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Christopher Steele

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For the 18th-century portraitist, see Christopher Steele (artist). For other people, see Christopher Steel (disambiguation).

Christopher Steele
Born (1964-06-24) 24 June 1964 (age 60)
Aden, South Arabia (now Yemen)
CitizenshipUnited Kingdom
EducationWellington College
Alma materGirton College, Cambridge (BA)
Occupation(s)Secret Intelligence Service (1987–2009)
Private intelligence consultant
Known forSteele dossier
Spouses
Laura Hunt
​
​
(m. 1990; died 2009)​
Katherine Steele
​
(m. 2012)​
Children4

Christopher David Steele (born 24 June 1964) is a British former intelligence officer with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1987 until his retirement in 2009. He ran the Russia desk at MI6 headquarters in London between 2006 and 2009. In 2009, he co-founded Orbis Business Intelligence, a London-based private intelligence firm.

Steele became the centre of controversy after he authored a 35-page series of memos for a controversial political opposition research report later known as the Steele dossier. It was prepared for Fusion GPS, a firm hired by an attorney associated with the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign. The dossier claims, based on anonymous sources, that Russia collected a file of compromising information on Donald Trump and that his presidential campaign conspired to cooperate with the Russians in their interference in the 2016 presidential elections.[1][2][3]

Trump and his allies have falsely claimed[4][5][6] the U.S. intelligence community probe into that Russian interference was launched due to Steele's dossier.[7] Contrary to these false claims, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee, among many other sources, concluded in an April 2018 report that the probe had been triggered by previous information from Trump adviser George Papadopoulos, and the February 2018 Nunes memo, written by staff members for that GOP committee, reached the same conclusion.[8][9]

Early life

[edit]

Christopher David Steele was born in the Yemeni city of Aden (then part of the British-controlled Federation of South Arabia), on 24 June 1964.[10][11] His parents, Perris and Janet, met while working at the Met Office, the United Kingdom's national weather service. His paternal grandfather was a coal miner from Pontypridd in Wales.[12] Steele spent time growing up in Aden, the Shetland Islands, and Cyprus, as well as at Wellington College, Berkshire.[12]

Steele matriculated at Girton College, Cambridge in 1982. While at the University of Cambridge, he wrote for the student newspaper, Varsity.[10][12][13] In the Easter term of 1986, Steele was President of the Cambridge Union debating society.[14][15] He graduated with a degree in Social and Political Sciences in 1986.[10][16]

Career

[edit]

Steele was recruited by MI6 directly following his graduation from Cambridge[11] and worked for MI6 for 22 years.[17] He worked in London at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) from 1987 to 1989.[11] From 1990 to 1993, Steele worked under diplomatic cover as an MI6 officer in Moscow, serving at the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Moscow.[10][15][18] Steele was an "internal traveller",[19] visiting newly-accessible cities such as Samara and Kazan.[12][20][21]

He returned to London in 1993, working again at the FCO until his posting with the British Embassy in Bangkok in 1998 and then shortly after to Paris in the same year, where he served under diplomatic cover until 2002. The identity of Steele as an MI6 officer and those of a hundred and sixteen other British spies were revealed in an anonymously published list.[10][18][22][23][24]

Steele spent time teaching new MI6 recruits.[18] Steele returned to London and between 2006 and 2009 he headed the Russia Desk at MI6.[10][12][15][25]

He served as a senior officer under John Scarlett, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), from 2004 to 2009.[25] Steele was a counterintelligence specialist[17] and was selected as case officer for Alexander Litvinenko and participated in the investigation of the Litvinenko poisoning in 2006.[18] It was Steele who quickly realised that Litvinenko's death "was a Russian state 'hit'".[25] Twelve years later, Russian double agent Boris Karpichkov alleged that Steele himself was included in a hit list of the Russian Federal Security Service, along with Sergei Skripal who was poisoned in 2018 by a binary chemical weapon Novichok in Britain.[26]

Since 2009, Steele has avoided travel to Russia. In 2012, an Orbis informant quoted an FSB-agent describing him as an "enemy of Mother Russia".[10] Steele has refrained from travelling to the United States since his authorship of the Steele dossier became public, citing the political and legal situation.[27]

In 2012, Orbis was sub-contracted by a law firm representing Oleg Deripaska,[28] who was also a "person of interest" to the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russia's election interference.[29] Between 2014 and 2016, together with Bruce Ohr, Steele cooperated with the FBI's and Justice Department's unsuccessful efforts to flip Deripaska into an informant.[30]

Private sector

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In March 2009, Steele and fellow MI6-retiree Chris Burrows co-founded the private intelligence agency Orbis Business Intelligence, Ltd., based in Grosvenor Square Gardens.[31][15] Between 2014 and 2016, Steele created over 100 reports on Russian and Ukrainian issues, which were read within the United States Department of State, and he was viewed as credible by the United States intelligence community.[12] The business was commercially successful, grossing approximately $20,000,000 in the first nine years of operation.[10]

Steele ran an investigation dubbed "Project Charlemagne", which noted Russian interference in the domestic politics of France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.[10] In April 2016, Steele concluded that Russia was engaged in an information warfare campaign with the goal of destroying the European Union.[10]

In November 2018, Steele sued the German industrial group Bilfinger, alleging that the company owed €150,000 for an investigation into Bilfinger's activities in Nigeria and Sakhalin.[32]

According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), in 2023, Texas-based Steward Health Care ran a "smear campaign" against Fraser Perring, a critic of Steward and the founder of Viceroy Research, a short-selling firm. Steward hired Audere International, a London-based private intelligence firm, to help them. Audere paid Steele 29,000 British pounds to advise British Member of Parliament Liam Byrne on how to ask a question in parliament "about Perring and Russian short-selling attacks": "Audere provided the text of a proposed question on Viceroy to Steele, who later confirmed he had sent the question to Byrne with minor changes." The OCCRP wrote:

A private intelligence firm working for a disgraced U.S. healthcare operator fed what appears to be false information to a British politician, leading him to claim in parliament that a well-known businessman was a Russian agent, leaked communications show.[33]

FIFA research

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In 2010, The Football Association (FA), England's domestic football governing body, organised a committee in the hope of hosting the 2018 or 2022 World Cups.[34] The FA hired Orbis Business Intelligence to investigate FIFA (International Federation of Association Football). In advance of the FBI launching its 2015 FIFA corruption case, members of the FBI's Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force met with Steele in London to discuss allegations of possible corruption in FIFA.[31][35] Steele's research indicated that Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin had rigged the bidding of the 2018 World Cups by employing bribery.[10]

Attempts by China to influence UK elite

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Steele also contributed to a privately commissioned report that alleged China attempted to influence key figures in British politics and business. The report was submitted to selected British MPs and some media.[36]

Steele dossier

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Main article: Steele dossier

Background and information gathering

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In September 2015, The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, retained the services of Fusion GPS, a private Washington D.C. political research firm, to conduct research on several primary Republican Party candidates, including Trump. The research was not primarily related to Russia and was ended once Trump was determined to be the presidential nominee.

The firm was subsequently hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee through their shared attorney at Perkins Coie, Marc Elias. Fusion GPS then hired Steele,[37] to investigate Trump's Russia-related activities,[31] and this investigation produced what became known as the Steele dossier.[38] Steele's dossier relied, among others, on long-term Clinton-associated sources.[39]

In July 2016, Steele supplied a report he had written to an FBI agent in Rome.[40] His contact at the FBI was the same senior agent with whom he had worked when investigating the FIFA scandal.[18][10] Two individuals "affiliated" with Russian Intelligence were also aware of Steele's election investigation at this time.[41]

In September 2016, Steele held a series of off the record meetings with journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo! News, The New Yorker and CNN.[12] In October 2016, Steele spoke about his discoveries to David Corn of the progressive American political magazine Mother Jones. Steele said he decided to pass his dossier to both British and American intelligence officials after concluding that the material should not just be in the hands of political opponents of Trump, but was a matter of national security for both countries.[42] Corn's resulting 31 October article in Mother Jones was the first to publicly mention information which became part of the dossier, although the article did not disclose Steele's identity.[42] The magazine did not publish the dossier itself, however, or detail its allegations, since they could not be verified.[43]

Whistleblower

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Steele's reaction to the revelations from his sources has been described as that of a whistleblower. Steele has said that he soon found "troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government". According to his sources, "there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit".[44] According to Harding, "Steele was shocked by the extent of collusion his sources were reporting", and told his friends: "For anyone who reads it, this is a life-changing experience."[45] Steele felt what he had unearthed "was something of huge significance, way above party politics".[46] American reporter Howard Blum described Steele's rationale for becoming a whistleblower: "The greater good trumps all other concerns."[46]

On his own initiative, Steele decided to also pass the information to British and American intelligence services because he believed the findings were a matter of national security for both countries.[47][48] According to Simpson's testimony, Steele, who enjoyed a good working reputation "for the knowledge he had developed over nearly 20 years working on Russia-related issues for British intelligence,[49] approached the FBI because he was concerned that Trump, then a candidate, was being blackmailed by Russia,[50] and he became "very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat".[47]

In relation to a defamation lawsuit filed by Aleksej Gubarev against BuzzFeed, regarding their publication of the dossier, Senior Master Barbara Fontaine said Steele was "in many respects in the same position as a whistle-blower" because of his actions "in sending part of the dossier to Senator John McCain and a senior government national security official, and in briefing sections of the US media".[51]

Ending of cooperation with FBI

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Steele first became a confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI in 2013 in connection with the investigation in the FIFA corruption case, but he considered the relationship as contractual. He said the relationship "was never really resolved and both sides turned a blind eye to it. It was not really ideal."[52] Later, the Inspector General report on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation discusses "divergent expectations about Steele's conduct in connection with his election reporting", as Steele considered his first duty to his paying clients, and not to the FBI. The Inspector General's report states that "Steele contends that he was never a CHS for the FBI but rather that his consulting firm had a contractual relationship with the FBI." (Footnote 200) Steele said "he never recalled being told that he was a CHS and that he never would have accepted such an arrangement, ..." This divergence in expectations was a factor that "ultimately resulted in the FBI formally closing Steele as a CHS in November 2016 (although ... the FBI continued its relationship with Steele through Ohr)".[53]

On 28 October 2016, days before the election, Comey notified Congress that the FBI had started looking into newly discovered Hillary Clinton emails. Simpson and Fritsch described their reaction: "Comey's bombshell prompted the Fusion partners to decide they needed to do what they could to expose the FBI's probe of Trump and Russia. It was Hail Mary time."[54] The founders of Fusion GPS were very upset by a misleading 1 November 2016, New York Times article "published a week before the election with the headline: 'Investigating Donald Trump, FBI Sees No Clear Link to Russia'. In fact, Russia was meddling in the election to help Trump win, the U.S. intelligence community would later conclude, though Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence that Trump’s campaign team conspired with the country."[55]

During questioning from Special Counsel John Durham, Brian Auten, a supervisory counterintelligence analyst with the FBI, testified that, shortly before the 2016 election, the FBI offered Steele "up to $1 million" if he could corroborate allegations in the dossier, but that Steele could not do so.[56] Steele has disputed this description: "And to correct the Danchenko trial record, we were not offered $1 million by the FBI to ‘prove up’ our Trump-Russia reporting. Rather, we were told there were substantial funds to resettle sources in the US if they were prepared to testify in public. Understandably they were not."[57]

In November 2016, after Steele discussed his findings with the press, the FBI formally closed Steele as a confidential human source.[53][58][59] Simpson later said that "Steele severed his contacts with [the] FBI before the election following public statements by the FBI that it had found no connection between the Trump campaign and Russia and concerns that [the FBI] was being 'manipulated for political ends by the Trump people'."[60][53] Steele had become frustrated with the FBI, whom he believed failed to investigate his reports, choosing instead to focus on the investigation into Clinton's emails.[48] According to The Independent, Steele came to believe there was a "cabal" inside the FBI, particularly its New York field office linked to Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani, because it blocked any attempts to investigate the many suspicious[61][62] links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies.[48]

Post-election work on the dossier

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Steele continued to work for Fusion GPS on the dossier without a client to pay him.[63] After the election, Steele's dossier "became one of Washington's worst-kept secrets, and journalists worked to verify the allegations".[63] On 18 November 2016, Sir Andrew Wood, British ambassador to Moscow from 1995 to 2000, met with U.S. Senator John McCain at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada, and told McCain about the existence of the dossier about Trump.[64] Wood vouched for Steele's professionalism and integrity.[65] In early December, McCain obtained a copy of the dossier from David J. Kramer, a former U.S. State Department official working at Arizona State University.[63] On 9 December 2016, McCain met with FBI Director James Comey to pass on the information.[64]

In a second memo Steele wrote in November 2016, after the termination of his contract with Fusion GPS, he reported that Russian officials had claimed that Russia had blocked Donald Trump from nominating Mitt Romney to be his Secretary of State, due to Romney's hawkishness on Russia.[10][66]

Revealed identity

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On 11 January 2017, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Steele was the author of the dossier about Trump, citing "people familiar with the matter".[2] Although the dossier's existence had been "common knowledge" among journalists for months at that point and had become public knowledge during the previous week, Steele's name had not been revealed. The Telegraph asserted that Steele's anonymity had been "fatally compromised" after CNN published his nationality.[37]

The Independent reported that Steele left his home in England several hours before his name was published as the author of the dossier, as he was fearful of retaliation by Russian authorities.[37] In contrast, The Washington Post reported that he left after he had been identified earlier in the day by the initial The Wall Street Journal report.[67]

Christopher Burrows, director of Orbis Business Intelligence, Ltd., said he would not "confirm or deny" that Orbis had produced the dossier.[68]

On 7 March 2017, as some members of the United States Congress were expressing interest in meeting with or hearing testimony from Steele, he reemerged after weeks in hiding, appearing publicly on camera and stating, "I'm really pleased to be back here working again at the Orbis's offices in London today".[69]

Disclosure and reactions

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In early January 2017, a two-page summary of the dossier was presented to President Barack Obama and incoming President Donald Trump in meetings with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.[70][71]

On 10 January 2017, BuzzFeed News was the first media outlet to publish the full 35-page dossier. In publishing the Trump dossier, BuzzFeed said it had been unable to verify or corroborate the allegations.[72] The UK issued a DSMA notice on 10 January 2017, requesting that the media not reveal Steele's identity,[73] although the BBC and other UK news media released the information in news stories the same day.[20] Trump said the dossier's allegations were "fake news" during a press conference.[74] Vladimir Putin also dismissed the claims.[75]

Ynet, an Israeli online news site, reported that US intelligence advised Israeli intelligence officers to be cautious about sharing information with the incoming Trump administration, until the possibility of Russian influence over Trump, suggested by Steele's report, has been fully investigated.[76]

Former British ambassador to Russia, Sir Tony Brenton, read Steele's report. Speaking on Sky News he said, "I've seen quite a lot of intelligence on Russia, and there are some things in it which look pretty shaky". Brenton expressed some doubts due to discrepancies in how the dossier described aspects of the hacking activities, as well as Steele's ability to penetrate the Kremlin and Russian security agencies, given that he is an outsider.[77]

On 15 March 2017, former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell raised questions about the dossier. He was concerned about the accuracy of the information, due to the approach taken by Steele to gather it. Steele gave money to intermediaries and the intermediaries paid the sources. Morell said, "Unless you know the sources, and unless you know how a particular source acquired a particular piece of information, you can't judge the information—you just can't." Morell, described as a "Clinton ally" by NBC News, strongly believes that Russia attempted to influence the election via social media, but that there is "smoke but no fire" on Trump's collusion with Russia.[78] In a 2020 Washington Post editorial, Morell summarized his view that Russia launched a "human intelligence operation" against the Trump campaign, and that several officials in the Trump campaign may have passed on information due to "naivete".[79]

No role in the origins of the FBI's Russia investigation or Crossfire Hurricane investigation

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See also: Steele dossier § Subject of investigations and conspiracy theories

Although the dossier later became one factor among many in the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation, a continuation of their existing Russia investigation, it had no role in the start of either investigation. This fact has been the subject of intense discussion and controversy, largely fuelled by false claims made by Trump and his supporters.[80][81]

In early February 2018, the Nunes memo, written by aides of Republican U.S. Representative Devin Nunes (who was at the time the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee), said the information on George Papadopoulos "triggered the opening of" the original FBI investigation in late July 2016 into links between the Trump campaign and Russia.[82] In late February 2018, a rebuttal memo by Democrats in the House Intelligence Committee stated that "Christopher Steele's reporting ... played no role in launching the counterintelligence investigation ... In fact, Steele's reporting did not reach the counterintelligence team investigating Russia at FBI headquarters until mid-September 2016, more than seven weeks after the FBI opened its investigation, because the probe's existence was so closely held within the FBI."[83][84]

In April 2018, the House Intelligence Committee, then under Republican control, released a final report on Russian interference in the 2016 election; the report said the House Intelligence Committee had found that "in late July 2016, the FBI opened an enterprise CI [counterintelligence] investigation into the Trump campaign following the receipt of derogatory information about foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos".[8][9][85]

Role in subsequent investigations

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In the summer of 2017, two Republican staffers for the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence travelled to London to investigate the dossier, visiting the office of Steele's lawyer but not meeting with Steele.[86] In August 2018, Representative Devin Nunes, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, travelled to London in an attempt to meet with the heads of MI5, MI6, and GCHQ for information about Steele, but was rebuffed by the three agencies.[87][88]

Steele reportedly revealed the identities of the sources used in the dossier to the FBI.[89] Investigators from Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation team met with Steele in September 2017 to interview him about the dossier's claims.[90][91] The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was in contact with lawyers representing Steele.[92]

Over the course of two days in June 2019, Steele was interviewed in London by investigators from the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General regarding the Steele dossier. They found his testimony surprising[93] and his "information sufficiently credible to have to extend the investigation".[94]

[edit]

In February 2017, lawyers for Russian internet entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev filed a libel suit against Steele in London. Gubarev claimed he was defamed by allegations in the dossier.[95]

In August 2017, lawyers for Gubarev demanded Steele give a deposition regarding the dossier, as part of a libel lawsuit against BuzzFeed News[96][97] filed in February.[98] Steele objected to testifying but his objections were rejected by U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Mancusi Ungaro, who allowed the deposition to proceed.[99][100][98]

In April 2018, Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and German Khan—the owners of Russian commercial bank Alfa Bank—filed a libel suit in Washington D.C. against Steele, who mentioned the bank in the Steele dossier.[101] The lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Anthony C. Epstein on 20 August 2018.[102][103]

Alfa Bank partners Petr Aven, Mikhail Fridman, and German Khan brought a lawsuit for defamation in Britain against Orbis Business Intelligence, Steele's private intelligence firm. In July 2020, Justice Warby from the Queen's Bench Division of the British High Court of Justice ordered Steele to pay damages to Aven and Fridman who Steele claimed had delivered "large amounts of illicit cash" to Vladimir Putin when Putin was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. Judge Warby said the claim was "demonstrably false" and awarded the damages to compensate "for the loss of autonomy, distress and reputational damage caused by the breaches of duty". The judge stated that Steele's dossier also inaccurately claimed that Aven and Fridman provided foreign policy advice to Putin.[104][105][106]

Senate Republicans' referral for a criminal investigation

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Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Wikisource has original text related to this article:

On 5 January 2018, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, joined by senior Republican member Lindsey Graham, issued a criminal referral regarding Steele to the Justice Department for it to investigate whether Steele had lied to the FBI about his interactions with the media.[107][108][109][110] Because the referral is based on classified FBI documents, the context in which the Republican senators allege Steele to have lied is limited to references that he discussed the dossier with media outlets.[110] Both Grassley and Graham declared that they were not alleging Steele "had committed any crime. Rather, they had passed on the information for 'further investigation only'".[111]

The referral was met with scepticism from legal experts, as well as members of both parties on the Judiciary Committee.[109] Fusion GPS lawyer Joshua A. Levy said the referral was just another effort to discredit the investigation into Russian interference in the election and that, "after a year of investigations into Donald Trump's ties to Russia, the only person Republicans seek to accuse of wrongdoing is one who reported on these matters to law enforcement in the first place."[109] Veteran prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg called the referral "nonsense" because "the FBI doesn't need any prompting from politicians to prosecute people who have lied to them."[109] Another former federal prosecutor, Justin Dillon, said it was "too early to assume the letter was simply a political attack". The senior Democrat on the Committee, Dianne Feinstein, said the referral was made without consultation of any Democrats on the committee and released a five-page rebuttal.[112] A Republican aide said Grassley and Graham were "carrying water for the White House"; that their actions did not reflect the views of the committee as a whole; and that other members were upset with Grassley over the matter.[109]

In an opinion-editorial for Politico, former CIA official John Sipher said the attacks on Steele, a private citizen who provided information to the FBI that alarmed him, will make future tipsters less likely to approach American law enforcement with information bearing on national security.[113]

U.S. Inspector General findings

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On 9 December 2019, U.S. Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified to the House Judiciary Committee that, despite having made 17 mistakes in their applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), the FBI showed no political bias during the investigation of Trump and the Russian government.[114][115][116][117] A redacted version of his report was released the same day.[53]

Steele was a paid confidential human source for the FBI before preparing the Steele dossier, and the FBI found "Steele's information to be valuable and that it warranted compensation", with Steele receiving $95,000 from the FBI between 2014 and 2016 for information on previous matters unrelated to Trump.[118] From information in the report, ABC News determined that Steele and Ivanka Trump had had a business and personal relationship from 2007 for a number of years.[119][120]

One of the report's findings related to conflicting accounts of sourced content in the dossier. When one of Steele's sources was later interviewed by the FBI about the allegations sourced to them, they gave accounts which conflicted with Steele's renderings in the dossier. They indicated that Steele "misstated or exaggerated" the source's statements.[53][117]

The IG found it difficult to discern the causes for the discrepancies between some dossier allegations and explanations later provided to the FBI by the sources of those allegations. The IG attributed the discrepancies to three possible factors: miscommunication between Steele and the sources, "exaggerations or misrepresentations" by Steele, or misrepresentations by the sources when questioned by the FBI.[53]

Another factor was described by the Supervisory Intel Analyst, who believed someone described as "one of the key sources" for the dossier "may have been attempting to minimise his/her role in the election reporting following its release to the public." That person had been the source for "the alleged meeting between Carter Page and Igor Divyekin" and the "allegations concerning Michael Cohen and events in Prague".[53]

ABC News documentary

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Following the dossier's release, Steele completely avoided on-camera interviews until he participated in an ABC News documentary that was aired on Hulu on October 18, 2021. In that documentary, Steele maintained that his sources were credible and that it was typical in intelligence investigations to "never get to the point where you're 99% certain of the evidence to secure a conviction". Steele also acknowledged that one of his sources had faced repercussions; he confirmed that the source was still alive, but he would not provide further details.[121]

Included in Vanity Fair's 2018 "New Establishment" list

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In 2018, Steele was included as number 38 in Vanity Fair's 100-person "New Establishment" list.[122][123] He had grown a beard and been in hiding, but sent a thank you note explaining why he could not attend given his "present legal and political situation".[123][122] When he broke his silence, he used it to criticize Trump[124] during these "strange and troubling times".[125]

Personal life

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Steele was first married to Laura Hunt in July 1990.[126] They had three children; Hunt died in 2009 after a long illness. He remarried in 2012. He and his second wife Katherine had one child and are raising all four children together.[10] He lives in Farnham, Surrey.[10]

Book

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In his 2024 book Unredacted: Russia, Trump, and the Fight for Democracy:[127]

Steele predicts a 'new world disorder' if Trump wins back the presidency in November, and portrays him as more dangerous than U.S. adversaries such as China and Iran. He calls the Republican Party and the former president who dominates it 'the gravest threat to Western democracy and the rule of law … increasingly the willing handmaidens for Putin.'"[128]

References

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  1. ^ "Trump dossier: Christopher Steele, ex-MI6 officer, named as author". The Guardian. Press Association; Agence France-Presse. 12 January 2017. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
  2. ^ a b Bradley, Hope; Rothfeld, Michael; Cullison, Alan (11 January 2017). "Christopher Steele, Ex-British Intelligence Officer, Said to Have Prepared Dossier on Trump". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
  3. ^ Entous, Adam; Barrett, Devlin; Helderman, Rosalind S.; Tate, Julie (24 October 2017). "Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier". The Washington Post. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  4. ^ Robertson, Lori (27 March 2019). "Dossier Not What 'Started All of This'". FactCheck.org. Retrieved 2 April 2019.
  5. ^ Kiely, Eugene (27 February 2018). "Trump's Spin on Democratic Memo". factcheck.org. Retrieved 2 April 2019.
  6. ^ Savage, Charlie (1 December 2021). "Why the Discredited Dossier Does Not Undercut the Russia Investigation". The New York Times. Washington. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 1 December 2021.
  7. ^ Dilanian, Ken (23 July 2018). "Why Trump is wrong about Carter Page, the dossier and the FISA warrant". NBC News. Retrieved 14 December 2018.
  8. ^ a b Yen, Hope; Woodward, Calvin; Tucker, Eric (1 April 2019). "AP Fact Check: Trump's exaggerations about the Russia probe". Associated Press. Retrieved 2 April 2019.
  9. ^ a b Qiu, Linda (21 May 2018). "Trump Falsely Claims Russia Investigation Started Because of Steele Dossier". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 April 2019.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Mayer, Jane (5 March 2018). "Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Trump Dossier". The New Yorker. Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  11. ^ a b c The Diplomatic Service List. H.M. Stationery Office. 1996. p. 235. Steele, Christopher David; Second later First Secretary FCO since April 1993; born 24.6.64; FCO 1987; Second Secretary (Chancery) Moscow 1990; FCO 1987; m 1990 Laura Katharine Hunt.
  12. ^ a b c d e f g Harding, Luke (15 November 2017). "How Trump walked into Putin's web". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 16 November 2017.
  13. ^ Dawson, Hannah (13 January 2017). "Everything we know about Christopher Steele, the Cambridge MI6 spy". The Tab. Archived from the original on 13 January 2017.
  14. ^ Parkinson, Stephen (2009). Arena of Ambition: A History of the Cambridge Union. Icon. p. 368. ISBN 978-1848310612.
  15. ^ a b c d Blum, Howard (April 2017). "How Ex-Spy Christopher Steele Compiled His Explosive Trump-Russia Dossier". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on 3 April 2017. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
  16. ^ The Cambridge University List of Members
  17. ^ a b Harding, Luke; Sabbagh, Dan (1 November 2019). "Trump-Russia dossier author gave evidence to UK intrusion inquiry". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 November 2019.
  18. ^ a b c d e Rayner, Gordon (13 January 2017). "Who is Christopher Steele, the former British spy who created the Donald Trump Russia dossier?". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 16 January 2017.
  19. ^ Podcast: Sweeney Talks: Christopher Steele: The ex-spy who took on Trump. 31/10/2022
  20. ^ a b Cox, Joseph (13 January 2017). "UK Asks Journalists to Not Name Ex-Agent Allegedly Behind Trump Report". Vice News. Archived from the original on 13 January 2017.
  21. ^ "List of MI6 Officers". Cryptome. Archived from the original on 6 January 2017. Christopher David Steele: 90 Moscow; dob 1964.
  22. ^ Behar, Richard (11 January 2017). "Could This Be The British Ex-MI6 Agent Behind The Trump FBI Memos?". Forbes. Retrieved 12 January 2017. A diplomatic service list published by the British government shows that Steele, 52, was posted to the U.K.'s Moscow embassy in 1990 with the title of "Second Secretary (Chancery)."
  23. ^ "Ex-MI6 officer Christopher Steele in hiding after Trump dossier". BBC News. 12 January 2017.
  24. ^ Diplomatic Service Administration Office (1999). The Diplomatic Service List. p. 297. Steele, Christopher David; First Secretary (Financial) Paris since September 1998; born 24.6.64; FCO 1987; Second Secretary (Chancery) Moscow 1990; Second later First Secretary FCO 1993; First Secretary Bangkok 1998; m 1990 Laura Katharine Hunt (2s 1996, 1998).
  25. ^ a b c Hopkins, Nick; Harding, Luke (12 January 2017). "Donald Trump dossier: intelligence sources vouch for author's credibility". The Guardian. Over a career that spanned more than 20 years, Steele performed a series of roles, but always appeared to be drawn back to Russia; he was, sources say, head of MI6's Russia desk.
  26. ^ "Russian ex-spy says he was on Kremlin 'hit list' along with poisoned Skripal". NBC News. 30 March 2018.
  27. ^ Haynes, Deborah (10 October 2018). "Ex-MI6 spy's veiled swipe at Donald Trump revealed". Sky News. Archived from the original on 11 October 2018. The former intelligence officer indicated he is unable to travel to the US at a time of deep divisions between Republicans and Democrats over the Russia probe.
  28. ^ Mayer, Jane (25 November 2019). "The Inside Story of Christopher Steele's Trump Dossier". The New Yorker. Retrieved 27 November 2019.
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  31. ^ a b c Hosenball, Mark (12 January 2017). "Former MI-6 spy known to U.S. agencies is author of reports on Trump in Russia". Reuters. Archived from the original on 12 January 2017. After he left the spy service, Steele supplied the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with information on corruption at FIFA, international soccer's governing body.
  32. ^ Harding, Luke (8 November 2018). "Trump dossier author suing engineering firm for alleged unpaid work". The Guardian.
  33. ^ Khadija Sharife, "Claims About Short-Seller Made in UK Parliament Trace Back to Private Intelligence Firm Hired by Steward Health Care", OCCRP, 23 September 2024 https://www.occrp.org/en/scoop/claims-about-short-seller-made-in-uk-parliament-can-be-traced-back-to-private-intelligence-firm-hired-by-steward-health-care
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  39. ^ Marshall Cohen (18 November 2021). "The Steele dossier: A reckoning". CNN. Retrieved 22 November 2021. information in the dossier originated from Charles Dolan, 71, a public relations executive with expertise in Russian affairs who had a decades-long political relationship with the Clinton family
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  46. ^ a b Blum, Howard (30 March 2017). "How Ex-Spy Christopher Steele Compiled His Explosive Trump-Russia Dossier". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 24 December 2017.
  47. ^ a b Levine, Mike (12 January 2018). "FBI vets: What many are missing about the infamous 'dossier' amid Russia probe". ABC News. Retrieved 26 February 2018. Chris said he was very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat and said ... he thought we were obligated to tell someone in government, in our government about this information," Glenn Simpson, the man who hired Steele to conduct opposition research on Trump, told Senate staffers in a transcript released Tuesday. "He said he was professionally obligated to do it.
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  50. ^ Herb, Jeremy; Raju, Manu; Cohen, Marshall (10 January 2018). "Fusion co-founder: Dossier author feared Trump was being blackmailed". CNN. Retrieved 21 January 2018. Chris said he was very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat and said he wanted to—he said he thought we were obligated to tell someone in government, in our government about this information," Simpson said. "He thought from his perspective there was an issue—a security issue about whether a presidential candidate was being blackmailed."
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  54. ^ Simpson & Fritsch 2019, p. 117.
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  61. ^ Harding, Luke (15 November 2017). "How Trump walked into Putin's web". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 May 2019. ...the Russians were talking to people associated with Trump. The precise nature of these exchanges has not been made public, but according to sources in the US and the UK, they formed a suspicious pattern.
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  66. ^ Barry, Rob; Holliday, Shelby (8 March 2018). "Russian Trolls Tried to Torpedo Mitt Romney's Shot at Secretary of State". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 8 March 2018. According to the report, Mr. Steele created another, previously unreleased memo in late November 2016, which said the Kremlin "intervened to block" Mr. Trump's choice of Mr. Romney for secretary of state. The memo is attributed to a single source described as "a senior Russian official."
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    1. "We annotated the full Nunes memo on the Russia probe". PBS. 2 February 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2019. The memo underscores the intensifying partisan debate over special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia. ... The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok.
    2. Emmons, Alex; Aaronson, Trevor (2 February 2018). "Nunes memo accidentally confirms the legitimacy of the FBI's investigation". The Intercept. Retrieved 27 March 2019. Despite rhetoric that could help to undermine Mueller's investigation, the Nunes memo specifically says that George Papadopoulos sparked the counterintelligence investigation that ultimately led to the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, the firing of FBI Director James Comey, and the appointment of Mueller as special counsel.
    3. French, David (2 February 2018). "The Big Flaw in the Memo". National Review. Retrieved 27 March 2019. Well, if the newly released Nunes memo is correct, House Republicans and the Trump administration just confirmed the Times' scoop ... Ironically enough, the memo in fact confirms the necessity of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
    4. Yuhas, Alex. "What is the Devin Nunes memo about and how does it affect Trump?". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 March 2019. The four-page document released on Friday is at the heart of a firestorm over Donald Trump, Russia and special counsel Robert Mueller. What's in it? ... the memo acknowledges that Papadopoulos, not Page, "triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016".
    5. Easley, Jonathan. "Memo: Papadopoulos info triggered FBI's Russia investigation". The Hill. Retrieved 27 March 2019. according to the memo released Friday by House Intelligence Committee Republicans ... Russia investigation itself—and by extension, special counsel Robert Mueller's probe—was launched from ... 'information' about Papadapoulos, rather than the dossier.
    6. Levitz, Eric (2 February 2018). "6 Quick Takeaways From the Nunes Memo". New York. Retrieved 27 March 2019. But the memo doesn't just fail to discredit the investigation into the Trump campaign—it actually confirms its validity. The core of the GOP's argument against the Mueller probe has been that it was based on unsubstantiated allegations gathered by a Clinton operative. The memo suggests this might be true of the Carter Page warrant—but not of the broader investigation.
    7. Tucker, Eric; Jalonick, Mary; Day, Chad (4 February 2018). "Trump claims memo 'totally vindicates' him in Russia probe". Associated Press. Retrieved 27 March 2019. Even as Democrats described it as inaccurate, some Republicans quickly cited the memo—released over the objections of the FBI and Justice Department—in their arguments that Mueller's investigation is politically tainted. A closer read presents a far more nuanced picture ... the memo confirms the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign began in July 2016, months before the surveillance warrant was sought, and was "triggered" by information concerning campaign aide George Papadopoulos.
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  101. ^ Polantz, Katelyn (20 April 2018). "3 Russian oligarchs sue Christopher Steele". CNN. Retrieved 22 April 2018.
  102. ^ Harding, Luke (21 August 2018). "Author of Trump-Russia dossier wins libel case in US court". The Guardian. On Monday, a judge in the District of Columbia, Anthony C Epstein, upheld a motion by Steele to have the oligarchs' case thrown out.
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Further reading

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