The journalist who was among the first to report on the Trump-Russia dossier suspects many of the allegations made in former British spy Christopher Steele’s collection of memos are “likely false.”
Yahoo chief investigative reporter Michael Isikoff was one of the journalists who met with Steele during the 2016 campaign. On Sept. 23, 2016, he wrote an article about former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, which outlined how Page had attracted law enforcement’s attention for allegedly trying to establish back channels between the campaign and Russia and for discussing the lifting of sanctions with Moscow-linked officials. The article was frequently cited during congressional investigations into whether the Justice Department and FBI abused surveillance powers by gathering information on Page, a U.S. citizen, after obtaining warrants based on Steele’s unverified work.
Despite reporting accusations made by Steele, Isikoff told John Ziegler’s Free Speech Broadcasting podcast that many of the claims had still not been corroborated.
“In broad strokes, Christopher Steele was clearly onto something, that there was a major Kremlin effort to interfere in our elections, that they were trying to help Trump’s campaign, and that there was multiple contacts between various Russian figures close to the government and various people in Trump’s campaign,” Isikoff said Saturday. “When you actually get into the details of the Steele dossier, the specific allegations, we have not seen the evidence to support them, and, in fact, there’s good grounds to think that some of the more sensational allegations will never be proven and are likely false.”
Steele’s dossier was funded in part by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, conservative outlet the Washington Free Beacon, the Democratic National Committee, and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It contained unsubstantiated claims that Russian intelligence operatives filmed President Trump with prostitutes urinating on a Moscow hotel bed and that Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen traveled to Prague in August 2016 to make arrangements with agents of Moscow to hack data beneficial to then-candidate Trump. Trump and Cohen have vehemently denied the accusations. The FBI’s inquiry into connections between the Trump campaign and Russia eventually led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.
Isikoff added that Mueller’s investigation may not be as probative as some pundits hope or believe.
“Why wasn’t he charged with lying about it if that’s what he did? That would have been as serious a lie as the lie he told about the Trump Tower Moscow project,” Isikoff said, alluding to Cohen. “I could be wrong about this. There are other cards that Mueller may have to play. But all the signs to me are that Mueller is reaching his end game, and we may see less than what many people want him to find.”
Cohen pleaded guilty last month to lying to Congress about the Trump Organization real estate deal. He was sentenced to two months in prison for the charge, which was brought by Mueller’s team. It will be served concurrently with the three years he received as part of the case he faced in New York for campaign finance violations, and tax and bank fraud.
