Yet the press ran with it. On Sept. 23, 2016, Yahoo News’s Michael Isikoff published a bombshell story under the headline: “U.S. intel officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin.” Mr. Isikoff said “U.S. officials” had “received intelligence” about Mr. Page and Russians, and then went on to recite verbatim all the unfounded dossier allegations. He attributed all this to a “well-placed Western intelligence source,” making it sound as if this info had come from someone in government rather than from an ex-spy-for-hire.
The Clinton campaign jumped all over it, spinning its own oppo research as a government investigation into Mr. Trump. Jennifer Palmieri, the campaign’s communications director, the next day took to television to tout the Isikoff story and cite “U.S. intelligence officials” in the same breath as Mr. Page. Other Clinton surrogates fanned out on TV and Twitter to spread the allegations.
The Isikoff piece publicly launched the Trump-Russia collusion narrative…
Kim also raised the question whether FISA warrants on figures around the Trump campaign were procured in part on basis of the dossier. She concluded that “it is fair to ask if the entire Trump-Russia narrative—which has played a central role in our political discourse for a year, and is now resulting in a special counsel issuing unrelated indictments—is based on nothing more than a political smear document.” She asked: “Is there any reason to believe the FBI was probing a Trump-Russia angle before the dossier? Is there any collusion allegation that doesn’t come in some form from the dossier?”
The dirty trick on Roy Moore is fast out-pacing the dossier dirty trick.
As far as I have seen, there is no evidence that Steele presented this to journalists prior to the election ... merely his claim.
Consider a different scenario: this dossier was never meant to see the light of day because it would have been shredded in five minutes, as indeed was the case.
The purpose of the dossier, and the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. which we now find out was a set-up arranged by Fusion GPS, was to give the FBI enough supposed evidence for a FISA warrant to bug Trump and his associates. No one expected they would find “evidence” of collusion with Russia. What they expected to find was lots of nefarious dealings, but it turns out, much to their disappointment that with Trump, what you see is pretty much what you get.
Step 2: Hillary is elected, and the dossier is never found out to be the fake basis of the wiretaps that uncovered the unrelated dirt that won her the election.
But then she isn’t elected, and all of the above is going to come out, so they then need to spin the story about collusion in the press, to cover their own butts.
In that scenario, we have Watergate on steroids, with the press playing Nixon’s praetorian guard.
Why does anyone even listen to Hillary after she was caught lying about the dossier. She said that allegations of her involvement were bologna. Now she freely admits paying for the bologna, ordering the bologna and eating the bologna.