Free Republic

BuzzFeed News is no more, but its former editor, Ben Smith, spearheading the new Semafor media venture, decided to reflect on the moment he gave the green light to post the infamous Steele Dossier. The document was unverifiable and has now been dismissed as anything but legitimate. This tranche of papers is what set off the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into Donald Trump, the investigation that formed the core of the Russian collusion hoax that later evolved into the Mueller investigation. The media circus destroyed the last vestiges of credibility with many reporters in the legacy media. No bombshell development ever...

Veteran journalist Bob Woodward revealed in a new interview that Washington Post reporters essentially ignored his warnings about the shortcomings of the infamous Christopher Steele dossier, amidst the feverish Russiagate media coverage that dominated the Trump administration. In a lengthy report for Columbia Journalism Review, Jeff Gerth interviewed media and political figures wrapped up in Russiagate — the sweeping term for the allegations of Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election — including Donald Trump himself, finding in particular where the media went wrong. Woodward, one of the reporters famous for breaking the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post, told Gerth...

Michael Steele, tell us what you really think. Steele, Chair of the Republican National Committee from 2009 to 2011 has made no secret of his disdain for Donald Trump and anybody who supports him, has become increasingly strident in his condemnations of Republicans. Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele warned his party against legitimizing some Trump-aligned figures as political leaders, calling them “fleas” and “blood-sucking ticks” whom potential House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., would have to “lay down with.”

A jury acquitted Igor Danchenko, an analyst hired to compile parts of the Steele dossier that alleged ties between Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, of charges of lying to the FBI on Tuesday. Why it matters: It is a major blow to special counsel John Durham's multi-year investigation into the origins of the Russia probe and possible misconduct by U.S. law enforcement. Danchenko was the third person charged, and subsequently indicted, in the investigation. This trial is expected to be the last stemming from Durham’s investigation before it is concluded. The jury began deliberating on whether to convict...

The FBI offered Christopher Steele $1 million if he could prove allegations recorded in his now-infamous dossier, a senior FBI analyst said in court on Tuesday.FBI analyst Brian Auten testified in the trial of Igor Danchenko, the primary source of allegations in Steele’s dossier, that the bureau placed a $1 million price tag on confirmation of the dossier’s outlandish allegations. Steele was unable to provide any evidence.Auten said he and a group of FBI agents met with Steele in October of 2021 and offered the former British spy $1 million for evidence supporting the dossier, according to Fox News. The...

At the heart of the second trial to come out of Special Counsel John Durham's investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe is a story of disinformation. Marc Elias, general counsel for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, testified both during a House Intelligence Committee investigation in 2017 and recently during Durham's ongoing probe that he was the one who hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump. Fusion GPS went on to commission former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to create the infamous "Steele dossier," which purported to show collusion between Trump's...

The FBI offered ex-British intelligence agent Christopher Steele $1 million to corroborate salacious allegations made in his dossier against Donald Trump and members of his 2016 campaign, but he was unable to do so, an FBI official testified Tuesday.

"[O]ne of the biggest revelations in the motion is that Danchenko himself was a confidential paid human informant!" Special Counsel John Durham's request to unseal a motion in limine pertaining to the trial of Igor Danchenko, who has been identifed as the "primary source" behind ex-British spy Christopher Steele's dossier, has been granted. A motion in limine is a "pretrial motion asking that certain evidence be found inadmissible, and that it not be referred to or offered at trial," according to Cornell's Legal Information Institute. The Special Counsel's motion to include the evidence against Danchenko reveals that the FBI was...

Now, a grand jury is alleging that Dolan, 71, was behind at least some of the claims included in the dossier, according to a 39-page indictment obtained by John Durham, the special counsel probing the Justice Department’s Russia investigation. The indictment also suggests that Dolan, who worked on both Bill and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns and on a State Department advisory board during the Clinton administration, was so partisan that any information he provided would be suspect. Dolan is left unidentified in the charges against Igor Danchenko, a Russia analyst who, the indictment claims, provided the core allegations included in...

In the final hours of the Trump presidency, the U.S. Justice Department raised privacy concerns to thwart the release of hundreds of pages of documents that Donald Trump had declassified to expose FBI abuses during the Russia collusion probe, and the agency then defied a subsequent order to release the materials after redactions were made, according to interviews and documents. The previously untold story of how highly anticipated declassified material never became public is contained in a memo obtained by Just the News from the National Archives that was written by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows just hours...

Special counsel John Durham requested a federal court to issue 30 subpoenas for testimony in the trial against Igor Danchenko, British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s alleged main source for his discredited dossier. Danchenko was charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI, which Durham says he made about the information he provided to Steele for the dossier. His trial is scheduled for October. The DOJ’s watchdog said FBI interviews with Danchenko “raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting” and concluded Danchenko “contradicted the allegations of a ‘well-developed conspiracy’ in” Steele’s dossier. He has pleaded...

Special Counsel John Durham’s prosecution of Igor Danchenko, the Russian national who served as Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source, will soon heat up—maybe as early as next week, if prosecutors are wise and return to the grand jury to obtain the documents the Hillary Clinton campaign wrongfully withheld based on attorney-client privilege. Those documents will likely reveal Fusion GPS peddled Danchenko’s lies directly to reporters. The jury’s acquittal of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann after less than a day of deliberations represented a setback to Durham’s three-year investigation of the Russia collusion hoax. Americans nonetheless learned much from the prosecution,...

Jon Rahm’s errant shot in the first round of the PGA Championship reportedly hit and injured ESPN anchor Sage Steele Thursday. Steele was "covered in blood" after Rahm was heard yelling fore, an eyewitness told The Quadrilateral. The witness told the SubStack Steele was "on the ground, holding her nose, mouth or chin area." Steele has not posted anything on social media about the injury. ESPN was covering the first two rounds of the PGA Championship and will defer main afternoon and evening coverage to CBS on Saturday and Sunday for rounds three and four. Rahm’s errant shot found its...

SportsCenter anchor Sage Steele is suing ESPN for what she claims was illegal retaliation against her for comments she made on Jay Cutler's podcast last year, according to Joe Flint of the Wall Street Journal The comments in question came last September. Among other things, Steele called ESPN's vaccine mandate "sick," said female reporters dressed a certain way share the blame when athletes make inappropriate comments about them and questioned former President Barack Obama identifying himself as Black "considering his Black dad was nowhere to be found but his white mom and grandma raised him." The social media backlash was...

My late Friday night involved hitting refresh on PACER every so often, incurring the $0.10 charge for each search result as I waited on Special Counsel John Durham’s latest filing in the Michael Sussmann case. (Exciting, I know.) The motion exceeded expectations, discussing CIA conclusions that Sussmann was providing implausible data to federal authorities, providing CIA notes regarding their meeting with Sussmann, and confirmation that they essentially spied on President-Elect Trump. The motion can be found here. It was filed as part of the government’s efforts to convince the court that the evidence it seeks to admit in Sussmann’s trial...

The Federal Election Commission has reportedly fined Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee over complaints that they violated federal law in improperly describing expenditures to law firm Perkins Coie, who then hired research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump. The Coolidge Reagan Foundation published a letter said to be from the FEC, in response to the foundation's complaint against Hillary for America and the DNC. The Washington Examiner first reported on the memo. TRUMP SUES HILLARY CLINTON, DNC, OFFICIALS INVOLVED IN RUSSIA PROBE "After conducting an investigation in this matter, the Commission...

The lead investigator for the House Intelligence Committee’s 2018 probe into the FBI’s investigation of alleged Trump–Russia collusion, Kash Patel, said the fact that the Hillary Clinton campaign is paying a penalty to Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an admittance of guilt. Clinton and DNC are doing so to bury the narrative and prevent more media coverage of these illegal activities, said Patel. “I think the public sees what that is. It’s their way of burying the narrative, because if they contested what happens, more media coverage, more people start looking into these things,” Patel said. “So the Hillary Clinton...

Former Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was fined last week by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) for paying for the fraudulent “Russia dossier” — but NBC’s Chuck Todd failed to ask her about it on Sunday morning. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democrat National Committee were fined on Tuesday $113,000 by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for hiding their spending on the fraudulent Russia “dossier.”

This week the Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign for president a combined $113,000 for concealing their payment of more than a million dollars for the fabrication of derogatory allegations against Donald Trump in the "Steele Dossier." A spokesman for the DNC denied guilt, but said "we agreed to pay the fine in order to expedite the closing of the investigation. All things considered, the amount we had to pay was well worth it. The Steele Dossier's allegations enabled the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a two-year harassment of...

The Federal Election Commission has fined Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign $8,000 and the Democratic National Committee $105,000 for obscuring their funding of the "Steele dossier," a 2016 opposition research report that sought to highlight alleged links between Donald Trump and Russia. The bipartisan election commission also dismissed a complaint against Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier that caused a firestorm of allegations and investigations that shook the early months of Trump's presidency. The campaign mislabeled Steele's work as "legal services" and "legal and compliance consulting" in campaign filings, the FEC concluded...... Steele's report concluded, based on anonymous sources, that...