So when he says that he thinks the infamous Trump dossier is a Russian fabrication designed to sow discord in our government he isn’t talking through his hat. He says that the document bears the marks of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) disinformation and that the perception that the Russians cared one way or another who won the election is false. They simply wanted to be a disruptive and destabilizing influence no matter who won. So far, so good.
And it also has to be pointed out that the allegations, whether of financial or sexual–hmm, what word to use? Improprieties? Irregularities?–whatever, would have no credibility at all if Trump’s life were not filled with such whatevers. In other words, we have elected a man whose life lends credence to the vilest of rumors.
But I do wonder a bit about this whole “Russia made it up” theory. The source through which the intel was funneled, Christopher Steele, a former British M16 agent who now runs his own security firm, doesn’t seem to me to be an easy mark. And he passed the dossier on to US intelligence even though it was very much against his interests to do so. (He’s had to go into hiding since his identity was revealed.) The dossier has been out there since the summer, but everyone in the intelligence community kept their lips firmly buttoned. All that seeped out were a few speculations that Trump’s unending praise for Putin might have something to do with the Russians having damaging info on him, perhaps picked up during Trump’s visit to Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe pageant. (Beauty pageants! Strip clubs! Casinos! But I digress.)
It seems to me that if this was misinformation being fed to a duped source as a way of making mischief in the election and the material wasn’t getting out because people were being so discreet, for Heaven’s sake, that the FSB would have made sure it got out some other way. I’m sure there’s glee in the halls of the Kremlin at the spectacle of this debacle, but I do question the strategy that’s being ascribed to the Russian operatives.
To sum up: We have a pair of mutually-exclusive conclusions:
1. The Russians fabricated the material about Trump to as a means of causing trouble during the election season and fed it to a source that US intelligence would find credible. In this case, there would be every reason in the world for the FSB (if that’s the entity that dreamed it up) to make sure the dossier was publicized. But they don’t seem to have done that. (Satter says that one of the stories in the dossier bears a resemblance to a story planted about him on his Wikipedia page. But the only similarity is that they are both sexual in nature. And note that in Satter’s case the story was publicized.)
2. The Russians do indeed have damaging material on Trump, of which this dossier is probably just a sample. But in this case it’s to the Russians’ advantage to keep the info secret. Once the info gets out, its power to blackmail is lost. So the narrative of Russian agents leaking the dossier to Steele for pay seems to me more likely than alternative #1.
Either way, the whole situation is utterly and completely disgraceful, and the President-elect is only making things worse. Now, let’s just speculate on what a decent, honorable man would have said when faced with these allegations. Perhaps something along the lines of, “I have never been unfaithful to my wife and my personal life will bear any scrutiny.”
Oops.
What did Trump say? That he’s aware that there are security cameras all over the place in Russian hotels. And that he’s a “germaphobe.” (I didn’t know what he was referring to when I first heard him say that and won’t spell it out now.) If that isn’t a ringing endorsement of his innocence, I don’t know what is!
Well, perhaps you’d better read the article.