The Steele dossier, revisitedSpecial counsel Robert Mueller has spoken. A redacted version of his 448-page report has been released. So how does the raw intelligence contained in...
| |  | | Democracy Dies in Darkness | | | | | | | | | | The truth behind the rhetoric | | | | | | The Steele dossier, revisited Special counsel Robert Mueller has spoken. A redacted version of his 448-page report has been released. So how does the raw intelligence contained in the Steele dossier hold up now, under the cold light of Mueller's fact-finding? The "dossier" consists of more than a dozen memos, based on conversations with Russian sources, that were written between June and December 2016 by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. It's a compendium of raw, unverified intelligence. The FBI's counterintelligence operation into whether Russia was assisting the Trump campaign was not prompted by the dossier. But the FBI was aware of the document and used Steele as a source. Mueller was looking for criminal acts, not seeking to confirm the dossier. In fact, Steele is rarely mentioned in the Mueller report. But some key elements of the Steele dossier certainly appear in grave doubt. Others hold up. We did a side-by-side comparison of some key claims. For example, Memo 95 from Steele said, "TRUMP associate admits Kremlin behind recent appearance of DNC e-mails on WikiLeaks, as means of maintaining plausible deniability." That's accurate. Mueller reached the same conclusion. Memo 113 said, "Two knowledgeable St Petersburg sources claim Republican candidate TRUMP has paid bribes and engaged in sexual activities there but key witnesses silenced and evidence hard to obtain." The Mueller report, however, does not describe any bribes paid by Trump. There is no indication Mueller investigated this allegation. |  | | Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this e-mail was forwarded to you, sign up here, for the weekly newsletter. Hear something fact-checkable? Send it here, we'll check it out. The Four Pinocchio claim hanging over the Supreme Court's census case The Trump administration's move to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census landed at the Supreme Court on Tuesday. In other words, the justices heard arguments about a Four-Pinocchio claim by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau and approved the question last year, claimed in congressional testimony that the Justice Department "initiated the request for inclusion of the citizenship question." But, as part of this court case, emails were released showing that Ross was talking to top Trump advisers and maneuvering to add the citizenship question months before the Justice Department sent a letter in December 2017 with a formal request. The emails show that Ross pressed Justice Department officials behind the scenes to send him the question and then, in public, claimed it was their idea, not his. Concealing the real basis for the decision is a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, according to the three lower-court judges who have considered the case and ruled to block the citizenship question. "Because Secretary Ross's stated rationale was not his actual rationale, he did not comply with the APA's requirement that he 'disclose the basis of [his]' decision," U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman wrote in his January opinion. It might be a stretch to say this all comes down to whether Ross was telling the truth, but because it's one of the APA violations that Furman found, it's a key part of the case before the Supreme Court. | | | We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can also reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @mmkelly22, @rizzoTK or use #FactCheckThis), or Facebook (Fact Checker). Read about our rating scale here, and sign up here for our weekly Fact Checker newsletter. Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. — Salvador Rizzo | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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