Perspectives: Durham Probe Indicts Steele Dossier Source
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Last Thursday, the primary source for the 2016 “Steele dossier” of allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump was arrested and charged with lying to the FBI.
The charges came as part of special counsel John Durham’s probe of the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The source, Russian analyst Igor Danchenko, provided British ex-spy Christopher Steele with information, much of which the FBI said was based on exaggerations and lies. The Durham probe’s indictment also alleges that some of Danchenko’s information came not from the Kremlin, but from an unnamed person active in Democratic politics who was later confirmed to be Charles Dolan Jr.
Outlets from across the spectrum published opinion articles on the indictment. News coverage was much more common and prominent on the right, with some right-rated outlets reporting on the Washington Post (Lean Left) media columnist’s criticism of outlets like CNN and MSNBC for advancing an anti-Trump narrative without proper evidence. Updated 11/9 at 5:04 p.m. ET with new articles.
Featured Coverage of this Story
From the Center
Indictment of Steele dossier source is more bad news for multiple media outlets
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow in December 2017 aired a special report on the Trump-Russia dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. That document, claimed Maddow, relied on information coming from Steele’s “deep cover sources inside Russia.”
A federal indictment unsealed Thursday has something to say about the quality of those “sources.”
It charges Igor Danchenko, the dossier’s primary intelligence collector, with making false statements to the FBI about his interactions with sources consulted for the dossier. Danchenko isn’t a deep-cover type; he’s a Russian national living in the...
From the Right
The Dossier Deceit
We learn from special counsel John Durham’s indictment of Igor Danchenko that “the FBI ultimately devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate the allegations” in the now-infamous Steele dossier. “Ultimately” is right — but not before it relied on the shoddy document to surveil an American citizen in an investigation that produced the Mueller probe and a two-year-long obsession with Trump and Russian built on a preposterous foundation.
The web of deceit is a tangled one, but while the indictment details a shocking story of transnational dirty tricks weaponized at the highest level...
From the Left
The Crippling Blow for the Steele Dossier
Christopher Steele, the former MI6 spy who compiled the notorious dossier during the 2016 campaign alleging ties between Donald Trump and Russia, made a splash a few weeks back when he gave his first interview about it. Steele described his professionalism as an intelligence-gatherer to George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and then doubled down on some of the dossier’s most salacious allegations, asserting, among other things, that the infamous “pee tape” involving Trump may be still out there, just waiting to be found.
Since BuzzFeed published Steele’s reports in 2017, many of the...
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