We interrupt your daily news routine to put this forthcoming New Yorker profile, titled “Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Trump Dossier,” on your radar.
You’re probably going to hear a lot about this report in the coming weeks, especially the story’s most noteworthy claim, which comes from former British spy Christopher Steele.
The short version is this: The Russians reportedly had input when President Trump was hunting for secretary of state candidates in 2016. More specifically, the Russians supposedly vetoed Trump’s initial idea of going with 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, according to Steele.
The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer writes:
One subject that Steele is believed to have discussed with Mueller’s investigators is a memo that he wrote in late November, 2016, after his contract with Fusion had ended. This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as “a senior Russian official.”
The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he’d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney. (During Romney’s run for the White House in 2012, he was notably hawkish on Russia, calling it the single greatest threat to the U.S.) The memo said that the Kremlin, through unspecified channels, had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions, and who would cooperate on security issues of interest to Russia, such as the conflict in Syria.
I’m leery of any story that originates with Steele. His past work, including the infamous Trump/Russia dossier, has been less than, shall we say, convincing. So, I’d recommend taking this Romney allegation with a grain of salt. The New Yorker article itself refers to this November 2016 memo as “fantastical.”
Then again, as Mayer notes, this story would finally explain the absolutely bizarre Romney/Trump meeting two years ago. It’d explain why the Massachusetts governor didn’t get the gig, even after he publicly embraced and supported Trump. It’d explain why, practically out of nowhere, Trump announced on Dec. 13, 2016, that Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson had landed the job. Then again, it wouldn’t explain the president approving the sale of 210 missiles and 37 launchers to Ukraine.
“The choice was a surprise to most, and a happy one in Moscow, because Tillerson’s business ties with the Kremlin were long-standing and warm. (In 2011, he brokered a historic partnership between ExxonMobil and Rosneft.) After the election, Congress imposed additional sanctions on Russia, in retaliation for its interference, but Trump and Tillerson have resisted enacting them,” Mayer writes.
Russian input is a tidy theory that finally makes sense of the Romney debacle. However, without corroborating evidence, and so long as this story begins and ends with Steele, readers would be wise to treat it as just a theory.
