The Steele Dossier, Comey, and Disappearing Russian Spies: Revisiting Loose Ends

Over what seem to have been the longest twelve days in recent memory, a lot has happened in the short period of time since Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 45th President of the United States. He quickly began the process of dismantling Obamacare, re-instituted the global gag rule, introduced the concept of ‘alternative facts’, appointed Steve Bannon as a principle on the National Security Council while demoting the Joint Chief of Staff and Director of National Intelligence, and began the process of following up on his campaign promise to prevent Muslims from entering the United States — to name just a few things.

While two of the most popular articles on this site in the past week posited their own theories of Trump’s Machiavellian mastery of the political ‘bob and weave’ as he consolidates power, another article (albeit a much less popular one) convincingly shot them down as somewhat paranoid conspiracies. I’m still not quite sure where in this spectrum of speculation my own opinions land, and in light of the fact that we’re dealing with such inexperienced, authoritarian men I find it best to keep my predictions to a minimum. (Meaning I only wrote one fantasy story in which Trump and his inner circle are convicted of treason.)

Instead of trying to predict precisely where in hyper-reality this rudderless, schizophrenic administration is going to take us next, I figured there’s more value in looking backwards at some of the loose ends that are still far from being tied up. To begin, I’d like to go back in time a couple of months, to the first few days after Trump won the electoral college in a stunning upset. Sitting in my political theory class the day after election night felt odd, I’d just witnessed something I continuously told myself was impossible and a sense of anxiety hung over the room while we desperately sought wisdom and insight as to what might happen next from our professor.

My peers were shell-shocked, asking her which policies she thought Trump might pursue, which promises he would likely abandon, and what those of us who were here or had relatives here depending on temporary visas or President Obama’s Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals could expect. Perhaps it was my whiteness and economically privileged upbringing shielding me from personal concerns, or maybe my tendency towards institutionalism, but the one idea I couldn’t get out of my head was that there was no way this man wouldn’t be impeached. So I asked my professor the one and only burning question I had: What loose ends do you think are going to catch up to him, if any?

Her response was measured, she warned that Trump is a character who has more or less managed to suspend what were thought of as the ‘normal rules’ of American politics so far, so ‘loose ends’ that might constitute career-ending scandals for others are likely to bounce right off the teflon-Don. However, she did allow for one possibility. She mentioned a story she’d read about a former intelligence officer who had supposedly been hired by a Republican primary opponent of Trump’s to do opposition research. Supposedly this retired intelligence officer found some pretty troubling information, so troubling in fact that he took it straight to the FBI.

Allegedly, my professor spoke very cautiously now, this former intelligence officer had uncovered information that led him to believe Trump was compromised by the Russians — an allegation which, if true, would be absolutely devastating to the very foundations of American democracy. While nothing had come of it so far, if this ticking intelligence time-bomb were to blow up it would surely mean the end of Trump’s administration and possibly could make him the first President to be impeached and convicted.

That was the only loose end she could think of that would matter.

Fast-forward to the final two weeks leading up to Trump’s inauguration, and Buzzfeed earned themselves an impressive Trump tirade for leaking the now infamous Steele-dossier. The mythical piece of intelligence my professor had alluded to finally materialized in all of its golden-showery-greatness, and it actually turned out to contain some astonishing allegations. While the former MI6 officer Christopher Steele who compiled the report had always been a reliable source with extensive experience in Russia, the allegations could not be independently verified by any of the news organizations he passed it on to and were therefore never published during the campaign.

That changed when the dossier was included in briefings given to President Obama and President-elect Trump at the time, as well as numerous members of Congress. As anyone in D.C. knows, if you don’t want a leak you don’t tell the hill — so it should be no surprise that the dossier soon ended up in the hands of Buzzfeed, who had less qualms about publishing it than The New York Times. Hence, President-elect Trump labeled them a ‘failing pile of garbage’ at his first press conference in almost half a year, just nine days before he took office.

One question that didn’t get nearly enough attention in light of Trump’s meltdown over the dossier related to the actions of a man who got no love this election cycle, FBI Director James Comey. Now that the public was aware of the Steele dossier and more importantly the fact that it was turned over to the FBI, some began putting two and two together to ask why Comey made unprecedented public statements regarding investigations into Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton while remaining completely silent on an arguably much more serious investigation into Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Such blatant public partisanship on behalf of an FBI Director is unprecedented (Hoover preferred to keep his dirt on Presidents of both parties to himself), yet when Democrats cried foul — alleging that Comey ‘rigged’ the result for Trump by announcing that he was re-opening the Clinton investigation less than two weeks prior to the election, they were called sore losers. Yet the question remains — what exactly was Comey’s threshold for information warranting a public announcement that the discovery of Anthony Weiner’s laptop met but a report compiled by a former MI6 officer didn’t?

Despite the dossier now being public information, it was still never verified and was in fact found to have some inaccuracies, so it was widely discredited and forgotten amid the ever-growing cyclone of Trump-related news. However, recent reports that Russia sold a 19.5% stake in its state-run oil company Rosneft and funneled it through such a complex web of international investments and offshore funds so as to be completely untraceable rings a bell. One memo in the Steele dossier alleged that the CEO of Rosneft Igor Sechin, a close Putin ally, had offered Trump and his associates a 19% stake in Rosneft if they lifted the economic sanctions applied to Russia in response to their 2014 annexation of Crimea.

While the sanctions have yet to be lifted, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson who worked with Sechin to sign a multi-billion dollar offshore drilling deal in 2013 was recently confirmed as Secretary of State. Despite barely squeaking through on a historically close vote of 56–43, the former recipient of the ‘Order of Friendship’ from Russian President Vladimir Putin will now take control of the U.S. Department of State. The beginning of his tenure marked by an abnormal amount of resignations in the department, it remains to be seen whether Tillerson will attempt to lift the sanctions on Russia and verify another claim contained in the Steele dossier.

Additionally, while most of the media and political establishment has (rightfully so) been treating the dossier as unreliable and therefore not reporting on it, this is slightly misleading. While no U.S. intelligence agencies (as far as the public knows), nor news agencies were able to confirm the numerous memos written by Steele over several months, with the exception of specific minor details they have also not been entirely debunked. Instead, the exact opposite has happened and a crucial detail has been verified. The improbability of predicting the largest privatization in Russian history since the fall of the Soviet Union ought to at least lend a modicum of credence to Steele’s work, after all he sure isn’t kidding around about it.

In addition to Steele having gone ‘underground’, four Russian FSB agents were recently arrested for treason — one of whom was ran a covert hacking group and was reportedly taken out of a meeting with a bag over his head, a tactic reminiscent of the old KGB style. While any connections between these arrests/disappearances (we’ll see if they ever stand trial) and the dossier or efforts to influence U.S. elections are entirely speculative, they are worth noting in the larger context of backchannels that seem to have been glowing with activity since the campaign. As for the accuracy of the Steele dossier, I’d still be the first to argue that it is entirely unreliable information — but I’m having a harder time convincing myself of that with every new development.