Crime in Progress
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Other claims in the dossier have been corroborated. Steele alleged that the billionaire Russian bankers Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven were “giving informal advice to Putin, especially on the US.” The Steele memo also reported allegations about the history of their business activities in the 1990s. The Mueller report didn’t address that history, but disclosed that Aven had meetings with Putin on a quarterly basis, including in 2016, where they discussed U.S. relations. Aven said he took Putin’s suggestions or critiques as directives that could not be ignored without consequence.
In another memo, dated December 2016, Steele’s source identified an obscure Russian firm called XBT/Webzilla as having used “botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct ‘altering operations’ against the Democratic Party leadership.” Webzilla’s owner vehemently denied the claim, saying it didn’t control what content traveled across its servers. It sued BuzzFeed for defamation after it published the dossier—a case BuzzFeed eventually won. The Miami Herald reported that Webzilla was used by the Russian troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, for “meddling operations” in the United States during the election.
While these threads were being slowly borne out, the media and the public tended to fixate on the lurid claim contained in Steele’s first report: that Russian intelligence had recorded Donald Trump in 2013 cavorting in the Moscow Ritz-Carlton with prostitutes who urinated on a bed once slept in by Barack and Michelle Obama.
When the allegation surfaced, Orbis weighed whether to remove it from its reports, for fear that it would distract from the other reporting. They ultimately decided against doing so—Steele felt the allegation was important from a counterintelligence perspective. Russian kompromat against Trump would give them leverage over a future U.S. president. Fusion also had misgivings about being a conduit for such a tale. But when the decision was made to give the dossier to the authorities, Fusion saw value in keeping Steele’s reporting separate from its own work and decided not to edit it in any way.
So is the Ritz-Carlton allegation true? The answer still isn’t known, but some evidence supports the possibility.
Trump told FBI Director James Comey at a private dinner on January 27, 2017, that he had never even spent the night at the Ritz-Carlton when he visited Moscow in 2013 to host the Miss Universe pageant with the Agalarovs. It has since been established that he did spend the night. Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller recalled the offer of prostitutes in congressional testimony. Schiller said he turned down the offer and eventually left Trump alone at his room in the Ritz-Carlton that night.
A final tantalizing clue about the possibility of a “pee tape” came in a footnote buried deep within the Mueller report: “On October 30, 2016, Michael Cohen received a text from Russian businessman [Giorgi] Rtskhiladze that read: ‘Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know….’ Rtskhiladze said ‘tapes’ referred to compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group.” The Crocus Group is the real estate company of the Agalarov family, Trump’s partner in the Miss Universe contest.
Mueller’s report is silent on the significance of this exchange, whether it involves the Moscow Ritz-Carlton or some other incident, and whether the existence of these tapes was ever verified. It is yet another piece of vital information stubbornly beyond reach for now.
Steele remains confident that the Ritz allegation is not disinformation, a hoax, or the fabrication of a fantasist. Ultimately, whether the incident detailed in the dossier is true or not is likely not of paramount importance. The Russians had ample kompromat against Trump and his top aides with or without any pee tapes.
One of the biggest sources of confusion over the dossier, Steele always complained, was the erroneous assumption that the memos were based on spontaneous encounters with random Russians. “What people don’t know is that this is not an isolated group of sources, it is a network of tried and tested sources that have been proven up in many other matters,” Steele would complain. While the public and many in the media did not understand that, it was not something the FBI was ignorant of. Indeed, that is exactly why he was taken so seriously, and helps explain why so much of what Steele reported turned out in the long run to be correct. It is ironic that many journalists, of all people, failed to appreciate this, given their own dependence on well-placed sources to deliver the news out of Wall Street and Washington.
Another line of attack that galls Steele is the tendency to dismiss the dossier as “disinformation,” in part or in full.
“These people simply have no idea what they are talking about,” he said to Simpson. “I’ve spent my entire adult life working with Russian disinformation. It’s an incredibly complex subject that is at the very core of my training and my professional mission.”
In his view, one of the most important criteria for disinformation “is whether there is a palpable motive for spreading it, and whether that motive outweighs the downside effects of putting it out. The ultimate Russian goal was to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming president, and therefore, the idea that they would intentionally spread embarrassing information about Trump—true or not—is not logical.”
The idea that they would be using such tactics merely to discredit Steele is even more absurd. “The stakes were far, far too high for them to trifle with settling scores with me or any other civilian. Damaging my reputation was simply not on their list of priorities. But helping Trump and damaging Hillary was at the very top of it. No one denies that anymore.”
Steele has told associates that he remains confident that at least 70 percent of the assertions in the dossier are accurate. On that he hasn’t wavered.
* * *
—
Perhaps the most consequential claim in Steele’s memos is the description of a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between the Trump campaign and the Russian leadership.
Mueller’s report offers mountains of intriguing evidence of such a conspiracy, including more than 140 contacts—many of them surreptitious—between the Trump campaign and Russians. But he ultimately concluded that the evidence of a criminal conspiracy was insufficient for proving the case in court beyond a reasonable doubt.
That legal conclusion should not be mistaken for an exoneration. There is ample evidence amassed over the past three years to show that the Trump campaign and the Russian government repeatedly sought to work together to swing the 2016 election—and that they succeeded.
There is no other plausible explanation for Trump’s ongoing subservience to Putin’s agenda and the continuing campaign of obstruction and coordinated lies, in which several of Trump’s closest aides have opted to go to prison for long prison terms rather than tell the truth to investigators. Not only has Trump failed to respond to an attack on the United States by a hostile foreign power—he welcomed it and used it to achieve power. He continues to publicly support and praise the author of that attack while dismantling the American institutions he took an oath to defend.
The Trump campaign’s conspiring with Russia may not be a crime provable in federal court, but it amounts to one of the most significant betrayals in American history.
That, at its core, was the warning sounded by Fusion and Steele in 2016, a warning that remains as urgent today as it was then.
* An opinion memorandum from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded in 1973, and again in 2000, that the indictment of a sitting president would “unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch.” While the opinion did not have the force of law, it was considered DOJ policy. As a DOJ prosecutor, Mueller would have had to request that the OLC opinions be revisited and overturned in order to criminally indict Trump. Such a move would likely have been challenged inside the DOJ and the courts. See Randolph D. Moss, Office of Legal Counsel, “A Sitting President’s
Amenability to Indictment and Criminal Prosecution,” October 16, 2000, https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/2000/10/31/op-olc-v024-p0222_0.pdf.
Glenn:
For Mary, Max, and Charlie
Peter:
For Mom, Dad, Lynn, and the kids
This book is a product of the some of the finest investigative work we’ve ever been associated with—and we’ve worked and competed with a lot of terrific investigators over the course of our careers at The Wall Street Journal and beyond. Our colleagues at Fusion stand alongside the best of them. They don’t get headlines or share their work on Twitter, but the Fusion team is among the most dedicated and creative group of writers and researchers working today. This book is theirs too.
Our point man on Project Bangor was, and is, Jacob Berkowitz. We dare say there is no one out there who knows more about the many business entanglements of Donald Trump. The late Village Voice muckraker Wayne Barrett, the first reporter to take Trump seriously, would have loved comparing notes with Jake. Research aces Patrick Corcoran, Laura Seago, Jay Bagwell, and David Michaels made important discoveries too numerous to mention. Taylor Sears, our in-house expert on offshore shell companies, helped unpack the many secrets of Paul Manafort. Thanks to Erica McMillon, who always keeps the trains running on time.
There were many people outside our company, in the United States and overseas, who also made valuable contributions to our understanding of Trump’s record. We won’t name them here, for obvious reasons. We do, however, want to single out the work of Nellie Ohr and her fellow Russian linguist and researcher Edward Baumgartner. Donald Trump and the right-wing commentariat he apes have portrayed Nellie as some sort of partisan warrior. In truth, she is an incredibly accomplished Russia expert who is meticulous in her research—and a person of impeccable character. We’re proud to know her.
Chris Steele and Chris Burrows are gentlemen of grace and good humor. History will remember them for acting out of a sense of duty when many others dithered, and doing so without the expectation of recognition or thanks. The past few years have brought us closer as friends, and for that we are equally grateful. We thank them and their colleagues at Orbis. Daniel Jones was brave and foolish enough to step forward and work with us at precisely the moment when the political attacks on us were most intense. We won’t forget that, nor will we forget those who stepped forward to support him and keep our work going.
Mary Jacoby, who partnered with Glenn twenty-five years ago when both were young reporters, has been an invaluable sounding board and supported Glenn through all of his endeavors.
We wish we didn’t have so many lawyers to thank, but we do. Bill Taylor, Steve Salky, Bob Muse, Ted Boutrous, Rachel Cotton, Rachel Clattenburg, and their teams provided sage counsel and support in some very difficult times. Our old friend Stuart Karle painstakingly reviewed the manuscript. Joshua Levy deserves special recognition: lawyer, therapist, foxhole friend for life. Thank you.
We also want to recognize the great work of the many journalists on the Trump beat, both before the 2016 election and in its aftermath. As this book recounts, a lot of outstanding journalism was committed that got drowned out in the noise of a national election. It was out there, hiding in plain sight, if you looked closely enough.
Everyone needs a good editor. We were lucky enough to have three. Our partners Tom Catan and Jason Felch are great writers and thinkers, who made valuable contributions to the text (and helped keep our ship afloat through some very heavy seas). From the start, our old Wall Street Journal friend and Fusion colleague Neil King was this book’s bureau chief, wrangling copy, resolving impasses, and contributing a significant share of the writing himself. We’re getting the bylines on this one, but this book is as much Neil’s as anybody’s. We can’t thank him enough.
Thanks to our editor Andy Ward at Random House. At one point, Andy described one draft chapter as a “goiter on the book.” If you can’t identify it, thank him. Our agent, Tina Bennett, was patient, kind, and encouraging throughout. Our in-house copy maven Holly Yeager let no error pass. The fastidious Halle Rudolf and Frances King, worked tirelessly to create our endnotes, index, and bibliography, catching many errors along the way. They’ll soon be in the job market. Hire them.
Finally, thanks to our families and the families of everyone mentioned above. Only you know how strange and difficult the past few years have been. We thank you and love you.
In some ways, research on this book began in Brussels in the mid-2000s, when we worked on stories for The Wall Street Journal highlighting the odd marriage of money and convenience between Republican political consultants and Putin’s Russia. That work, and our own research in 2015 and early 2016, helped us recognize the importance of Christopher Steele’s explosive source reporting.
But we had other good reasons to believe that Steele’s sources were credible. We can only go so far in this book, unfortunately, in explaining why we thought that, and still do. Steele has explained to us how some of his sources were in a position to know what they reported and why he thinks their information is credible. In some cases, we know who these people are.
Ideally, we would have quoted extensively from internal and external communications. That wasn’t always possible, because much of our communications on Project Bangor occurred over end-to-end encrypted messaging applications that do not store traffic. Those messages are gone. In some cases, people with whom we communicated saved our exchanges and allowed us to review them. We’re grateful for their help in re-creating certain scenes and dialogue. Other dialogue we re-created from memory. Where possible, we checked our recollection of events against that of other participants and the public record, such as congressional testimony.
In our endnotes, we’ve done our best to cite source material to primary and official documents, such as published works, media accounts, court filings, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, and official government and congressional transcripts.
The nature of our engagement with the law firm Perkins Coie prevents us from recounting our communications after we were retained. We described one meeting with Marc Elias that occurred before we were hired. Perkins has not released us from our obligations to keep our communications confidential, nor have other clients.
Under pressure from Republicans in Congress, some of our clients provided limited waivers to our confidentiality agreements so that various committees could question us and examine some of our records.
We generally don’t talk about our dealings with reporters because those discussions are conducted on a confidential basis by mutual agreement. We avoided disclosing the details of our dealings with individual reporters unless those interactions had already come to light in congressional investigations or other public accounts. In some cases, we recount discussions with journalists with their express permission. There are several instances, however, in which we believe news organizations and individual reporters voided their confidentiality agreements with us by publishing details of their off-the-record communications with Fusion.
Finally, we relied on many outstanding books on Donald Trump and Russia under Vladimir Putin, which informed our understanding of these subjects and helped us make our own observations about the events of 2016 and beyond.
CHAPTER ONE: “I THINK WE HAVE A PROBLEM”
Senator McCain, still many months from a dire brain cancer diagnosis, wanted to put a copy of Steele’s memos in front of FBI Director James Comey: Manu Raju, “Graham Encouraged McCain to Turn Trump-Russia Dossier Over to FBI,” CNN, March 25, 2019.
The story blew open: Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper, and Carl Bernstein, The Situation Room, CNN, January 10, 2017.
“Classified documents on Russian interference”: Ibid.
“compiled by a former British”: Perez et al., The Situation Room, January 20, 2017.
“potentially a crime in progress”: Testimony of Glenn Simpson, Senate Judiciary Committee, August 22, 2017.
published Steele’s reports to Fusion: Ken Bensinger, Mark Schoofs, and Miriam Elder, “These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties to Russia,” BuzzFeed News, January 10, 2017.
The dossier’s shocking main thesis: A series of raw intelligence reports from Orbis to Fusion GPS, June 20, 2016–December 13, 2016, now commonly referred to as “the dossier.”
Later that day, the paper: Bradley Hope, Michael Rothfeld, and Alan Cullison, “Christopher Steele, Ex–British Intelligence Officer, Said to Have Prepared Dossier on Trump,” Wall Street Journal, January 11, 2017.
the FBI had looked into suspected Russia ties: Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers, “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia,” New York Times, October 31, 2016.
the Times published a front-page story: Scott Shane, “What We Know and Don’t Know About the Trump-Russia Dossier,” New York Times, January 11, 2017.
Trump weighed in: Donald Trump, news conference, New York, January 11, 2017.
“a garbage document”: Bob Woodward, Fox News Sunday, Fox News, January 15, 2017.
“Thank you Bob Woodward”: Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Twitter, January 15, 2017, 12:04 P.M.