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DEMOCRATS REALLY, REALLY LOVED THE PEE TAPE: How much did Democrats embrace the discredited Steele dossier? And how much did they embrace the most discredited part of the discredited dossier, the allegation that in a room in the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel in 2013, private citizen Donald Trump watched as prostitutes performed a kinky sex act — while Russian spies captured it all on videotape? One answer is found in the newly-released transcripts of interviews conducted by the House Intelligence Committee as part of its Trump-Russia investigation.
Remember what the dossier said. It alleged that in 2013, when private citizen Trump was in Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant, some very funky stuff occurred in his room. Just for those who might have forgotten, here it is:
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It never happened. Steele’s source told investigators the pee tape story came from a statement he had heard made it jest. It was never serious. There was no evidence to support it. Even Christopher Steele himself did not dare claim it was true. Yet the nation’s top intel chiefs were so excited in January 2017 that they decided to brief President-elect Trump about it. The briefing leaked, leading to publication of the entire dossier. And the “pee tape” became an obsession in some quarters of the Resistance.
On November 17, 2017, the House committee interviewed Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller, who accompanied Trump on the Moscow trip. Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell took it upon himself to try to get Schiller to corroborate the pee tape story. But since the episode did not happen, there was no corroboration to be had. So Swalwell asked question after question, pursuing Schiller for incriminating details, leading to enlightening exchanges like this:
Q: “What do you remember about the hotel?”
A: “It was nice.”
Q: “And was it the nicest room in the hotel that you stayed at?”
A: “Well, I don’t know if it was the nicest one. I only stayed in one.”
Swalwell even produced a photo of a room in the Ritz-Carlton, leading to more instructive testimony:
Q: “Does it look like the hotel room that Mr. Trump stayed in when he went to Moscow, the 2013 trip?”
A: “I don’t recall — we’ve been in thousands of hotel rooms. It could be one of any. But it looks like a nice room.”
Q: “Looks like a room that Mr. Trump might stay in?”
A: “I’d stay there.”
As Republicans stifled laughter, Swalwell went on and on, asking Schiller about this or that Russian that he had never heard of. It would be years before news broke that the FBI had learned early on that the dossier and the pee tape were nonsense. Now, thanks to the release of the House interviews, the public can see how seriously Democrats took the dossier long after it should have been debunked.
