Back when “President Donald Trump” was merely a twinkle in the eye of residents of the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane,[1] a conservative organization/web-site hired Fusion GPS to dig up some dirt on Trump, help run him off the road in a hurry so that normal people could chase the Republican nomination.[2]  Well, that didn’t work.  When the Republicans packed it in, the Clinton campaign, through a lawyer “cut out,” took over.  Only at this point did GPS Fusion hire Christopher Steele to investigate Trump’s Russia connections.[3]

Steele is an accomplished former British intelligence officer.[4]  He once headed the Russian department of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6).  He contacted a couple of Russian sources: a “former top-level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin” and a “senior Russian Foreign Ministry official.”[5]  They provided him with a bunch of dirt on Donald Trump for the Clinton campaign to use.  Here’s the thing to my ignorant eye.  Vladimir Putin doesn’t like people to do stuff without checking with him first.  No way to run an organization according to American best business practice literature.  Still, Putin seems to like this approach.[6]

In Steele’s words, Moscow “cultivated” Donald Trump “for at least five years” before the election of 2016.  Both Donald Trump and some of his aides[7] “showed full knowledge [of] and support [for]” the Russian leak through Wikipedia of the e-mails stolen from the Democrats.  For its part, Trump and his aides would “sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue” and ease up on sanctions against Russia.  Furthermore, Steele reported that the Russians have a it-would-embarrass-anyone-but-Donald-Trump video tape of Trump instructing Russian prostitutes to urinate on the bed of a Russian luxury hotel once used by the Obamas.

On 20 June 2016, Steele sent the first of his reports to Fusion GPS.  However, Steele was in a wee bit of a lather.  He also shared his reports with the EffaBeeEye and with journalists.  At the end of October 2016, Mother Jones ran an article reporting the existence of the “Steele dossier.”  This didn’t blunt Hillary Clinton’s drive for defeat.  Later, John McCain sent a copy of the dossier to the EffaBeeEye.[8]  Then BuzzFeed published the whole thing.

Common opinion holds that the Russians sought to harm Clinton’s chances of becoming president.  Often, journalists portray this hostility to Clinton as springing from a desire to favor Trump.  However, Putin had reason to hate Clinton, but he couldn’t just kill her.  He hates the United States, but can’t just nuke us.  So, vicious pragmatist that he is, he has settled for the next best thing.  He also trued to sink Trump as well.  “Like a rotten mackerel by moonlight, it shines and stinks.”—John Randolph.

[1] Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs (1988).

[2] Sounds like a good idea to me.  So long as Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or Sideshow Bob doesn’t become president.

[3] Why target only the Russian connections of a businessman with multi-national operations?  Did GPS Fusion have prior knowledge of Russo-Trumpian skullduggery that allowed them to target this particular issue?  Or did they pursue multiple lines of inquiry and the Russian one is the first to hit pay dirt?

[4] “The Steele dossier,” The Week, 2 February 2018, p. 11.

[5] Wait, there are a couple of Russian officials who have been “sources” for a senior intelligence officer of an enemy state and they’re still walking around? Not buying 20-30 Big Macs to tide them over on the train-ride to Siberia?

[6] For example, see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/23/here-are-ten-critics-of-vladimir-putin-who-died-violently-or-in-suspicious-ways/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ec13e0aab80b

[7] Steele names Paul Manafort, Carter Page, and Michael Cohen.

[8] Which would seem to have obtained a copy from Steele himself earlier on and was sitting on it.