“In his testimony, Comey again pushed the fiction that Republicans opposed to Trump first paid for the dossier. Congressional Republicans are right that Comey is trying to muddy the waters—the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded Steele’s work. None of it would have been possible had the media not linked arms with spies, cops, and lawyers to relay a story first spun by Clinton operatives. But credit Comey for underscoring, and maybe not accidentally, a larger truth—the operation that sought to defraud the American voter had bipartisan support all along. Court documents released in December show that Steele gave his final report to Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s chief of staff, Jonathan Burks.”
“Around the same time Fusion GPS was hired, longtime Clinton foot-soldier Cody Shearer was also probing for ties between Trump and Russia. He, too, was speaking to media figures, like former CIA official Robert Baer. Shearer wrote two reports (“Donald Trump—Background Notes—The Compromised Candidate,” and “FSB Interview”), which are likely sources for the dossier report on which Comey briefed Trump.
Both Shearer memos detail Trump’s alleged sexual proclivities. One claims there is film of a woman urinating on him. The other Shearer report alleges that there is video of Trump caught in a sexual tryst in the presidential suite of the Moscow Ritz-Carlton in 2013. According to Shearer’s FSB source, this is how the Russians compromised Trump.
These are nearly identical to the core findings that Steele seems to have shared with the State Department and FBI in June and early July. The chronology of the BuzzFeed document indicates no other memos existed at that point. It’s not known whether Steele shared reporting with U.S. authorities that was not included in the BuzzFeed version.”