trump Tower Moscow. However, he also met personally in Trump Tower with Russian Oligarch Victor Vekselberg, chairman of the investment firm Renova Group. They met again during the inauguration and later established a cash consulting deal with Columbus Nova, the U.S. affiliate of Vekselberg’s Renova Group. He and Felix Sater secretly negotiated a deal to end sanctions against Russia by stopping the violence in Crimea with a member of the Ukranian parliament named Andrii V. Artemenko. They supposedly delivered a copy of this plan to Michael Flynn’s desk, but there is no evidence Flynn ever reviewed it or passed it on to anyone before he was fired. When this was revealed, Artemenko was looked at for possible treason charges by Ukraine.
Therefore, I would consider allegation No. 49 confirmed.
Confirmed: 2. Partially confirmed: 0. Unconfirmed: 1.
Score: 2 out of 3.
- October 20, 2016
- 50) Kremlin insider reports TRUMP lawyer COHEN’s meeting/s with KREMLIN officials was/were held in Prague.
- 51) Russian parastatal organization Rossotrudnichestvo used as cover for this liason and premise in Czech capital may have been used for meeting/s
- 52) Pro-Putin leading DUMA figure KOSACHEV, reportedly involved as ‘plausibly deniable” facilitator and may have participated in August meeting/s with COHEN.
Allegations No. 50 and 51 have been debunked by Mueller, although it appears that there may have been another Michael Cohen who is being referenced here and it has been reported that his cellphone pinged in the area. Negative 2 points.
Allegation No. 52: Kosachev is not mentioned by the Mueller report at all and can’t be confirmed.
Confirmed: 0. Partially confirmed: 0. Unconfirmed: 1. Debunked: 2.
Score: -2 out of 3.
- December 13th, 2016
- 53) TRUMP representative COHEN accompanied to Prague August/September 2016 by 3 colleagues for discussions with Kremlin representative and associated operators hackers.
- 54) Agenda included how to access deniable cash payments to operatives; contingency plans for covering up operations; and action in event of a CLINTON election victory.
- 55) Some further details of Russian representatives/operatives involved; Romanian hackers employed, and use of Bulgaria as bolt hole to “lie low.”
- 56) Anti-CLINTON hackers and other operatives paid by both TRUMP team and Kremlin, but with ultimate loyalty for the head of PA, IVANOV and his successor/s.
Allegation No. 53 seems to be a repeat or an extension of allegation No. 50, which appears to be wrong and has been vehemently denied by Cohen and also Mueller. However, in part of Cohen’s indictment there is a mention of $50,000 for “IT services” charged to the campaign, which doesn’t make any sense, as noted by EmptyWheel. Negative one-half point.
Cohen paid some tech company $50,000 in connection with the campaign.
That’s not a whole lot of money, in any case. And if it went to pay off part of the information operation, it would have to have involved some part of the operation not yet publicly identified. Even the one known instance of Trump supporters reaching out to hackers in Europe — Peter Smith’s reported consultation of Weev — is known to have been paid for by other means (in that case, Smith’s own fundraising).
Still, it’s certainly possible that that $50,000 went to some still unidentified entity that played a role in the information operation that, for some reason, didn’t get paid for by Putin’s cronies or the Russian.
Allegations No. 54 and 55 are similarly suspect, but oddly there was a Romanian hacker named Yevgeni Nukilin who was arrested in Prague not long after this alleged meeting took place. One-half point each.
A Russian man on Friday pleaded not guilty to charges he hacked three U.S. technology companies, potentially compromising personal details of more than 100 million users, including on LinkedIn, after being extradited from the Czech Republic.
Yevgeniy Nikulin, 30, of Moscow, entered his plea in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, after having fought his extradition following his 2016 arrest in Prague.
That is very oddly close to this allegation, which means it may have merit but was wrong when linked to Michael Cohen. Someone else may have been this facilitator he was told about. Negative half point for 54, and one-half point for 55.
Allegation No. 56 seems outlandish, but Michael Flynn ally Peter W. Smith did pay a set of hackers looking for negative emails on Clinton from her server.
In one of the most intriguing episodes of the 2016 presidential campaign, Republican activist Peter W. Smith launched an independent effort to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails to help defeat her and elect Donald Trump. His quest, which reportedly brought him into contact with at least two sets of hackers that he himself believed were Russian, remains a key focus of investigations into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.
Now, BuzzFeed News has reviewed documents showing that FBI agents and congressional investigators have zeroed in on transactions Smith made right as his effort to procure Clinton’s emails heated up. Just a day after he finished a report suggesting he was working with Trump campaign officials, for example, he transferred $9,500 from an account he had set up to fund the email project to his personal account, later taking out more than $4,900 in cash. According to a person with direct knowledge of Smith’s project, the Republican operative stated that he was prepared to pay hackers “many thousands of dollars” for Clinton’s emails — and ultimately did so.
Also, Flynn associate Barbara Ledeen paid hackers looking for Clinton emails on the dark web.
A close associate of Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn arranged a covert investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state, and through intermediaries turned to a person with knowledge of the “dark web” for help.
[...[
According to the FBI notes, Ledeen wanted to pursue her own investigation in 2015 into whether or not Clinton’s emails had been compromised but could not finance the work.
She sought out the help of an unnamed defense contractor and also turned to Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, for help. According to the FBI notes, Gingrich “wanted to speak to others about the project” and asked Judicial Watch, the conservative activist group, for financial assistance.
Judicial Watch allegedly turned to another, unnamed, contractor who was familiar with the “deep web and dark web”, according to the FBI files. The parties were concerned about what they would do if they came across any emails that contained classified information. According to the FBI investigation, the project was later halted.
This is confirmed by Mueller.
Mueller report Page 62.
Barbara Ledeen and Peter Smith were among the people contacted by Flynn. Ledeen, along-time Senate staffer who had previously sought the Clinton emails, provided updates to Flynn about her efforts throughout the summer of 2016.266 Smith, an investment advisor who was active in Republican politics, also attempted to locate and obtain the deleted Clinton emails.26
Ledeen began her efforts to obtain the Clinton emails before Flynn's request, as early as December 2015.268 On December 3, 2015, she emailed Smith a proposal to obtain the emails, stating, "Here is the proposal I briefly mentioned to you. The person I described to you would be happy to talk with you either in person or over the phone. The person can get the emails which 1.Were classified and 2. Were purloined by our enemies. That would demonstrate what needs to be demonstrated."269
Whether the hackers paid for by Peter Smith or Barbara Ledeen were some of the same exact people who were also contracted by the FSB or GRU who were ultimately loyal to Ivanov remains to be seen. But the primary argument that both Russia and Trump associates were paying hackers looking for “dirt” on Hillary remains true. One-half Point.
Confirmed: 0. Partially confirmed: 3. Unconfirmed: 0. Debunked: 0. Partially debunked: 2.
Score: 0.5 out of 4.
Total Confirmed: 24. Partially Confirmed. 17. Not Confirmed. 11. Partially Debunked: 2. Total Debunked: 2.
Based on the scoring system I devised as a guide the final total is 29.5 out of a possible 56 which gives the impression that on balance about half of the dossier allegations have been born out totally with some things partially or circumstantially correct, about the same not confirmed and a few things flat out wrong. The work isn’t perfect and certainly wasn’t intended to be, it was intended to be a raw intelligence and a starting point for discovering more information. It was never meant to be a complete confirmed report, more like a set of notes. For example, I didn’t include in the scoring hat Steele misspelled “Kulagin/Kalugin” and also “Alpha/Alfa” bank, but both that person and that bank were apparently real and the allegations against them seem to have some merit.
More generally this means that 41 out of the 56 allegations — 73 percent — have been fully or partially confirmed, while 11 remain unconfirmed — 19 percent — and 4 have been totally or at least partially debunked — 7 percent — based on my analysis. If the 11 unconfirmed items can eventually be verified — which is doubtful since most of those items were matters of gossip, opinion, motivation or point of view — then the would the entire dossier would top out at 92 percent accurate. Steele himself has said that his dossier is probably 70 -90 percent correct, so that seems just about right on the money.
With that in mind, I think it’s important to point out how interesting even some of Steele’s near misses are. He didn’t get some of the details of which Russians talked to Carter Page exactly correct — hence those were scored as only partially confirmed — but most of the actual content of those conversations were completely correct and confirmed by Page himself under oath. Page said he was talking to a different person than Steele says, but he admits he still discussed some of the exact same subjects. This indicates that the information was valid, but perhaps Steele’s source switched some of the names because they may have been more personally connected than they wanted to admit. (ie. Based on Steele’s later updated allegation it seems that the source themselves had the conversation with Page and used stand-ins to hide their own involvement, and/or it’s possible that Page changed the people around to cover his ass.). This tends to indicate that the parts of the conversation that Page left out — that he had heard about the Russians have “kompromat” on both Clinton and Trump, and the suggestion that the Rosneft stock sale was a “kickback” in exchange for dropping sanctions — just might have happened too, but Page was confident the Russians would either be unavailable or lie about it just as Peskov lied to stay in sync with Cohen and Trump’s lies about the Moscow Tower project. Unfortunately, without honest testimony from the Russians to compare against Page this can’t be proven one way or the other.
The same may be true with the Prague allegation with Michael Cohen which I generally ranked as debunked because Mueller seems to indicate that it didn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean that someone else like Rick Gates or Felix Sater didn’t go to Prague for that exact purpose — possibly while in possesion of one of Cohen’s many, many, many cellphones — and again, names where possibly swapped for some external reason. Somebody may have attempted to get some hackers “out of dodge”, and a Russia hacker was arrested in Prague not long after, but it seems that someone wasn’t Cohen according to Mueller.
Lastly, the Ritz Carlton allegation has gained the most notoriety but if it’s a lie, it’s a very intricate and elaborate lie that just so happens to match so many of the actual events that really did occur with Keith Schiller, Emin and Trump as to make it appear that one of them has to be the source for it whether it’s true or not. Emin and Trump did go to “The Act” together in Vegas and Keith did confirm that Emin later tried to send prostitutes to his room in Moscow, there were CIA sources who say there are tapes and that there are previous tape allegations from St. Petersburg, and this type of honey trap is something FSB has been using for decades, they even recently attempted it against Putin critic Alexei Navalny using Belarus “sex guru” Anastasia Vashukevich who later claimed she had videos of her “boyfriend” Oleg Deripaska having secret conversations with high ranking Russian officials until she was arrested in Thailand, deported to Russia and suddenly changed her story.
Earlier this month, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posted a video investigation that used the Instagram posts of a woman with the handle Nastya Rybka to build a corruption investigation involving one of Russia's wealthiest men and a powerful government official.
Rybka — who is actually a Belarus-born woman named Anastasia Vashukevich — works as an escort, which is how she wound up posting a video of her and others cavorting with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. Also seen in the video hanging out on Deripaska's yacht: Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko, which Nalvany said showed the close link between oligarchs and the Russian government.
In Navalny’s video he shows footage of several scantily clad Russian women who showed up in his offices with a videographer who were trying to cause some trouble, not long afterward he received a video message from Vashukevich herself threatening that she and “her girls” would eventually “fuck one of them and get it on tape.” So secretly taped opponent fucking for fun and ‘kompromat’ is apparently a big thing in Russia. And also Navalny is a total and completely square wallflower.
The details in the Ritz Carlton allegation have just too much coincidence with documented events to be made of whole cloth, either it happened or something else happened that was close enough to be used against Trump for exactly the same reason, to gain leverage over him just in case FSB needed to apply pressure.
I admit it may not have happened, but if it came down to the word of Emin, Keith and various hotel workers vs Trump, it’s close enough to the truth for pressure tactics to have potentially been effective. “Kompromat” doesn’t have to be true to work, it just has to be believable. With a man who cheated on his first wife, cheated on his second wife, cheated on his third current wife and then cheated on his Playboy Playmate Mistress Karen McDougal with porn star Storm Daniels it’s possible to believe he’s capable of just about anything, and just about anything alleged about him in this area is fairly believable.
On the other hand some of the things Steele got right, such as the depth capabilities of the Russia cyber operations, the fact that they were targeting Democrats and the DNC in order to hurt Clinton and help Trump and the specific reasons why were very accurate. It's uncanny how Steele describes how they used Wikileaks for “plausible deniability” and grew cold feet and buyers remorse when it seemed like the plan wasn’t working and actually put everything on hold for a few months as heads started to roll until they finally went all-in with a second dump of the Podesta emails to Wikileaks months later is very revelatory and matches basically hand-in-glove with what Mueller tells us ultimately happened. That portion should be taken very seriously and studied closely on how we deal with future cyber threats and attacks. The last thing Russians want is to get caught red-handed.
That Trump has likely been the target of Russian cultivation for 5-8 years is probably low-balling it, he was first approached and stroked with with juicy cash condo sales that were probably money-laundering scams by Russian mobster David Bogatin — who again has ties to the Mogelevich crime family — starting in the early 80’s almost 40 years ago.
I’m fully open to the idea that others may disagree with some of my marginal scores on the “confirmed” or “half correct” items which should be either upgraded or downgraded either up or down a slot — and that’s fine. That’s a worthwhile discussion to have on an item by item basis because I admit there are some things I don’t know or things I’ve researched that could change or be discovered in the future.
On the whole, Steele was far more right than the two or three problem areas where he was apparently wrong.