Ohhhh: New York Times Reports That It's Very Possible the Entire Steele Dossier Was Itself Kremlin Disinformation

Didn't they dismiss this possibility for two and a half years and also smear anyone who noticed the entire basis of this conspiracy theory that Trump was a Kremlin asset actually came from Kremlin assets?!

Oh right, they did do exactly that.

And now, as Pitch Meeting Guy would say:

Whoops.

Whoopsie!

Now the dossier, financed by Hillary Clinton's campaign and compiled by a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, is likely to face new, possibly harsh scrutiny from multiple inquiries.

Republicans in Congress have vowed to investigate. The Justice Department's inspector general is considering whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation improperly relied on the dossier in applying to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a warrant to eavesdrop on Carter Page, a Trump adviser. The inspector general wants to know what the F.B.I. learned about Mr. Steele's sources and whether it disclosed any doubts about their veracity to the court.

The Times spends a few paragraphs alibiing the Clinton campaign and Steele (and themselves) by explaining all the ways in which this dossier could have been completely wrong, and yet innocently so.

Only after those alibis do they venture another guess:

Another possibility -- one that Mr. Steele has not ruled out -- could be Russian disinformation. That would mean that in addition to carrying out an effective attack on the Clinton campaign, Russian spymasters hedged their bets and placed a few land mines under Mr. Trump’s presidency as well.

Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who now lives outside Washington, saw that as plausible. "Russia has huge experience in spreading false information," he said.

Mr. Steele declined to comment for this article.

Of course, The Daily Caller reported on that possibility weeks ago, when the media was still dismissing the possibility as a conspiracy theory which couldn't possibly be true because it disagreed with their own preferred conspiracy theory.

No Matter How Cynical I Get I Can't Keep Up Update: MikeN brings up a possibility I didn't think of -- what if this new claim is itself a cover story?

173 Ace, don't fall for this. This is being leaked by the same people who were leaking against Trump before. The purpose is to try and protect the fact the dossier was written not by Russians, but by the people who wanted to spy on Trump.

Well, actually... right. Certainly they were paid to deliver a product with specified dimensions and, whaddayaknow, their paid Kremlin-asset "sources" just happened to tell them stories that fit their design.

So yes, this is at least mostly true. But is there a chance that they colluded with Putin to interfere with an election?

I'd say yes-- they just might have been spreading Russian disinformation knowingly. With both sets of partners in the conspiracy getting the political results they wanted.

posted by Ace of Spades at 05:05 PM

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