PissGate / Golden Showers Controversy

Overview

#Pissgate refers to an ongoing political scandal surrounding allegations made by a former British intelligence officer that the Russian government has been grooming Donald Trump to be the United States president for years, while simultaneously gathering compromising information about him, including a claim that Trump hired a group of prostitutes to urinate on the bed in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where President Obama and the First Lady had stayed during their official trip to Russia in 2013.

Background

On January 10th, 2017, CNN reported that both President Barack Obama and President-Elect Donald Trump received a classified debriefing of allegations from a credible source that the Russian government has been covertly gathering compromisable personal and financial information about Trump, all the while regularly exchanging information with his campaign team through indirect channels. About an hour after CNN broke the story, BuzzFeed News published the full-length version of the document, a 25-page long dossier compiled by a former British MI6 agent with ties to the U.S. spy agencies and prepared as opposition research for a bipartisan group of anti-Trump Republicans and Democrats.

‘Golden Showers’ Claim

The allegations in the document includes a particularly scandalous claim that during one of Donald Trump’s visit to Russia in recent years, he hired a group of prostitutes to urinate on the bed, otherwise known as a ‘golden showers’ show, in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where President Obama and the First Lady had stayed during their official trip to Russia in 2013. According to news reports, while the credibility of the source has been vetted by the U.S. authorities, the allegations remain unverified and under investigation.

Notable Developments

Online Reaction

Upon its publication, the BuzzFeed News report garnered over 1.3 million views within first three hours. On Twitter, readers reacted to the article with satirical commentaries using the hashtag #PissGate, #goldenshowers^[19] and #PEEOTUS^[20] while the /r/PissGate subreddit was launched on Reddit.

On 4chan and Reddit, fake photographs of highlighted documents with parody accusations against Trump began circulating on /pol/ and /r/The_Donald (shown below).

Official Investigation

According to CNN’s sources inside the U.S. government, while the U.S. intelligence officials have vetted the credibility of British MI6 agent’s works in the past, the FBI has launched an investigation to assess the credibility and accuracy of the allegations, due to its heavy reliance on claims made by Russian sources.

Donald Trump’s Responses

That day, Trump tweeted the statement “Fake news – a total political witch hunt!” in all capital letters. Within 24 hours, the tweet gained over 72,000 likes, 50,000 replies and 25,000 retweets.^[14]

The following day, Trump posted several additional tweets responding to the accusations (shown below).

Michael Cohen’s Response

Also on January 10th, Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen responded to specific claims made in the document that he met secretely with Kremlin officials in Prague in August 2016, tweeting “I have never been to Prague in my life” (shown below).

In reply, other Twitter users mocked the tweet by posting photographs of other objects, along with denials of going to Prague and various locations (shown below). That day, the blog TrumpOrMrBurns^[18] published a post highlighting various examples of the tweet replies.

BuzzFeed Ben Smith’s Company Letter

That day, BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith issued an email to BuzzFeed News staff explaining the reason for releasing the unverified documents, noting that “there is serious reason to doubt the allegations” but that “publishing the dossier reflects how we see the job of reporters in 2017” (shown below).^[21]

4chan Hoax Rumor

Meanwhile on 4chan, an elaborate alternative theory behind the origin of the dossier began circulating on the imageboard, which claimed that the ‘golden showers’ passage in the report was a hoax fabricated by Anonymous pranksters since as early as late October 2016 that was sent to Republican strategist and #NeverTrump critic Rick Wilson, who then proceeded to pass it on to the CIA, resulting its inclusion in the agency’s official classified intelligence report on Russia’s U.S. election interference. The theory was accompanied by a jumble of remarks made by Rick Wilson on Twitter and threads on 4chan.

Wilson subsequently denied the rumor in on Twitter, saying that the reports did not come from /pol/ and that he was not BuzzFeed’s source (shown below).

That same evening, Twitter user @trsprudence^[16] posted several tweets claiming to have sent Rick Wilson a “piss fan fiction” based off a story about KGB black mail he discovered on Reddit.^[15] The following day, @trsprudence^[17] announced he was “speaking to a lawyer today about publishing”.

Press Conference

On January 11th, 2016, Donald Trump held a press conference in which he discussed the Pissgate allegations, referring to them as “false” and “fake news.” During the conference, he referred to BuzzFeed as a “steaming pile of garbage” (shown below, left) and refused to take questions from a CNN reporter, calling the cable news network “fake news” (shown below, right).

Search Interest

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External References