Talk:Steele dossier/Archive 27

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Unsourced and incorrect text in the article

There is a subsection in this section that has major issues.
First it's titled False claim it was "a significant portion" of FISA application which is unsourced and OR text.
Second, the first line of the section contradicts the heading, reading information from the dossier had been used as part of the basis for getting the October 2016 FISA warrant to monitor Page.
There's also a link to the IG Report that says the Dossier played a central and essential part in the FISA process.
There's then this line The role of evidence from the dossier in seeking FISA warrants soon became the subject of much debate. How much of the evidence was based on the dossier? Was it a "significant portion" or only a "smart part" of the FISA application? which is unsourced and likely an editor editorializing.
There's then the Nunes Memo piece that makes the claim that the dossier play a significant part.
Then comes this line The following sources and the historical timeline show the Republicans' claims are false which again reads like someone editorializing. It's completely unsourced and OR itself.
Then there's McCabe comment which in part contains his quote Was the dossier material important to the [FISA] package? Of course, it was. As was every fact included in that package.
Then we get Ken Dilanian's opinion (who his wiki article notes routinely submits his stories to the CIA for approval) that the dossier played a small part. That's the only text from a RS that is cited that makes any sense, and is undue by itself. The IG Report is the authoritative source here so we should assign more weight to the description of central and essential. There's no source that says the claim was false.

The section is a mess and should probably just be deleted. Do we really need 9 paragraphs devoted to this? Mr Ernie (talk) 19:54, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

WP:PRESERVE. Oppose deletion or any major change based on this. You don't assign more weight to WP:PRIMARY, the opposite. Andre🚐 20:55, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Support deletion based on this. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 21:05, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Let's start an RFC, then. I'm sure @Valjean, @Objective3000, @Slatersteven and @Soibangla would also agree with me that an excessive trim is not desirable. Pinging @PackMecEng and @David Fuchs for balance. Andre🚐 21:12, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Blatant canvassing is inappropriate. We don’t preserve unsourced text or original research. I do think an RFC would be the most useful way to bring fresh eyes to this article, but let’s see how this goes as a first step. Mr Ernie (talk) 21:48, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Before removing any good faith content, you should check to see if any of the existing sources support the material or tag it with citation needed tags and give others a chance to cite the content. Per WP:CANVASS my public, balanced ping of participants in the similar discussions is acceptable. Andre🚐 23:29, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

• Kill it, we don't cite preserve to keep unsourced WP:OR. Also don't canvass people, it's not a good look. Regardless if you think it was balanced, you just don't do it. PackMecEng (talk) 23:59, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

  I really don't see any OR in the article. I see some inadequate summarizing, perhaps, or a need for more specific sourcing. That's why I pinged a bunch of users who had worked on the article - and you, for balance, per the above-linked guideline on what is acceptable notification and publicization of the discussion. Andre🚐 00:05, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  If it is inadequate summarizing, perhaps, or a need for more specific sourcing then what is there is original research since it is not in the source. I don't get this for balance thing you mention either. So you ping 4 people and then 2 others "for balance"? PackMecEng (talk) 00:09, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  The guideline on canvassing, nor that on consensus, does not prescribe exact numbers. I pinged a cross-section of people. Regardless, you've done me one better by opening a proper RFC so that will certainly do a better job of publicizing the discussion and getting some fresh eyes on the article as Mr. Ernie said. Andre🚐 00:12, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

• Sigh. As usual, Mr Ernie's reading comprehension is miserable, leading to his false claims.. It's all very carefully sourced, including the parts in quotes. The basis for this complaint suffers from severe CIR issues. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:05, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Please provide the sources to the two claims cited as OR above. Mr Ernie (talk) 02:11, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Mr Ernie:

  "First it's titled False claim it was "a significant portion" of FISA application which is unsourced and OR text."

  Article:

  "In February 2018, the Nunes memo alleged FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's testimony backed Republican claims that the "dossier formed 'a significant portion' of the Carter Page FISA application". McCabe pushed back and said his testimony had been "selectively quoted" and "mischaracterized". He also "denied having ever told Congress that the [FISA] warrant would not have been sought without information from the dossier"."

  Why do we always have to do your homework for you? It's all sourced, and you dare to even claim that text in quote marks is unsourced. Sheesh! Please stop wasting our time here. Every single time you come here, that's what you do. It's tendentious and disruptive. You are clueless about the subject because your sources are terrible and you don't read RS, so you don't understand the issues that are known by those who read RS. Please stop displaying your ignorance.

  The dossier was not a significant portion (amount) of the application. It was a minuscule, likely 1% part, but that was a significant part (played a "central role"). The significance was in the fact that it confirmed what the FBI had learned from their own sources. That's what gave the FBI confidence in the dossier, and the dossier reconfirmed their confidence in their own sources. Some of the dossier was confirmed to be accurate, according to what their own sources had independently discovered. Nunes and the GOP have been lying about this fact for years, and since RS discuss it, it belongs here. When lies and conspiracy theories about the dossier flourish, and RS debunk them, then that is perfectly legitimate content. It is very due. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:38, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  You’ve confirmed that the sourcing doesn’t match the wording. Please avoid personal comments and attacks and stick to the content. Mr Ernie (talk) 14:30, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

• PackMecEng, you wrote: "Kill it, we don't cite preserve to keep unsourced WP:OR." Stop and think about what you did there. You blindly accepted something/anything said by Mr Ernie, of all people. You should know by now that he can't be trusted. What he said is false. It's all carefully sourced. He is just clueless. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:45, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Copying from the advisory notice posted at the top - Only content verified by subject experts and other reliable sources may be included, and uncited material may be removed without notice. Since no reliable cited source says the claim is “false,” it must be removed. Mr Ernie (talk) 14:38, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  That is the Edit Request advisory for non-auto-confirmed edit requests on this partially locked page. It's to reduce the number of trivial requests and rejections. The basic talk page notice for this article is Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. SPECIFICO talk 14:53, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Clearly no consensus for this removal. Please stop. Andre🚐 18:31, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  @Andrevan Since you've reinstated the content, the onus is now on you to provide a source for the "false" claim. Please do so or I will again remove the text. Please provide a source that says the claim that the dossier was significant to Page's FISA warrant is "false." Mr Ernie (talk) 13:07, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

  Mr Ernie, your reading comprehension again prevents you from making sense. "Significance" is not in question. It is the "amount" that is in question. Nunes falsely claimed "the "dossier formed 'a significant portion' of the Carter Page FISA application". He implied it was the "majority" of the application. It was not, as explained by McCabe (below) That cannot be the case as the FBI was already at "the line", and "the Steele reporting 'pushed [the FISA proposal] over the line' in terms of establishing probable cause." The FBI could have filed the FISA application without the dossier, but when it came along, it was just enough (thus "significant") to make them decide to do it right away. FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe mentioned the dossier's role in the start of the investigation and the FISA warrant:

  'We started the investigations without the dossier. We were proceeding with the investigations before we ever received that information,' McCabe told CNN. 'Was the dossier material important to the [FISA] package? Of course, it was. As was every fact included in that package. Was it the majority of what was in the package? Absolutely not.'[420]

  Stop muddying the waters with your ignorance and false claims. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:41, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

  Where is the source that says the claim is false? It's in a section you've titled "false claims about dossier" and subtitled "False claim it was "a significant portion" of FISA application." You've linked a source with McCabe's testimony, but you've also got sources saying the IG report said it was "central and essential" and a CNN source saying "information from the dossier had been used as part of the basis for getting the October 2016 FISA warrant to monitor Page." An editor analyzing these 3 sources and then writing something is "false" in wikivoice is original research and must be removed until you can cite a source that makes the claim. Mr Ernie (talk) 17:20, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

  You're mixing different things together. Reread my last comment. The significance is not in question. McCabe had to strongly dispute the Nunes/GOP false claim. They tried to put the blame on the dossier for the Carter Page FISA warrant when it's part was very small. There is no RS mention that the dossier added any allegation to the application. The FBI already had enough without it. RS do say that when the CH team got the first 6 reports, they discovered it was nothing new to them. The reports showed that Steele's sources had discovered, long before the FBI did, central facts about the Russian interference and Trump campaign's knowledge and cooperation with it. The FBI learned these things from their own sources, so the dossier reinforced their confidence in their own findings, apparently enough to push them "over the line" to make the decision to file the FISA application. It is in that sense it was so significant. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:35, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

  We don't seem to be communicating, but I'll try one last time. Where is the source that uses the word "false?" Otherwise you'd have to attribute the section title to McCabe and say it was his opinion after the memo came out since you don't have the testimony the Nunes memo used and he didn't go on record before then. But even then you couldn't use the word "false" because McCabe's refuting something Nunes doesn't allege. "Was the dossier material important to the package? Of course, it was." But what you wrote was "The following sources and the historical timeline show the Republicans' claims are false." What "claims" are you talking about? Nunes said McCabe testified that no warrant would have been sought without the dossier. McCabe's later statements seem to support that, he just disputes it wasn't the majority of the information in the package.

  In short, what "claims" are "false," and where is the source that says that? Mr Ernie (talk) 18:09, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

  This is just a logical error. Where are the RS that use the words "Nunes" and "true" in the same sentence? SPECIFICO talk 18:15, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

  Irrelevant since that's not in the article. There's not a source that says the IG report is "true" either. Mr Ernie (talk) 18:43, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Mr Ernie, you ask what claims I am referring to. It's the partisan Nunes/GOP claim that the dossier was "a significant portion" of the FISA application. We do not have to have a source that uses the word false when there is such a stark difference between the claim and its refutation by several people who understand the issue. They pushed back and explained how it was only a small part. The difference is one of a fact and a false claim about that fact. It's a difference between truth and partisan lies.

Oddly, while you misrepresent what McCabe said, you still state the fact, that "he just disputes it wasn't the majority of the information in the package." That's partly true (it wasn't the majority) and supports the point of the section under discussion.

More seriously, you blithely glide over the fact that Nunes was not speaking the truth when he, in your words "said McCabe testified that no warrant would have been sought without the dossier. McCabe's later statements seem to support that,.." No, his later statements do NOT support that: "McCabe pushed back and said his testimony had been "selectively quoted" and "mischaracterized" by Nunes. McCabe did NOT say "no warrant would have been sought without the dossier". Congressman Quigly backs him.[1] McCabe is not the only one who has said that they could have applied for the FISA warrant without the dossier, but then it came along and caused them to move from their state of indecision. It pushed them "over the line" to file for the FISA warrant. It was the 1% more (on top of the FBI's 99%) needed to go ahead and do it. Nunes and the GOP would have us believe the dossier was a majority of the evidence when it wasn't. It was the drop that made the glass overflow. The glass was already full with evidence from the FBI's own sources.

McCabe: "Was it the majority of what was in the package? Absolutely not." Yet... FBI Would’ve Been Derelict Not to Use Steele Dossier for the Carter Page FISA Warrant -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:15, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

We do not have to have a source that uses the word false is simply incorrect. I've removed the section until this can be appropriately sourced. Mr Ernie (talk) 13:07, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

References

Federal Election Commission Fine against Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee

Is there any reason this cannot be included? DarrellWinkler (talk) 21:54, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

No, it’s perfectly appropriate content to include. Mr Ernie (talk) 21:57, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Why did SPECIFICO remove it? DarrellWinkler (talk) 21:58, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

They failed to say why. Mr Ernie (talk) 22:05, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

No, I said that I was rolling back the article text to the most recent before the edit-warring commenced. Please be careful not to misrepresent the actions or stated views of other editors. SPECIFICO talk 23:08, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Darrell, you said you had read the whole article, but you apparently forgot about this. We already cover that topic. In fact, I doubt you can find a topic mentioning the dossier that we don't cover, but I welcome anything you can find. Here's what we have:

"In March 2022, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the DNC $105,000 and the Clinton campaign $8,000 for misreporting those fees and expenses as "legal services" and "legal and compliance consulting" rather than "opposition research".

That seems to cover the topic. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:31, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

References

Carter Page in the Lead

I think its important to qualify that the wiretap on Carter Page was illegal, unlawful or ... some other adjective.

“The legislation begins to address the problems that we saw with the FBI’s illegal surveillance of Trump campaign associate Carter Page,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who worked with Democrats on the measures approved as part of a much larger reform package passed Wednesday by the House.

Granted, Jordan's description of it being "illegal" is coming from a partisan source but the term we in the LE community use when something is done contrary to the law or some other statutory administrative rule is "illegal" so this would seem to be a perfectly acceptable description of the FISA wiretap on Page. DarrellWinkler (talk) 16:30, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Then we would attribute it, not state it as a fact. And not in the lede, which is a summary of our article. Nor does this seem to be about the Steele dossier (which is what this article is about). But rather the FISA warrant. Slatersteven (talk) 16:48, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Darrell, we cover Carter Page only as he relates to the dossier. There are other articles that also deal with him and where some information belongs. Not everything about him belongs here. BTW, you are citing a RS (WaPo) and quoting a very devious partisan person, Jim Jordan, so be careful. We do document unreliable crap at Wikipedia when it's described in RS, but we do it in a manner that makes it clear it's crap. What Jordan says is crap. Whether Page should have been surveilled or not is debated, but there were many justifiable and legal reasons for doing so. The way it happened was unfortunate. He had been surveilled already in 2013 (or 2014?) and was continuing his suspicious anti-american actions and was caught lying about them. There were many good reasons to suspect he was working with Russian agents again. Honest people don't act the way he did. Under oath, he was forced to constantly revise what he had said, and ended up confirming some of the allegations in the dossier. He had indeed spoken to Russian officials and officials at Rosneft. The dossier was basically right. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:23, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Darrell, the WaPo source says this: "The inspector general did not call the surveillance illegal, but the Justice Department acknowledged that the government lacked probable cause in at least two of the Page FISA applications." -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:50, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Carter Page Section

Why is this section so long? The OIG report is prety definitive in its conclusion that "the Crossfire Hurricane team's receipt of Steele's election reporting on September 19, 2016 played a central and essential role in the FBI's and Department 's decision to seek the FISA order.”

Aside from that and the very rare public statement from the FISA court on the FBI antics in this, what more needs to be said? DarrellWinkler (talk) 20:57, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Not much in my opinion. the OIG report is the conclusive authority on this topic, and the rest is mainly political and opinion news pieces that don't hold up. Central and essential is a very clear and concise way to describe the role of the dossier in the Page filing, so we should just do that. Mr Ernie (talk) 21:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

The categorical implication you appear to assert with that excerpt from the OIG report is discredited. SPECIFICO talk 21:37, 23 August 2023 (UTC) Clarification added13:59, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Do you have a source for that? DarrellWinkler (talk) 21:38, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

User:SPECIFICO, I suspect you misspoke. It is the Durham report that is discredited, not the OIG report. It's even better than the Mueller Report.

The OIG is an authoritative primary source, but not the only source we are supposed to use. The dossier says many things about Carter Page and many RS comment on them. The OIG is not the only source of relevance.

Here's what's in that sub-section, but that is in relation to the main section. We discuss Carter Page many places, according to the topic.

Page originally denied meeting any Russian officials, but his later testimony, acknowledging that he had met with senior Russian officials at Rosneft, has been interpreted as corroboration of portions of the dossier. On February 11, 2021, Page lost a defamation suit he had filed against Yahoo! News and HuffPost for their articles describing his activities mentioned in the Steele dossier. The judge said that Page admitted the articles about his potential contacts with Russian officials were essentially true.

Maybe you're thinking of something else about Page? Ask if we cover it, because we probably do. Maybe you're just focusing on the dossier's "central and essential role" in the FISA application. We cover that elsewhere, as that isn't primarily about Carter Page, but about the dossier and FISA. Try to explain your concern with different words. I'm not sure what you're really driving at. We use the words "central role" several times. Search and read. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:42, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

That whole article is just so much retrospective BS

"the Clinton campaign never learned that Christopher Steele was on their payroll until it [the dossier] was in the press."

Is this the same Steele that discovered evidence of Saddam Husseins WMDs /s

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-who-is-christopher-steele-man-behind-the-trump-dossier-perverted-sexual-acts-mi6-agent-moscow-ritz-carlton-hotel-room-prostitutes-sex-parties-blackmail-plot-cia-fsb-secret-intelligence-russia-a7524191.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.107.173.103 (talk) 16:56, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we go by follow-up research, and not at the time scoop hunting. Slatersteven (talk) 16:59, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

RFC on lead

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Should the first sentence of the lead refer to the document as controversial or discredited? PackMecEng (talk) 23:48, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

---

• Discredited - That is the most common way that reliable sources refer to the document.
  • CNN - The largely discredited dossier was a collection of unverified and salacious allegations compiled by retired British spy Christopher Steele, whose dirt-digging was indirectly funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.
  • PBS - well as the reliance by the FBI on a dossier of uncorroborated or discredited information compiled by an British ex-spy, Christopher Steele.
  • Politico - The dossier contains now-discredited rumors and salacious claims about Trump’s cooperation with the Russian government and was provided to the FBI
  • Columbia Journalism Rreview - where he recounted the most salacious allegation in the now discredited dossier
  • NPR - the creation of a discredited dossier about former President Donald Trump.
  • Wall Stree Journal - The material in the dossier has since been largely discredited.
  • The Intercept - at the heart of the now discredited Steele dossier
  • Newsweek - the Steele Dossier, a now-largely discredited document

It's time to bring this article up to date with modern viewpoints and with how it is treated in the body. I would also support largely discredited. PackMecEng (talk) 23:48, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

• Pinging those from the original discussion above: User:DarrellWinkler, User:Mr Ernie, User:Andrevan, User:Objective3000, User:Soibangla, User:Valjean, User:Slatersteven, and User:Randy Kryn. PackMecEng (talk) 23:48, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
• Discredited per the cited top tier contemporary sourcing. Recent sourcing is much more informed and comprehensive than most of the contemporaneous political news and opinion articles currently used for sourcing much of the article. I would also support “largely discredited.” Mr Ernie (talk) 23:54, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
• My natural inclination, of course, is to go with what the sources say, and they say discredited, so we go with that. But as I've said before, discredited is a journalistic weaselword meaning "lots of people have trashed it for a long time, but we really just don't know, so we're going to lean negative on it in an ambiguous way." Journalists don't have the same resources as intel agencies have to determine the dossier's veracity. Discredit means "harm the good reputation of," not refute its veracity, but I suspect many readers will interpret it to mean the latter, as disproven. Sure, its reputation has been tarnished, if for no other reason than a relentless messaging effort was conducted to do just that. The peetape allegation was particularly scandalous and had to be snuffed out, and the best way to do that was to insist the entire dossier was 100% fiction. Maybe we should keep controversial in the first sentence, since that is indisputable; but since the second sentence shows things that were corroborated, follow the second sentence with "Other aspects of the dossier were discredited." soibangla (talk) 01:03, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
• Both, with a preference to controversial. It's true that it was widely described as discredited, but also parts have been confirmed, and parts remain neither discredited nor confirmed. False dichotomy. Andre🚐 01:13, 19 August 2023 (UTC) I've decided on balance that I want to resolve the false dichotomy with neither as opposed to both, but I certainly do not think discredited should be in the lead. I find myself persuaded by points made by Muboshgu. Andre🚐 02:00, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
• Both. Agree with Andrevan, and with Soibangla's points about the narrower meaning of "discredited".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:32, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Both Neither - We have a problem in how we document this. There are a large number of nonsense sites, like Fox, that say this is all lies with some sort of Hilary Clinton conspiracy. We also know that large parts of this conspiratorial nonsense is nonsense and that significant parts of the dossier are true. As an encyclopedia, we should not take sides. We go with RS. How can we claim "discredited" when many of the claims have can demonstrated as true by RS? Convinced to change my !vote O3000, Ret. (talk) 01:58, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Can you point out what text is cited to Fox? We should remove that immediately. Mr Ernie (talk) 02:12, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Objective3000, your vote says that the first sentence should say "controversial and discredited political opposition research report" but in your last sentence you ask How can we claim "discredited" when many of the claims have can demonstrated as true by RS? That seems contradictory to me. Space4Time3Continuum2x ^(cowabunga) 14:37, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

• Controversial, as that is a fact. Possibly "discredited", but only as a slur by Trump without evidence (undermined byu a judge), an opinion contrary to facts, if "discredited" is understood to mean the allegations are disproven. That would be a false claim as many of them are true. The word "discredited" is already documented as a claim. As a dubious slur, it doesn't have much weight, even though many RS have carelessly repeated Trump's claim, which a judge undermined. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:56, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  On January 4, 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled on Trump's repeated tweets describing the dossier as "fake" or "discredited":

None of the tweets inescapably lead to the inference that the President's statements about the Dossier are rooted in information he received from the law enforcement and intelligence communities. ... The President's statements may very well be based on media reports or his own personal knowledge, or could simply be viewed as political statements intended to counter media accounts about the Russia investigation, rather than assertions of pure fact.[2]

Trump's lawyer's reaction is rather ironic, because ALL RS and history have shown that Trump's statements are usually false, like a "carnival barker"!!

"We are disappointed in the Court’s ruling and are evaluating the possibility of an appeal. Of far more concerning significance is the legal implication of this ruling, in so much as it reduces official statements by the President of the United States into little more than random musings by a proverbial carnival barker who just happens to also serve as the Chief Executive," Moss said. "It is difficult to envision a scenario in which it is in the national interest of this country for the President’s statements to be so cavalierly disregarded in this manner.”

Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:08, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

See this is a big part of the issue with this article, it relies on outdated information from opinion sources instead of actual strong reliable sources. It is not helpful that you are siting an old blog post to support your fringe claims. PackMecEng (talk) 14:29, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Citing U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta is perfectly appropriate. No later evidence has undermined her evaluation of that slur. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:37, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

• I doubt that there would be disagreement that it is controversial, so that would be OK. It also seems to be at least partially discredited and partially disproven, so should be OK to say those too. Whether it is largely discredited seems more controversial. Are there reliable sources addressing what proportion has been "discredited" and since "discredited" is largely a matter of published opinion, by whom it has been discredited?. So: Controversial, partly disproven, and discredited by some to an unknown extent. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 04:53, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Hey Peter, nice to see you in this part of the woods. I'm curious about "partially disproven". What part is that? Is it anything significant, or are you referring to the typos? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:56, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Hi Valjean I was summoned by bot. My comments basically refer to the use of language to convey accurate information as opposed to weaselling. I am not well informed or up to date on the details of the topic, so I may have misinterpreted whether there is any disproven information (some of the claims have been described as inaccurate). If so, then it it is partially disproven. If not, or if it is trivially unimportant, that part of my suggestions should be disregarded. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:19, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  The only part I am aware of that is "disproven" is that Cohen was in Prague, per Mueller Report, but even that was from Cohen's testimony and apparently Mueller didn't run it down. Cohen's passport didn't have a Czechia stamp, but he was earlier in Italy and could've entered another Schengen Area country, like Czechia, without presenting his passport. It's like interstate travel. Intel intercepts picked up Russians talking about Cohen being "near" Prague. Has anything else been disproven? soibangla (talk) 05:36, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Most of the issue is the dossier itself is a series of vague accusations with no really substance or proof behind most of the claims. It's basically just a fringe conspiracy theory at this point. Also I will note, the language under discussion here is discredited, not disproven. For example the NY Times has this to say about it No corroborating evidence has emerged in intervening years to support many of the specific claims in the dossier, and government investigators determined that one key allegation — that Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, had met with Russian officials in Prague during the campaign — was false.[3] PackMecEng (talk) 14:27, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, I understand the operative word we're discussing is discredited. But presumably people would have something other than a cacophony of partisans persistently bellowing that it's all fake to conclude it's discredited. They would have evidence that something in the dossier is provably false. Page 139 of the Mueller Report says "Cohen had never traveled to Prague and was not concerned about those allegations, which he believed were provably false." But the source for that? His own testimony, cited in footnote #955. That's it.[4] The dossier is raw intel, and IC folks say they're lucky if they can verify 50% of raw intel, but failure to verify does not mean it's disproven or a fringe conspiracy theory. soibangla (talk) 15:51, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Like the pee tape allegation, the Cohen/Prague one is unproven, not disproven. Both Trump and Cohen lied about them, and those actions are described by RS as consciousness of guilt. In both cases there are unrefuted pieces of evidence from RS they are true or likely true. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:33, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  That is mostly because you are asking for something that RS agree didn't happy to be disproven. Not how that works, that is what conspiracy theorist do. We go by main stream RS here, not personal opinion, original research, or random blogs that support our own POV. PackMecEng (talk) 20:13, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  I'm going by RS content in this article. The allegation remains unproven, but Cohen's lies about it makes one wonder. Why lie if it didn't happen? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:49, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Let's just stipulate that Cohen in Prague is false. Is there anything else in the dossier that has been disproven and so would warrant discarding the whole thing as a fringe conspiracy theory, as opposed to unverified raw intel? Anything at all? Must it be 100% true or else it's 100% false? soibangla (talk) 20:50, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Soibangla, call me a stickler for detail and evidence, but my conscience won't allow me to claim either "true/proven" or "false/disproven". I of course do stand behind the content I have added documenting that several RS have stated it is false or not true. That does not make it so, especially since those statements are made without evidence. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." (Sagan) The allegation remains unproven, neither definitely false nor true.

  Soibangla's other points remain: "Is there anything else in the dossier that has been disproven...?" -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:05, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

• Discredited per sources. Not both. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:56, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
• Controversial all sources say this (in some form), not all sources (even the ones provided to support it) do not say discredited. Slatersteven (talk) 14:00, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
• Neither Per MOS:CONTROVERSIAL. Labels aren't helpful. Just state what's validated and what's invalidated. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:58, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
• Discredited per sources here and in the above section. DoubleCross (‡) 14:47, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
• Discredited or largely-discredited per the near-universal consensus of mainstream journalistic RS in 2023, as demonstrated by the examples listed above, reflecting the fact that none of Steele et al.'s allegations about Trump or any American citizen have been proven true after six years of investigation by law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and journalists. That said, fighting over a label in the lede summary will only go so far when the article as a whole needs to be rewritten to reflect the findings of more recent (i.e., post-2019) reliable sources... And for that to happen, Valjean, the primary author of this article, contributing 78.8% of all text, who has stridently expressed complete certainty in the veracity of the dossier since at least 3 February 2017 (when he declared that "I follow what the Dossier and RS indicate, that Trump is compromised and vulnerable to blackmail. That's not OR. That's what the RS say."), and who just reiterated that the pee tape is "true or likely true," would probably have to step back and allow other contributors to make substantive changes, rather than policing the article in a way that reflects ownership.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:14, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree with some of this soibangla (talk) 02:37, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

TAAC, if you're going to try to apply "discredited" to the status of the allegations (proven vs unproven), as your statement implies, then you're way off base because your statement is false: "reflecting the fact that none of Steele et al.'s allegations about Trump or any American citizen have been proven true after six years..." That is a clearly false statement. The 2017 ODNI report confirmed the central allegations were true. Also, when the Crossfire Hurricane team first got six reports from Steele on September 19, 2016, they discovered that their own sources had discovered some of the same things Steele's sources had reported earlier to Steele. The Justice Department had this info from the FBI. This gave the FBI confidence in the dossier:

"Ranking Member Schiff describes the FBI's wholly independent basis for investigating Page's long-established connections to Russia, aside from the Steele dossier, and emphasizes that the Justice Department possessed information 'obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele's reporting' with respect to Page."[5]

So on at least these two occasions, we have confirmation that some of the allegations were confirmed as accurate. There are other allegations that are unconfirmed, but none strictly disproven. So don't connect "discredited" with the confirmation status of the allegations. Connect it with the dossier's reputation and unpopularity as the target of Trump's ire. It became his foil to distract attention from his other misdeeds. He rained false claims and conspiracy theories on it, all of them thoroughly debunked, but they did "discredit" it and careless journalists have repeated his use of that word, creating the confusion he hoped to create. You have fallen into the trap that "discredited" means none of the allegations have been proven true, but that interpretation is false. Many are proven true. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:07, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

"The 2017 ODNI report confirmed the central allegations were true"

There were actually four central allegation made in the dossier.

1. Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least 5 years.

The ODNI report did not confirm (or even address) this

2. However he and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.

The ODNI report did not confirm (or even address) this

3. Former top Russian intelligence officer claims FSB has compromised TRUMP through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him.

The ODNI report did not confirm (or even address) this

4. A dossier of compromising material on Hillary CLINTON has been collated by the Russian Intelligence Services over many years and mainly comprises bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls rather than any embarrassing conduct.

The ODNI report did talk about the Guuccifer 2.0 leaks, but is this "dossier" mentioned in Steele? I dont know and not RS makes that case.

I think your case is far weaker than you are presenting. DarrellWinkler (talk) 14:15, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

We have different definitions of "central", and here on the talk page I am referring to the ones in the ODNI report, and only them. There are many more allegations, and there are probably as many different interpretations of central as there are people. We have at least one RS that says "central", but we don't use that wording in the article for a group of allegations (but search for "central claim" and you'll find a few statements about how Steele's "central claim" was proven true. In the lead we prefer the vague "several key allegations", a wording that most would agree on because we stick to exactly the ones mentioned in the ODNI report:

Several key allegations made in June 2016 were later corroborated by the January 2017 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,[3][4] namely that Vladimir Putin favored Trump over Hillary Clinton;[3][5] that he personally ordered an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's campaign and to "undermine public faith in the US democratic process"; that he ordered cyberattacks on both parties;[3] and that many Trump campaign officials and associates had numerous secretive contacts with Russian agents.[6][7] While Steele's documents played a significant role in initially highlighting the general friendliness between Trump and the Putin administration, the veracity of specific allegations is highly variable. Some have been publicly confirmed,[4][8][3][5] others are plausible but not specifically confirmed,[9][10] and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven.[11][12][13]

What we need to avoid is the "either it's all true or it's all false" GOP party line. They think that if some allegations are shaky or seem false, that all of the dossier is false. Not so. That's an absurd line of thought, especially for an unfinished collection of raw intelligence. Steele was prepared for some of it being false, as this article explains. So far, our wording in the lead, which is based on sourced content in the body, is still true. No significant allegation has been proven false, even if it might well be false. A number of allegations have been proven true. Many will never be proven true because the sources cannot be interviewed.

Even the sensational pee tape allegation has zero lines of thought or evidence against it being true (we even know that Trump likes the sight of girls peeing on each other), but a number of unrefuted pieces of evidence and witness statements that tend toward it being true. They just aren't conclusive enough for a court of law (although that is not the standard of evidence with this type of thing.) I have no idea if the allegation is true, so I place it in the "unproven" group and leave the door open, and anyone who implies I believe it is true is lying to you, and there are people here who constantly slander me in that way. It's tiring. It's just intellectually dishonest to say it isn't true. It's wrong to close the door to the possibility it's true since there is zero evidence against that line of thought, and some evidence that favors it. As a medical professional and scientific skeptic, I look at all the evidence and hold that we don't know if it's true or false. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:04, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

The "central allegations" are all laid out right in the Steele memo. If you want to discuss the "central allegations" in the ODNI report, I believe theres an article for that which is the appropriate place for that information. DarrellWinkler (talk) 16:36, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Not all the allegations in the dossier are "central" (="important"), and some sources would consider some allegations as more important than others. That's what I mean. We don't get into the weeds with that subject. To call an allegation "central", we need a RS that does so. It is RS that determine the weight and importance of each allegation, and since the concept of which allegation is "most important/central" is debatable, we don't do it in the article without attributing that wording to its source. The ones confirmed by the ODNI (ergo any source, even if it's a RS, that says no allegations have been proven true, is lying) are important ones. No one would deny that. We use very conservative and uncontroversial wording: "Several key allegations..." Doesn't that make sense? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:56, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I believe you've hit the nail on the head here. Mr Ernie (talk) 13:04, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

• Discredited That's how reliable sources describe it. Judge Mehta's 2018 decision is irrelevant. It was a decision on whether or not a reporter could pursue a Freedom of Information Act request based on what Trump tweeted. All the judge said is that a tweet by Trump that the dossier had been discredited was not an official statement of the U.S. government. He did not rule on whether or not the dossier was discredited. TFD (talk) 03:23, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

  The opinion of a duly authorized jurist is an official statement of the US Government, so that refutation doesn't quite wash. SPECIFICO talk 13:50, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

  Since this isn't North Korea, Wikipedia considers mainstream media rather than government officials to be reliable. Furthermore, the only judge's remarks that are considered conclusive in law are one's whose truth is essential for determining the outcome of the case and have not been appealed, neither of which applies here. Also, who have misstated what the judge actually said. TFD (talk) 00:54, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

  You are now struggling to debunk your own strawman equivocation. But I already refuted it directly above. SPECIFICO talk 01:05, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

  Saying you have refuted it is no substitute for a reasoned argued using facts, policy and guidelines. The only surprising thing is that the document was taken seriously in the first place. It makes one wonder about how uncritical people can be. TFD (talk) 03:17, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

• Discredited- This description is the most widely used at this point and the CJR article explains why that is in more detail than any other source. DarrellWinkler (talk) 20:14, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

  It's discredited relative to the initial mainstream acceptance of everything it contains, but no source says that it's discredited in the sense that it's all garbage -- as RS do, for example characterize the Comer committee, Jim Jordan handwaving, etc. So the editorial problem is that we not try to use a single word to label the content when the appropriate detailed evaluation is given in the article text. SPECIFICO talk 21:31, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

  We do not provide "detailed evaluations" .... that's original research. We summarize reliable sources in proportion to their relevance to the topic. DarrellWinkler (talk) 13:54, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

  Straw man. The article text provides appropriate detailed evaluation - i.e. sourced to RS citations, as you will see if you read the article. SPECIFICO talk 18:26, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

  I have read the article, its apparently stuck in 2016-2017. DarrellWinkler (talk) 18:29, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

  Congrats! You're one of the few editors I've met who has actually done that. Most criticize this article in ways that show they are clueless about the contents of the article or the subject. (You are trying to add stuff that is already covered in the article, so be more careful.) That it may seem to be "stuck in 2016-2017" could have to do with the fact that not much more has been said since then (except more lies about the dossier, including from Durham), and none of the allegations' verification status has changed since then. (Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm very tired. I've seen bear and elk today, and have driven a whole lot. My head is spinning!) We're still missing the kind of evidence that could prove or disprove a whole lot of allegations, so they remain in the "unproven" category. So the status quo from that time period is still surprisingly accurate. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:05, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

• Dictionary time. Let's look at synonyms. It is discredited in the sense it is vilified, libeled, smeared, humiliated, defamed, maligned, slandered, and disgraced. Those are all synonyms for an opinion, which is not a fact. NPOV says we are not allowed to treat opinions as facts, but we do document such opinions, and we are required to attribute the opinions.

"Donald Trump and many sources have described the dossier as 'discredited'." That is an encyclopedic sentence describing an attributed opinion of low weight as it's a libelous smear, an opinion, not a fact. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:24, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we can just take it on your word that CNN/PBS/Politico/NPR/... are merely carelessly repeat[ing] Trump's claim and attribute what the weight of reliable sources say (primarily) to Trump. Endwise (talk) 10:10, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

You are basically giving us the creationist's "evolution is only a theory" argument. Consensus in expert opinion is treated as fact in order to avoid false doubt. TFD (talk) 01:06, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

So what type of scientifically valid approach to evidence would you apply here? So many seem to be jumping to the "it's either all true or it's all false" conclusion, which is just as nonsensical as the creationists' arguments, which reveal they are clueless about evidence and science. Heck, gravity is a theory, and I bet my life on it. What are you really trying to say? Please provide some sample wording that would be better than what we have.

Remember to apply common sense to what RS say. Even RS say stupid shit which we refuse to use here. Any source, even if it's a RS, that says no allegations have been proven true, is lying. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:11, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

• No. i.e. Neither, or else status quo The detail appears in the article text and it's way too complex and undetermined to label it with a single word that has been and will be used to reject everything in the dossier and more. SPECIFICO talk 11:32, 23 August 2023 (UTC) "discredited" is false. "controversial" is true. SPECIFICO talk 02:22, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
• Discredited, per sources cited here. Magnolia677 (talk) 22:51, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
• Neither - This is approaching a textbook example of WP:DOUBT. It is unhelpful and unencyclopaedic. 'Discredited' implies that nothing in the dossier has any validity, something that is contradicted a couple sentences later in the lede and by the body. 'Controversial' is specifically mentioned as a WP:WTW and is pretty self-evident through the lede and the article. Just state teh facts as presented by the sources, without their inherent editorialising. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 14:27, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
• Neither. Even the sources presented above - which are of course only a subset of all sources - don't support describing the dosser as a whole as discredited, since many of them qualify that in some way; eg. simply saying that it contains now-discredited rumors and salacious claims doesn't mean the entire thing is discredited. Neither does largely-discredited accurately paraphrase to simply discredited. And most sources lean more towards unsubstantiated or unproven; in addition to several of the ones presented above, see eg. Reuters: The dossier contained salacious details about Trump, many of which have never been substantiated.; CNN: Today, the dossier is largely seen as an unproven collection of rumors and gossip. There's simply not enough unanimity among high-quality sources to describe it as entirely discredited in the article voice. --Aquillion (talk) 23:38, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
• Neither in the lead. I am convinced to change my previous !vote by the explanations and policies mentioned by SPECIFICO, Muboshgu, Last1in, and Aquillion. I believe that "controversial" and "discredited" should continue to be described in the body, but since "discredited" is too vague (In what sense is it meant?) and definitely misleading and false in several ways, it should not be used in the lead, only in the body. There it has little weight as it's a slur without evidence. We can also remove "controversial" from the lead. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:58, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

  Discredited means it has been found to be not credible. IOW informed observers do not consider it reliable. What is vague about that? TFD (talk) 02:14, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

  That is equivocation. Informed, reliable, credible, discredited... That is not a meaningful basis for encyclopedic text. SPECIFICO talk 02:37, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

  TFD, you know just as well as the rest of us that the slur is vague and interpretable, is not based on objective criteria or facts, and is intended to imply that none of the allegations are true, which is clearly false. If we use such a vague term in the lead to describe the whole dossier, we are participating in that political mudslinging. That's unencyclopedic editing. We do mention it in the body where it's attributed. While that's more than it deserves, it's our job to document even untrue and misleading statements, but it's not right to give them more weight than they deserve. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:21, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

• Neither per Muboshgu, Aquillion et al. soibangla (talk) 00:07, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
• Neither But, the flaws and inaccuracies in the report should be clearly addressed/corrected and the opinions that it is controversial or has been discredited should be attributed accordingly (if they are not, already). Adding generalizations that are essentially opinions to the lead creates POV issues. DN (talk) 03:47, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

  Bingo! I couldn't agree more. If you see any specific lack in this area, please point it out so we can deal with it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:37, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

• Discredited - per majority of reliable sources.Yodabyte (talk) 09:09, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
• Discredited It's clear this is the majority RS view today. Springee (talk) 01:14, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
• Discredited Based on the current treatment in RS Arkon (talk) 02:25, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
• Neither. Both are editorializing (MOS:LABEL). The dossier isn't "discredited", according to the lead and the sources cited by Acquillion. The second sentence says that Several key allegations made in June 2016 were later corroborated. The first paragraph goes on to say that some allegations were publicly confirmed, some are plausible but not confirmed, and some are dubious but not strictly disproven. "Controversial" is redundant. The first sentence goes on to say that the dossier contains allegations, and the lead does exactly what MOS:LABEL says we should do, i.e., give readers information about relevant controversies instead of "using the subjective and vague term controversial". Space4Time3Continuum2x ^(cowabunga) 12:47, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
• (edited) Controversial. Was leaning and !voted Discredited, per discussion and current source descriptors and understanding of the document, then switching after an interesting conversation at Valjean's talk page. I'm not at all a subject matter expert on this topic and am not chapter and verse conversant on its details, and because of that I had a misconception of something which should be clearer in the lead: what the dossier actually was - raw intelligence that got passed around. As for my !vote, the topic certainly is controversial. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:52, 18 September 2023 (UTC) Randy Kryn (talk) 02:51, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Removal of Tags

Why have the POV and OR tags been removed twice now without a reason? The criteria for removal are listed here and none have been met. As someone recently mentioned, the tags would attract fresh, uninvolved, editors to work on this page and review it for inappropriate content. That's always a good thing, and since there is no specific allegation made by the tags, I think it is constructive. Mr Ernie (talk) 18:45, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, tags are used to bring editors into articles that have very little activity. This page has 334 watchers. O3000, Ret. (talk) 18:53, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I think the editors watching the page may be part of the problem, and therefore "fresh, uninvolved editors" would be helpful. As you can see above, the RFC which has drawn outside editors has pretty much already found consensus. Now check the first discussion on the page involving the exact same content as the RFC, but with the locals which bogged down and stalled out. There are a few editors here who I suspect do not want the article changed or improved, which makes these talk page discussions difficult. Mr Ernie (talk) 18:59, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

What makes pages difficult is massive violations of AGF. O3000, Ret. (talk) 20:25, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

The tag(s) may have been removed in the reset of the article page to the version prior to recent edit-warring. But if there is no specific problem for which the tags are proposed, that is contrary to policy and practice. SPECIFICO talk 19:24, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I’ve just now corrected the quote from “central role” to “central and essential role” in the OR section. If such a simple line could be so carelessly misquoted then the tags are appropriate to seek further review from uninvolved editors. That misquote stood for years. Mr Ernie (talk) 23:49, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

It's not a "misquote", just a partial quote. The change is fine. I found a couple other places to make the same improvement. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 00:17, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Actually the quote marks are recent, due to Valjean's 19 June 2023 edit. But MOS:SIC should have been followed, thanks for correcting. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:25, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, before that edit wikivoice was used with no quote marks. The meaning is unchanged, but it's even better now with an exact quote. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:46, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Mr Ernie, if you prefer an example of a misquote that has stood for years, have a look at this re Michael Gaeta: When he arrived in London on July 5, 2016, he met with Steele at his office,[68] and he was given a copy of Steele's first report, dated June 20, 2016 (Report 80).[70]: 95  His reaction was "shock and horror".[68] and look at the cites for the "shock and horror" quote, which is due to Valjean's 22 November 2019 edit. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:30, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes this is exactly why the tags are necessary. I’ll compile another list of examples next week, post them here, and restore the tags. We really need outside eyes on this article. Valjean has done a lot of good work and more collaboration could bring many improvements to this page. Mr Ernie (talk) 23:11, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Peter, thanks for catching that. The right ref was originally with that content, but somehow it got separated. Now it's back where it belongs. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:31, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Mr Ernie, I don't see that Valjean has acknowledged that putting things in quotes that way was wrong, and I see that Valjean has still let the shock-and-horror quote be surrounded by things that don't belong e.g. that it was in London and it was specifically Mr Gaeta's reaction (hint). And I've seen Valjean's remarks to you earlier. Since I fear these are indicators of the attitude you can expect in reaction to your list, I hope you won't spend much time on it. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:40, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Peter, have I misunderstood something? That's entirely possible. Just explain it and provide the sources to back the explanation. I'm pretty easy to work with when you AGF and are specific. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:20, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

New lawsuit from Trump

Saving this here:

• Trump suing ex-MI6 officer who alleged he was 'compromised' by Russian security service

Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:22, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

References

Dolan article

Interesting mentions of dossier:

Dolan denies being a source for the pee tape.

• Nora Dannehy made the right ethical decision], by Charles Halliday Dolan, Jr.

I provided one piece of information about the 2016 campaign to a person, who unbeknownst to me was working on the Dossier – a publicly sourced analysis of atmospherics within the Trump Campaign over Paul Manafort’s firing, from POLITICO and Fox News that was arguably the most accurate item of information in the entire Dossier.

After citing no evidence Durham falsely pronounces that, “In light of these facts, there appears to be a real likelihood that Dolan was the likely source of much of the Ritz Carlton …information in the Steele reports.” That’s just an unmerited supposition couched in vaguely conditional language but illustrates how Durham stretches to reach preconceived conclusions that are not supported by any evidence. As such, after reading the entirety of Durham’s report, it seems more reasonable to conclude its title should be changed to “Grasping at Straws.”

Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:48, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

References

Update needed

The last two sentences in the opening paragraph are as follows: “While Steele's documents played a significant role in initially highlighting the general friendliness between Trump and the Putin administration, the veracity of specific allegations is highly variable. Some have been publicly confirmed,[7][11][6][8] others are plausible but not specifically confirmed,[12][13] and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven.[14][15][16]”

All but one of those sources is from the 2010’s. Perceptions have since changed, per CNN and NYT:

• Jonny Hallam, Kristen Holmes and Marshall Cohen. “Trump sues former British spy behind controversial Russia dossier”, CNN (29 Sep 2023): “over the years, the credibility of the dossier has significantly diminished. A series of US government investigations and lawsuits have discredited many of its central allegations and exposed the unreliability of Steele’s sources. Trump has repeatedly denied the claims Steele put forward.”

• Savage, Charlie. “Why the Discredited Dossier Does Not Undercut the Russia Investigation”, New York Times (21 Dec 2021): “Was the dossier a reliable source of information? No. It has become clear over time that its sourcing was thin and sketchy.”

We should update accordingly, to something like this: “Many of its central allegations have been discredited, its sourcing was thin and sketchy, it was an unreliable source of information, and Trump denied its claims.” Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:18, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Nothing has substantively changed since the last time this was discussed I don't think. We do largely treat the dossier as untrustworthy, but it's not discredited wholesale; much of it turned out to be accurate, and some of it remains unknown. See Talk:Steele_dossier/Archive_27#RFC_on_lead Andre🚐 06:10, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

That RFC was specifically about the first sentence of the lead. I’m talking here about the fourth and fifth sentences which I quoted at the outset of this talk page section. I suggest leaving the first three sentences of the lead exactly as they are, and replacing the next two sentences with the following: “Many of its central allegations have been discredited, its sourcing was thin and sketchy, it was an unreliable source of information, and Trump denied its claims.” This reflects more recent reporting from the New York Times and CNN. Anythingyouwant (talk) 07:08, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

No, that RFC was about any use of discredited or controversial; there was no consensus to add either descriptor. You can start a new RFC or a new discussion but I do not see anything much new in the 2 articles above, so I'm not in favor of a change at this time. The reporting isn't really any different, it's just lazy recycling. Andre🚐 07:20, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

It isn't really very recent (the latest is just recycling old statements) and it's not "reporting" but just voicing opinions. It's not specific, just bellyaching about disappointed false expectations.

BTW, I assume you're referring to changing "Some have been publicly confirmed,[7][11][6][8] others are plausible but not specifically confirmed,[12][13] and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven.[14][15][16]" Is that correct? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 07:34, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Anythingyouwant, you may benefit from reading the recent RfC about adding general opinions and controversial, imprecise, unclear, and contentious labels like "discredited" to the lead. (We already mention them in the body where such opinions and labels can be dealt with much better.) There was no consensus to do so. See Talk:Steele_dossier/Archive_27#RFC_on_lead. Unless you can provide some other arguments and better sources, you are unlikely to get a different result. AFAIK, nothing new has popped up to change the situation, but we're always open to the possibility, and if it happens, the article will be revised again, as has happened many times.

These are the opinions of some writers, not facts, and the lead isn't the best place to highlight such controversial and disputed opinions. Also, the addition of Trump's denial is counterproductive to attempts to add wording like "discredited" to the lead as his denials lend credence to the oft-proven fact that any misdeed he denies usually turns out to be true. He is the ultimate unreliable witness. It's often best not to bring up his denials. His multiple denials and lies to Comey about the pee tape changed Comey from a skeptic who thought the allegation was BS to a "maybe peeliever"(!) who now believes it's possible the pee tape allegation is true.

When one accepts the fact that the dossier is not a perfect, finished, and fully vetted report, but "an unfinished 35-page compilation of unverified raw intelligence reports—"not established facts, but a starting point for further investigation"," the "discredited" description is revealed to be a misjudgment based on false expectations.

The more accurate thing to do, as we have done using myriad RS, is to examine each allegation and evaluate it. In that light, the last sentence of the first paragraph summarizes the more elaborate analyses of each allegation in the body most accurately. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 07:32, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

People forget that "failure to corroborate" an allegation does not mean it is "discredited" or "disproven". It just means the allegation remains uncorroborated. It may be true or untrue. We just don't know for sure. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 07:46, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

CNN reports that subsequent developments have “discredited many of its central allegations”. That’s not opinion, it’s a news article. If a document (e.g. the Steele Report) is deemed unreliable (which the NYT has done), that means pretty much the same thing. It doesn’t necessarily mean the allegations/accusations have been proven false, it just means that the Steele Report has been discredited as a reliable document, and if anything in the Steele Report happens to be true then that’s merely a coincidence. I again request that we accordingly update the last two sentences of our opening paragraph. Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:45, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

They take the same position we do here. Uncorroborated allegations are not considered RS. They are simply ignored. That's what we do with many of the dossier's allegations. We document their existence because RS do that, but do not consider them as strong evidence for anything. What does your suggested change add, other than confusion, since most people assume that "discredited" means "disproven"? How about first dealing with this in the body? Then it will be easier to see if it needs to be mentioned in the lead. We already deal with this type of stuff in the lead in the last two sentences of the first paragraph, a consensus formulation that was reached after long discussion.

The only addition (bolded here) that addresses what you mention without introducing misleading wording to the lead ("discredited" is already mentioned in the body), would be to say out loud what is currently unsaid and assumed: "While many of the allegations are still uncorroborated, (followed by the current wording) some have been publicly confirmed,[7][11][6][8] others are plausible but not specifically confirmed,[12][13] and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven.[14][15][16]" Valjean (talk) 20:12, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

We could easily add a phrase to address your concern: “Many of its central allegations have been discredited, its sourcing was thin and sketchy, it was an unreliable source of information, Trump denied its claims, and any correct claims in it are coincidental at best.” The opening paragraph currently does not convey these facts. So I’d erase (or move down) the last two sentences of the opening paragraph and insert what I’ve just proposed. We shouldn’t be emphasizing how useful and partially accurate the Steele Report may have been, it was a shoddy bit of dishonest oppo research. It wasn’t even meant to see the light of day. Steele has said that, when he learned of the leak by David Kramer to Buzzfeed, he felt "deep dismay and disappointment... at learning that Mr. Kramer had seriously betrayed his trust.” Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:54, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Anythingyouwant, it was unverified raw intelligence, and there is no evidence the dossier is "dishonest" oppo research, so it would be wise for you to drop that idea. If you don't, you will fail to evaluate it properly. The FBI even ruled out any contamination with Russian disinformation. They examined it for that, found none, and reasoned that it made no sense for the Russians to include anything that would make Trump look bad since he was their favored candidate.

The unfinished draft we have was never intended for publication until it was vetted and finished. We don't know what would have happened with it at that point. Steele was honest and did the right thing by turning it over to the FBI for vetting. A dishonest operator would not have done that. Unfortunately, the vetting process stopped when the Mueller investigation took over the investigation. Mueller seemed more interested in using other sources and pursuing other issues, and there were many of them.

Your interestingly worded suggestion is worth playing with:

“Many of its central allegations have been discredited, its sourcing was thin and sketchy, it was an unreliable source of information, Trump denied its claims, and any correct claims in it are coincidental at best.”

Based on what we know about each allegation, we could just as well reword that to this:

"Many of its central allegations were proven true, long before the FBI came to the same conclusions using their sources; its sources seemed to be well-connected and could report on things they were in a position to know; it was unvetted and most of the sources could not be interviewed, and therefore it could not be used for much, so the FBI used what it could and then depended on their own sources; Trump denied and lied about its claims, including those proven true; its correct claims showed Steele had good sources, and Danchenko proved to be one of the most valuable sources the FBI has employed in many years."

So you see, this can go both ways, but my version is based on the RS in the article, not opinions, and the opinions we do cite are attributed properly. Your version sounds more like biased opinions not based on examining the allegations and their verification status (which is summed up in the last two sentences of the first paragraph). -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:06, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Valjean states that "The more accurate thing to do, as we have done using myriad RS, is to examine each allegation and evaluate it." However, this approach is fundamentally flawed (and a core problem with our article), because the bulk of the allegations in Steele's dossier have not been discussed in any detail by major journalistic or academic sources. For example, "While The New York Times and many other news organizations published little about the document's unverified claims, social media partisans and television commentators discussed them almost daily over the past two years." As a result, the sources that are used in this article are mostly not reliable, at least not for the content in question.

• For example, the post-2013 incarnation of Newsweek is cited at least fourteen separate times ([6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19]), despite WP:RSP describing this source as "not generally reliable."

At 452,680 bytes as of the latest revision, Steele dossier is nearly twice the size of World War II (252,175 bytes at the time of writing), yet unlike World War II, nearly all of its sources fall into the "generally unreliable" or "marginally reliable" camp of opinion articles/tabloids/blogs (with some day-to-day news reportage for good measure), and the vast majority of all article text has just a single author (Valjean at 79.1% according to the latest estimate). It would be difficult for any person to manually review all 546 (!) individual citations to determine how many of them could be disqualified as opinion articles alone (which "are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact" per WP:RSEDITORIAL), but it could easily be in triple digits.

• Just glancing casually, how reliable/encyclopedic is "Christopher Steele: Yes, Trump's Pee Tape 'Probably' Exists" from The Daily Beast (WP:RSP: "Most editors consider The Daily Beast a biased or opinionated source. Some editors advise particular caution when using this source for controversial statements of fact related to living persons.")?

• How reliable/encyclopedic is "Forget the Steele dossier: Mueller report release shows why Trump-Russia inquiry was required" from Salon.com (WP:RSP: "There is no consensus on the reliability of Salon. Editors consider Salon biased or opinionated, and its statements should be attributed.")?

• How reliable/encyclopedic is "Explosive memos suggest that a Trump-Russia quid pro quo was at the heart of the GOP's dramatic shift on Ukraine" from Business Insider (WP:RSP: "There is no consensus on the reliability of Insider.")?

• How reliable/encyclopedic is "The Steele Dossier and Donald Trump's Betrayal of America" from Mother Jones (WP:RSP: "Almost all editors consider Mother Jones a biased source, so its statements (particularly on political topics) may need to be attributed. Consider whether content from this publication constitutes due weight before citing it in an article.")?

Is "Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart — Or His Handler? A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion" from New York's Intelligencer blog a "news," "analysis," or "opinion" source—and how well does it hold up more than five years later? What about this "analysis" article by Luke Harding in The Guardian (especially in light of Harding's debunked report on a closely related topic)? Is Rachel Maddow's opinion talk show a reliable source? The examples are endless...

One might also wonder how these sources were collated, in the sense of using neutral search criteria to generate a representative sample of high-quality sources. Valjean regularly mentions his use of Google Alerts (e.g., "I'm creating more Google Alerts for this."; "My Google Alerts tell me so."; "I have several Google Alerts for this topic."), but, based on the examples above (and others cited by critics on this talk page over the years), it seems like these alerts may be generating a considerable amount of content that is WP:INDISCRIMINATE, and thus an example of What Wikipedia is not. This problem is particularly pronounced in the Steele dossier#Allegations section.

Furthermore, contrary to Valjean's statement above, it is not the role of volunteer editors "to examine each allegation and evaluate it," as this often results in original research by way of synthesis. This problem is particularly pronounced in the Steele dossier#Veracity and corroboration status of specific allegations section.

Although top-level sources, such as The New York Times, unequivocally state that "the dossier ended up loaded with dubious or exaggerated details," Valjean and others have long actively pushed back against including similar language in our article, in part to avoid conflict with the Steele dossier#Veracity and corroboration status of specific allegations section, which can be interpreted as presenting many allegations in the most sympathetic light possible.

Notably, even the Steele dossier#Kompromat and "golden showers" allegations subsection spends eight paragraphs on the putative "pee tape" and ultimately weighs the "evidence" for and against its existence more-or-less equally, allowing Steele to evaluate his own work as follows: "As for the likelihood of the claim that prostitutes had urinated in Trump's presence, Steele would say to colleagues, 'It's 50–50'." I submit that, in a normal encyclopedia article with less tunnel vision, this collection of OR/SYNTH (largely supported by a skewed sample of low-quality and/or biased sources) would be replaced with a mere sentence or two, such as "No 'pee tape' has yet surfaced, and mainstream sources consider it to be a likely hoax."

While I support Anythingyouwant's proposal, bringing Steele dossier into compliance with Wikipedia's sitewide content policies would require a vast WP:TNT, particularly of the Steele dossier#Veracity and corroboration status of specific allegations section and the huge proliferation of marginal (if not WP:FRINGE) sources. However, there appears to be WP:LOCALCONSENSUS to veto a major overhaul at this time.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:01, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

My oh my! You're still personalizing this by making my diligent and careful editing into a crime. Please stop doing that. You also fail to mention that all RS, including opinion articles, are fair game for sourcing, and that each should be used on a case-by-case basis and attributed properly when necessary. WP:RSP is not an exclusionary "don't use opinions at all" list, as you seem to imply for many sources. Rather, that idea is reserved for some sources, and we don't use them.

When dealing with a topic, our job is to find all that RS say and, when possible to safely do so, summarize it. That works fine for simple and uncontroversial stuff not covered by many RS. That's what could have been done with the "verification" stuff, but, due to its complicated and controversial nature, rather than engage in too much summarizing, which can easily be interpreted as biased editorial synthesis, much of the commentary has been listed individually so readers can come to their own conclusions. They can see who wrote it and see that there are often widely varied opinions about each allegation.

Even the pee tape is far from a hoax. Rather, it's an old rumor that started long before Steele and his dossier. There is plenty of evidence that it's likely true, and none, zero, zilch evidence that it isn't. Comey, an expert lie detector, was originally a pee tape skeptic, believing it was BS, but after Trump repeatedly lied to him about it, he changed his mind and now believes it's entirely possible the incident happened. Keep in mind that Trump, Cohen, and a number of others we know by name have known about the pee tape rumor and allegation since shortly after Trump left Moscow in November 2013. Steele did not invent that rumor. His sources just reported it to him. It is not "his" allegation. It's an old rumor.

We don't come down on just "one side" here. It's not that simple. That some negative stuff is not mentioned is obviously because it comes from unreliable sources and lacks due weight for mention. (Yet...we still include quite a bit of that because RS mention it.) That's the right way to do it.

You seem to want to sanitize the article of what most RS have said and present a simplistic, one-sided, politically biased, negative picture of Steele and his sources while making Trump out to be an angel, even though the central accusations against him related to his cooperation with Russian interference turned out to be right, as attested by the 2017 ODNI report, Mueller report, Horowitz report, United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and other investigations. Trump never gets a free pass.

Your approach has been rejected because it's a "major overhaul" sledgehammer idea. That violates PRESERVE and other policies. Instead, deal with specific spots and sourcing you believe are weak or wrong. No article is perfect, and that approach has always worked here, resulting in many changes and improvements over the years, all without throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The length is because we have not split the article (an idea I'm still toying with, but haven't found a good way to do it), unlike what has been done with WW2 and other long topics. They are much larger topics, but splitting keeps the mother article smaller. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:49, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Any proposal has been discussed at length and will require affirmative consensus and Valjean is not the only contributor. Andre🚐 04:00, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

FYI, I have also made a more personal reply to TheTimesAreAChanging on their talk page. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:23, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Cluttered history

I'm reading through the history section and there's a few places where the article goes into more in depth than necessary, basically reaching WP:NOTNEWS. I removed a couple of them and also added some subsections.

Right now there are a lot of segments in the article, not all of them are necessary or well divided, which is overall causing size bloat and readability issues. There's a bunch of sections that are just too detailed and should be cut down, summmarised or split off into separate articles. I'm also not convinced by some of the sections decided ("Two research operations and confusion between them", "What the DNC, Clinton campaign, and Steele knew" etc), so thinking about a reorganisation might be good Soni (talk) 21:57, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Pretty much all content has been thoroughly discussed and edit-warred over, so be very careful. Right down to the words used, things have ended up as they are for reasons. This is possibly in the top ten most controversial articles here. That doesn't mean there can't be improvement, but I'd urge caution. Maybe point to specific wordings we can discuss here. Historians will need details we may not see as important now. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:21, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

@Valjean I'd rather you discuss this in talk page than just in diffs, simply because there's not enough context for why you are reverting.

For one, I think the history section is exceptionally long and think that sectioning it into "Initial report/FBI/Post public" was a good way to not make it an immense wall of text.

Second, I do not see what the paragraph about "Fusion co founder didnt want to help HRC" is doing there. It's not context that really helps the rest of context for the dossier, except to add more details to an already very detailed history.

Third, all the discussions of money payments from FBI are similarly extraneous. Without any payments, just a full paragraph in a long history section detailing what people said about payments is unnecessary and WP:UNDUE.

Fourth, I'm not sure what precisely is the context that you think needs to be extra clarified for conspiracy theories, but I'd personally not defer to conspiracy theories anyway for the purposes of summarising things. Either the conspiracy is notable enough to warrant mentioning, or it's not, in which case, going out of our way to explain things specifically for them is not helpful.

Right now the article is a very long extremely hard to read convolution. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of all facts that future historians "may" find helpful. It's an encyclopedia foremost and anything that makes the overall topic harder to understand for "present" readers is a net negative Soni (talk) 01:27, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I have now restored your good subheadings and the release date. Let me reread what you've written above and digest it. I suspect some of your suggestions may be workable. Right now I'm watching the State of the Union Address, so I'll get back to you later. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:02, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I can't find "Fusion co founder didnt want to help HRC". Please use exact quotes. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:02, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I did reduce the "payments" stuff you also edited, but maybe you are now referring to something else? Please quote exactly so I can find it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:04, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

The agents "raised the prospect of paying Steele to continue gathering intelligence after Election Day",[83] but Steele "ultimately never received payment from the FBI for any 'dossier'-related information".[55] In October 2022, 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.[84][85] 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."[86] The Inspector General's report later confirmed that the FBI had initially offered to pay Steele $15,000 for his trip to Rome, but when the FBI dropped Steele as a confidential human source because he had shared information with a third party "in late October 2016" (Mother Jones magazine), the payment was halted

This entire section about payments is completely superfluous and unnecessary for anything to do with WP:DUEness. There was no payment made, and yet there are nearly 200 words describing what various people said and when about said payments. At best it needs a single sentence and nothing more. We do not need to go into extreme WP:NOTNEWS territory by describing what every part of this investigation revealed about potential payments.

Also for future, I request you to engage in talk page before the reverts, next time. I had already explained the edits once while making them, and then explained them again in way more depth after the whole scale revert. Had we discussed instead of revert it all, we'd only have to focus on the edits that need it. Instead we're converging at the same spot, except with far more words simply because the first revert was too hasty. Soni (talk) 04:44, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm following BRD as it's best to work from the default and stable version. You made a BOLD edit, I REVERTED it, and now we are DISCUSSING it. That's normal practice. While discussion is ongoing, no reader will start reading an unstable version. They will read the long-standing version. When we have agreed on the changes, then we make them. This is standard practice. Notice that you have gotten quite a bit of what you wanted already, so things are moving in the "right direction", as far as you are concerned, and I'm very happy to help you. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:00, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

The payments stuff is relevant because of Trump's lies about the dossier. He lied about the payments, and so have his supporters. Hence the detail. Readers wonder about these things, and the sources answer their questions. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:02, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Then state the lies about the dossier and put the paragraph in context of those. If it needs to be in the history, sure. I think it's just better served by placing it in a separate section of the article, wherever we are putting what Trump and others have claimed about the dossier.

Either the conspiracy theory is worth mentioning and addressing directly, or we're just trying to sidestep saying what the sources really are saying by pointing out adjacent but ultimately not directly supporting statements. Soni (talk) 05:05, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I found "did not like the idea of helping Hillary Clinton". It is part of the evidence of how neither Steele nor Simpson originally had anything against Trump or for HRC. Steele didn't even know the client was Clinton until later. Steele was a friend of Ivanka's, and it was only after he learned what Trump was doing that he turned against him. Simpson didn't really like HRC. This is about the bias of the creators of the dossier. Is that important or not? The accusations against Steele and the dossier are considered important enough to include, so why not this? We usually cover both sides of such issues. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:12, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

The way you phrase these discussions seems to veer closer to WP:OR and very close to making your own conclusions instead of acting as a secondary source. Wikipedia is not a news organisation, and we must be careful to follow other RS when making claims of our own.

If you want to showcase Steele and Simpson had no information about their client, let's find a source that says that and quote that. Right now the quote actually in (He didnt like the idea of helping HRC) is just acting orthogonal without actually making the explanation you want to make (They were unprejudiced for/against HRC/Trump). Soni (talk) 04:31, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussions often include OR, and that's okay in a talk page discussion, but I was referring to actual content. It's in the article. Fusion GPS knew their client was a lawyer for the DNC and Clinton campaign. Steele did not learn that until later. That's all. Steele had a favorable relationship to the Trump family before he started working on the dossier. His attitude, very naturally, changed as he discovered things. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:54, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Again, nothing is so far defending why that sentence needs to be in History specifically, as opposed to the section specifically best suited for authorship, biases and overall source veracity of the dossier. Soni (talk) 05:08, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I am not saying that it might not work better somewhere else, I just have no idea where you'd like to place it. Make a suggestion. Let's collaborate. That's how we work here. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:15, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I thought I was doing that by listing three sections that could match (Authors, Biases/Discrepancies, Veracity), but more specifically "Authorship and sources" seems to be the clearest place for it to go. If it's a claim about Steele it goes in the steele section. If it's about Simpsons more generally, it goes either in Steele's section towards the middle or separately in the next section itself.

The exact formatting depends on the exact claim you are making, since I consider the current claim to be irrelevant to the actual article. You want to say something roughly like "They were not biased towards HRC, they even liked Trump before then" so that fits Authors way more than a general history claim Soni (talk) 05:24, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

More relevant to me, it's not part of the "History" of the dossier is it? It's just more context for the dossier and the biases and verifiability it has, but it tells us nothing about when/how it was made or similar. It's taking a point that's best adjacent to the overall context (How much did the source sympathise with the subject matter) and add it to a section that's already long without any flow towards the rest of history or why this context matters. This entire section will be far better served just moved to another section of the article entirely. Soni (talk) 04:33, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Anything related to the history of the dossier and its creators and sources is relevant. "Jane Mayer believes the dossier is "perhaps the most controversial opposition research ever to emerge from a Presidential campaign",[43] and Julian Borger described it as "one of the most explosive documents in modern political history".[165]" Therefore it is one of the most widely and deeply covered documents in modern political history. Reliable sources, not some artificial idea of an "ideal" article, dictate what and how much we should write. Wikipedia is not like any other encyclopedia, and should not model itself on any other encyclopedia. We are not paper, and our rules are very different, so we should think differently than the authors of other documents and encyclopedias. Fortunately there isn't much chance the article will get much larger as it is now history, and there are efforts aimed and splitting off some content. That will also help, so we don't need to delete content just to make it smaller. Long articles are allowed here, especially a topic like this one. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:54, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but that's also not justification to make pages as long as possible without considering when some info "needs" to be there. And more importantly, "where" it needs to be. I am not saying the paragraph is completely irrelevant, I am saying it's irrelevant as it stands for the history. We can easily find better sources that match what the paragraph was half implying, and we can move it to the section where it belongs, rather than make repeated points in multiple subsections of the article.

I'm not arguing for size reduction solely as a function of size reduction, I'm explaining it in the context I care about (How much of it is understandable from a single read through) and giving exact concrete suggestions for what I think could be changed/why. In this case, there are significant parts of the article that are long and warrant it, but there's also enough of it that's long while remaining not as readable Soni (talk) 05:01, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

"rather than make repeated points in multiple subsections of the article." Bingo! I'd love to see that problem resolved. Duplication is sometimes necessary, but not always, and some of that has crept into the article over the years. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:06, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I have looked at the "As Nuland later shared,..." and agree it's no longer very important. It's gone. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:16, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

This diff shows the changes made from the version right before you started your edits. You'll see that several of your changes are now in place. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:22, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Lede rewriting

I have made a copy of the lede at User:Soni/sandbox4 to show edits before I make them live.

I have moved a few more sentences of the lede around to make it flow better. Right now the lede seems to start off coherent and clearcut, and then starts repeating itself without any clear cut direction.

There's a paragraph in the middle that serves no purpose other than "facts that didnt fit anywhere else" so removed the bit about Orbis as it was not really relevant to rest of lede or helping with context enough. The line about DNC and Steele saying they didnt know is kinda UNDUE, kinda WP:MANDY but I can see some plausible worlds where we might want to rephrase and include it in some form. The line about US/British intelligence, I moved to another paragraph

The first paragraph is quite long and has no natural breaking points if you plan to keep the structure of that extremely long sentence listing all allegations in a row. I think that sentence could be split into 2 just before namely anyway, but I couldnt see how to. Otherwise the rest of paragraph (veracity of dossier) started being repetitive with the other paragraphs by trying to summarise the documents authenticity twice. Instead now the last paragraph solely focuses on the accuracy of the dossier and segues into the overall impact it had, borrowing the sentence from 1st para and discarding the repeated shorter line in last para.

Finally, now each para of this lede serves a clear purpose and direction, with intro/what were claims + how it was made/when it was public + how seriously was it taken + how correct it is/what impact it had.

I think all of these changes combined make a significant impact making the lede more understandable to a regular reader. Soni (talk) 04:26, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Changes to the lead have always been a nightmare here. Be very careful. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:41, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

That tells me nothing. I am very well aware of how annoying the lede changes here are, most of the unedited bits are exactly what I'd not touched the last time I was here (a year ago?). Back then I was trying to make an unreadable lede parseable, now I'm trying to make a parseable lede easy to follow.

I've also explained all of my reasonings in depth in advance, so we can judge each smaller change on its merits if needed. Best I can tell, each edit improves the article clearly and the lede function better as a wholesale summary. Any more carefulness, and I'd have to open an RFC on every single sentence here. Soni (talk) 04:49, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Seeing no objections in the last couple weeks, I've implemented these changes Soni (talk) 02:02, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

If I understand this correctly, the following is the better part of what you deleted:

In June 2016, Fusion GPS subcontracted Steele's firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, to compile the dossier. After the election, DNC officials denied knowing their attorney had contracted with Fusion GPS, and Steele asserted he was not aware the Clinton campaign was the recipient of his research until months after he contracted with Fusion GPS.}}

I think that's a reasonable change. It's not essential for the lead. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:34, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

References

Is the legality of the dossier slightly overstated?

In view of the FEC statement from 2022, I'm somewhat worried about the present wording of following paragraph in the section Steele dossier#Legal status and comparison to Trump Tower meeting:

By contrast, Steele's work was a legal, declared, campaign expense and did not involve any voluntary offer of aid to the Clinton campaign from the Russian government. FEC law allows such declared campaign expenditures, even if the aid is performed by foreigners.

I do not doubt that the Bump statement from 2018 should be considered as a reliable source, stating the full legality of the dossier, as in the quoted paragraph. I also note that as regards the main point, the question of the legality in employing and contacting non-US citizens for an investigation about possible illegal actions of a political opponent on one hand, vz. receiving aid and/or money from a foreign government in order to facilitate a certain (federal) election result on the other, there seems to be no difference between Bump's opinion 2018 and FEC's finding after more than 3 years of processing. Indeed, as you can see from FEC's letter, there were accusations that the HRC campaign or their agents had violated 52 U.S. Code § 30121; these accusations vere duly investigated by FEC; and they were dismissed.

However, the claim that "Steele's work was a legal, declared, campaign expense" and "FEC law allows such declared campaign expenditures" according to the opinion expressed by FEC "probably" does not mean that declaring this expense as for "legal service" was legal. Neither the HRC campaign and nor DNC accepted that declaring this particular part of the expenses as violations of 52 U.S.C. § 30104(b)(5)(A) and (b)(6)(B)(v) and 11 C.F.R. § 104.3(b)(3)(i); but both agreed to pay the fines demanded by FEC, and not to contest this legally. Therefore, IMHO, we cannot reasonably retain the paragraph exactly as it is.

@Valjean and Soni: I see in your earlier discussion that you both think that one should avoid unnecessary duplications in the article (and in general). I concur. However, this leaves me with a problem. It would be simple to enlarge the offending paragraph with a notice that indeed the FEC has found probable cause for the HRC campaign and the DNC to have wrongly booked payments for an in itself perfectly legal investigation; but this more or less should duplicate the text about this in the section Steele dossier#Hiring and initial reports. Another possibility would be to remove just both occurrences of the word "declared" from the paragraph; but it then probably would not quite be in accordance with the given source (Bump). Do you have any suggestions for resolving this?

One possibility I thought of is to insert an {{anchor}} at the earlier paragraph treating FEC's findings and the fines, and then change the paragraph to something like the following:

By contrast, Steele's work was a legal, campaign expense and did not involve any voluntary offer of aid to the Clinton campaign from the Russian government. FEC law allows such campaign expenditures, even if the aid is performed by foreigners, if they are properly declared (which however may not have been the case here; see [the anchor]).

What do you think? JoergenB (talk) 23:26, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I really like your thinking! That's a good catch. When that was written, there was no March 2022 FEC decision on the matter, and when it happened, it was added to a different section. I have now moved it to the right place, so now we have this:

By contrast, Steele's work was a legal, declared, campaign expense and did not involve any voluntary offer of aid to the Clinton campaign from the Russian government. FEC law allows such declared campaign expenditures, even if the aid is performed by foreigners.

Bump explains that:

President Trump has deliberately and regularly conflated the two, arguing that the former meeting was innocuous and that the real malfeasance—the real collusion—was between Clinton's campaign and those Russians who were speaking to Steele. Trump is incorrect. There is no reason to think that Clinton's campaign is culpable for any illegal act related to the employment of Steele and good reason to think that the law was broken around the meeting at Trump Tower—and that members of the Trump team might face legal consequences.

In March 2022, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the DNC $105,000 and the Clinton campaign $8,000 for misreporting those fees and expenses as "legal services" and "legal and compliance consulting" rather than "opposition research".

I think your wording is closer to what we should have, so, taking into account our current wording, would you please take another shot at it? Feel free to rework it into something that includes your finding. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:30, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

@Valjean: Moving the FEC fine sentence to the Legal status and comparison to Trump Tower meeting was a rather good and appropriate idea, I think.

If you wish, I'll try to tweak this a little. The text will become a little bit longer, since I'll add a few sentences about the original complaint and the extent to which is was denied or sustained. This may be adequate. (Actually, the Trump side has not just compared hiring an investigator of foreign nationality with receiving aid from a foreign government. Some months ago, the monetary punishment of the Clinton campaign without any accompanying NY criminal process against Clinton was cited as an example of why the Prosecution of Donald Trump in New York should be dismissed as 'selective prosecution'; also see Talk:Prosecution of Donald Trump in New York#Requests for dismissal of the indictment, if you wish. This was how I found out about the Steele dossier case; and is a reason I think we should be at least as careful as usual.)

I do trust you'll check my contribution, re-tweak it as you find needed, or even just revert it and instead adding your own tweaks, as you see fit. JoergenB (talk) 17:59, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Go for it. I have enough experience here to know that I am not always the best formulator of content. That's why the collaborative nature of this project is so important. We can all help to refine and improve content. It doesn't have to be absolutely perfect from the start. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:32, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Jörgen, tusind tak for dine forbedringer til artiklen. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Ingen orsak. JoergenB (talk) 14:29, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I believe the source is unreliable and should not be used at all. I was able to see an archived copy of it, Philip Bump's Why the Trump Tower meeting may have violated the law — and the Steele dossier likely didn’t as of August 2018. Some of the article's false or misleading statements: Natalia Veselnitskaya has "connections to the Russian government" (she was once employed in the Moscow prosecutor's office and knows Yuri Chaika if that's what this vagueness means), that she "apparently proceeded to outline how a businessman facing questionable criminal charges in Russia allegedly made donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign" (what we actually know is that her focus was the Magnitsky Act though she may have known about a company that donated to the DNC), "Steele’s research involved talking to Russian government officials" (in fact major sources were people like Danchenko i.e. not even in Russia), "members of the Trump team might face legal consequences" (it's six years later and they didn't), the so-called offer from Ms Veselnitskaya was "part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump" (which leaves out that those words are not from her but from non-Russian Rob Goldstone who later said he had no idea what he was talking about), and of course the main menu item "There is no reason to think that Clinton’s campaign is culpable for any illegal act related to the employment of Steele" (yet the FEC fined her and the DNC due to probable cause to believe there was misreporting). It's no wonder to me that Jonathan Turley, who is a real lawyer, included this article in a selection of Mr Bump's errors. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 00:57, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Jonathan Turley

Really? I've learned to stay away from Jonathan Turley as a source, as he has a tendency to lean into pro-Trump conspiracy theories, even the conspiracy theory (totally debunked) that there was vote switching that favored Biden over Trump.[20] He's a "Russiagate" truther and favorite of Fox News and unreliable sources. When unreliable sources like Fox News and Daily Wire like someone, you KNOW they are not on the level. Red flags.

The Washington Post is a RS, and, like all sources, we use it on a case-by-case basis. Does the way it's used here create some problem? I suspect that your argument is with many RS we use in our articles about the dossier, Trump Tower meeting, Russian interference, etc. Using Turley as a source for these issues is a red flag. Just be careful. If he contradicts what we say in our articles here, then don't believe him. Our RS are more reliable than he is on these topics.

Natalia Veselnitskaya has "connections to the Russian government"

Yes, she has lots of connections with the Russian government. They wouldn't send just anybody to bring the official offer of help to the Trump campaign. Goldstone even confirmed that Natalia Veselnitskaya was a "Russian government attorney". You don't seriously believe his attempt to minimize his role, do you? Read more about him here.

"Steele’s research involved talking to Russian government officials" (in fact major sources were people like Danchenko i.e. not even in Russia)

Danchenko, Galkina, and Dolan all had contacts in the Kremlin, and Steele had other contacts besides them. Danchenko did visit Russia as part of his research. He is unusually well-connected in Russia, and the FBI heaped high praise on him as a confidential human source.

"members of the Trump team might face legal consequences" (it's six years later and they didn't)

"Trump team"....how many were convicted and then pardoned by Trump? How many had proven secretive contacts with Russia and WikiLeaks, but were not tried? Trump pardoned five people convicted as a result of investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections: Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Alex van der Zwaan, Roger Stone, whose 40-month sentence for lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstruction he had already commuted in July, and Paul Manafort.

the so-called offer from Ms Veselnitskaya was "part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump" (which leaves out that those words are not from her but from non-Russian Rob Goldstone who later said he had no idea what he was talking about)

Goldstone wrote to Trump Jr.:

"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with [Emin's] father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.

This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin.[21]

The "Crown Prosecutor", Chaika, is known as the king of kompromat.[22] Trump's mere association with Agalarov and Goldstone (already from 2013) made him susceptible to kompromat and blackmail, due to the system of sistema under which the Russians operate.

This source will really bring you up to speed on all things related to Trump collusion with Russia.

Rob Goldstone may be a resident of Russia, or at least spend a lot of time there. I don't recall if he's considered a Russian agent or asset, but he's certainly a useful idiot for them. He is Emin's publicist. He is allied (that usually means compromised) with Russian oligarchs, primarily Aras Agalarov, whose Crocus Group allegedly controlled the pee tape. He was with Trump on several occasions when kompromat was allegedly collected on Trump, sometimes where Goldstone was involved in the planning of Trump's activities. He was a prime mover, together with Emin Agalarov, of the Trump Tower meeting, itself an occasion that provided kompromat on Donald Trump (because he lied about the meeting) and those who were there. On 7 June 2016, on behalf of Emin Agalarov, Goldstone e-mailed Donald Trump's son Donald Trump Jr., to request a meeting between the younger Trump and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya (referred to in Goldstone's e-mail as a "Russian government attorney"). According to Goldstone's email, Agalarov wanted to "provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information" that would help Donald Trump's campaign and damage the campaign of his rival, Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump, Jr., replied immediately: "If it's what you say[,] I love it[,] especially later in the summer."

and of course the main menu item "There is no reason to think that Clinton’s campaign is culpable for any illegal act related to the employment of Steele" (yet the FEC fined her and the DNC due to probable cause to believe there was misreporting)

"Misreporting"? How? Unlike the eager acceptance of the Russian offer of help to Trump's campaign, the act of employing Steele was not illegal. The problem was with the expense declaration, and they were fined for that. Case closed. We cover this in this article.

Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:49, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Jonathan Turley, who is a real lawyer

yes, he has a law license. tenure, too. and he's on Fox News primetime a lot. soibangla (talk) 04:06, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Is Fox News a RS for American politics and science. NO.

Do mainstream, sensible, people usually appear on that unreliable source? NO.

Has Turley pushed pro-Trump, pro-Russian, conspiracy theories? YES.

Turley strikes out. Using a bit of common sense really helps. This has to do with loyalty to our WP:RS policy and applying it to the real world of possible sources. It has to do with the ability to vet sources for reliability. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:29, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

"the FBI heaped high praise on him as a confidential human source." Can the FBI be trusted for information relating to American politics? Dimadick (talk) 07:50, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

LOL! Good one. Of course, they have their axes to grind, but that doesn't mean nothing they say is worthwhile. Russian intelligence certainly isn't trustworthy for American politics, yet Trump/GOP/MAGA/Turley trusts them and repeats their lies. In this type of case, yes, the FBI is certainly more trustworthy than Turley. It's still a fact that the FBI did praise Danchenko. (See Igor Danchenko#Value as FBI source.) Danchenko's value as a source for Steele should not be underestimated, and he was far from the only well-connected source used by Steele. There is even the court case against Danchenko where Judge Trenga kept swatting down Durham's dubious claims and acknowledged that Steele had other sources for the dossier than Danchenko. Trenga countered Durham's contention "that Danchenko was Steele's primary source of information for the Steele Reports writ large" by noting that Steele might have used other sources even more than Danchenko: "Nor is there any evidence that... Steele only, or almost entirely, used Danchenko as his source for the Reports." Durham's case was so faulty that Trenga acquitted Danchenko.

Durham had insinuated that Dolan was the source for the salacious claims in the dossier, but Durham had no solid evidence for that insinuation. Yet, Dolan was the source for the claims about Manafort in the dossier, and they were true. Danchenko's sources were the ones who told him about the old pee tape rumor, an old rumor that was "common knowledge around the Kremlin". The rumor started right after the 2013 Miss Universe contest, and Trump and Cohen have always known about it, yet Trump lies that it was a rumor created by Steele. That's nonsense, and Cohen testified as much. Ever since then he has been trying to locate the tapes and hush that rumor.

In my myriad Google Alerts, I just got more about Turley's association with unreliable sources, this time The Daily Caller. Anyone who is favorably associated with unreliable sources so much is a dubious source. It's just one more red flag. All these right-wing sources (many used to be center-right, but after Trump and MAGA they have gone whole hog off the deep end into pushing lies and conspiracy theories) are good indicators for who is reliable and who isn't. I keep an eye on those sources and recognize when editors are getting their (mis-/dis-)information from such sources. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 13:22, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

My post was a response in the previous thread, Valjean split it off and added a "WaPo ..." heading. In case that confused anyone: it's about the use of Mr Bump's article in the section "Legal status and comparison to Trump Tower meeting". Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:56, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh crap! Sorry about that. I have removed that heading. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:52, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

BTW, I think we have strayed into NOTFORUM territory, and I'm certainly guilty in that regard. This is not the place to carry on a meta-discussion about Turley, Russian interference, and many other related matters. We need to stick to the point of the "Legal status and comparison to Trump Tower meeting" section, so I'll try to do better.

Bump is not the only RS who accurately makes the point that the DNC/Clinton oppo research was legal, including the hiring of Steele, something the leaders of the Clinton campaign were not involved in and did not know about for some time. Also, other RS than Bump contrast the legal Steele/Fusion GPS oppo research with the illegal/unpatriotic and eager acceptance of many forms of Russian help by the Trump campaign. See: "The truth about Russia, Trump and the 2016 election", by Glenn Kessler.

Legitimate questions were raised by JoergenB when he started this thread, and I think he did an admirable job of fixing the problems. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:40, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

References

Fisa court

Wiki knows the following to be true since it writes: While the dossier played a central and essential role in the seeking of FISA warrants on Carter Page, it did not play any role in the intelligence community's assessment about Russian actions in the 2016 election, and it was not the trigger for the opening of the Russia investigation into whether the Trump campaign was coordinating with the Russian government's interference in the 2016 presidential election.

sources please. 2600:6C64:7D7F:8C6F:8C6D:A338:CA69:1DBE (talk) 22:51, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

They are found in the body of the article, especially this section:

• Steele dossier#Conspiracy theory it was trigger for start of investigation

There are plenty of references and links to whole articles with even more explanations and sources. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 00:14, 8 August 2024 (UTC)