# ...Buzzfeed were right to publish Christopher Steele's Trump Dossier. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 14, 2017, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buzzfeed-were-right-to-publish-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier/777161 "2017-01-14T21:32:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buzzfeed-were-right-to-publish-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier/777161/81 "2018-01-10T04:41:26Z")
He’s sensitive, and a bit withdrawn, like one of your more modest divas. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buzzfeed-were-right-to-publish-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier/777161/82 "2018-01-10T05:24:26Z")
…this is a good “tweet” summary of the transcripts of the hearings. [https://twitter.com/ECMcLaughlin/status/950884746082562048](https://twitter.com/ECMcLaughlin/status/950884746082562048) Some things that popped out for me: > [@](#): > > 27/ So why did they go to the FBI? "[L]et’s be clear, this was not considered by me to be part of the work that we were doing. This was – to me this was like, you know, you’re driving to work and you see something happen and you call 911, right.” (Tr. 164) > [@](#): > > 32/ Simpson flagged how serious it got within the Fusion investigation when, post-reporting to the FBI, the hacking of the Democrats continued, the RNC platform as to Ukraine changed, and Trump continued to say bizarrely favorable things about Russia. (Tr. 169-170) > [@](#): > > 38/ Then the @nytimes reported that the FBI looked into Trump/Russia and found nothing. Simpson calls this cluster “a real Halloween special.” (Tr. 178-179) > [@](#): > > 39/ And as a result, Steele stopped cooperating with the FBI. (Tr. 178-179) > [@](#): > > 45/ And then there is this explosive bit: Steele and Simpson weren’t sure that @Comey EVEN KNEW ABOUT THE ALLEGATIONS. Which would explain a lot. An awful lot. (Tr. 220-221) > [@](#): > > 59/ And lastly, just in case you thought this wasn’t as serious as it gets, one of Fusion GPS’s sources has already been murdered by the Russians. (Tr. 279) So just a quick summary: Steele reported his findings directly to the FBI. After reporting to the FBI the Democrats continued to be hacked, the RNC Ukraine policy changed, Trump continued to say positive things about Russia, information got leaked to the NYT and the NYT said nothing got found. It was at this stage Steele stopped co-operating with the FBI: he didn’t trust them. Steele and Fusion **don’t even think that the dossier made it to Comey.** For those that argued that the media should have kept the document hidden from the public: when would have been the correct time to release it? The dossier is still as “unverified” as it was this time last year. Should it still be kept under wraps? Even though the the transcripts from the hearing have been released? When the FBI can’t be trusted: don’t the press have a duty and responsibility to step up? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buzzfeed-were-right-to-publish-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier/777161/83 "2018-01-10T07:20:06Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > So just a quick summary: Steele reported his findings directly to the FBI. After reporting to the FBI the Democrats continued to be hacked, the RNC Ukraine policy changed, Trump continued to say positive things about Russia, information got leaked to the NYT and the NYT said nothing got found. It was at this stage Steele stopped co-operating with the FBI: he didn’t trust them. Steele and Fusion **don’t even think that the dossier made it to Comey.** > > For those that argued that the media should have kept the document hidden from the public: when would have been the correct time to release it? The dossier is still as “unverified” as it was this time last year. Should it still be kept under wraps? Even though the the transcripts from the hearing have been released? > > When the FBI can’t be trusted: don’t the press have a duty and responsibility to step up? Conceivably, people were working on it quietly and had their efforts flummoxed by the mass press alerting all of the perpetrators that the game was up. Conceivably, Buzzfeed will have saved the nation. Conceivably, Comey asked Buzzfeed to publish the dossier in order to trigger stage 2 of the investigation. Jim Comey and Robert Mueller are probably two of the few people in the world who could actually offer some form of educated opinion on the subject. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buzzfeed-were-right-to-publish-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier/777161/84 "2018-01-10T07:56:54Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Conceivably, people were working on it quietly and had their efforts flummoxed by the mass press alerting all of the perpetrators that the game was up. …which people are you talking about? The FBI? Steele had stopped co-operating with them. Were you talking about other press? Can you expand on who was working on it “quietly?” Can you expand on who had their efforts “flummoxed” by the Buzzfeed release? A year later the dossier is as “verified” as it was last year. Should the press have continued to have hidden it? Even though the senate transcripts have been released? > [@](#): > > Conceivably, Buzzfeed will have saved the nation. > > Conceivably, Comey asked Buzzfeed to publish the dossier in order to trigger stage 2 of the investigation. > > Jim Comey and Robert Mueller are probably two of the few people in the world who could actually offer some form of educated opinion on the subject. Last time around this thread was pretty much ruined by people posting “joke” posts. I would hope that we could avoid that again this time around. Comey couldn’t have offered much opinion on the dossier because apparently he wasn’t shown it (when Steele met with the FBI.) And Mueller is obviously looking at it now: but he wasn’t looking at it last year. So I don’t get your point. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buzzfeed-were-right-to-publish-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier/777161/85 "2018-01-10T20:48:48Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …which people are you talking about? The FBI? The FBI, the New York AG, the NSA, etc. > [@](#): > > Last time around this thread was pretty much ruined by people posting “joke” posts. I would hope that we could avoid that again this time around. Comey couldn’t have offered much opinion on the dossier because apparently he wasn’t shown it (when Steele met with the FBI.) And Mueller is obviously looking at it now: but he wasn’t looking at it last year. So I don’t get your point. There is more to the investigation than the dossier. There is a lot of signal intelligence, human intelligence, etc. that may have all shut down the day Buzzfeed released the dossier. Minus that, it’s conceivable that the investigators would have been able to keep collecting material and getting a chance at finding a smoking gun. It’s also possible that everything tightened up in September 2016, and so by the time Buzzfeed released, there was no harm on that front. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buzzfeed-were-right-to-publish-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier/777161/86 "2018-01-11T00:39:49Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The FBI, the New York AG, the NSA, etc. …Fusion were a private company who engaged a British citizen to find out information from Russian sources regarding an American subject. If the FBI, the New York AG, the NSA were all conducting investigations, why would the actions of a private company flummox them? The FBI knew what Fusion were up too. If they didn’t want to get “flummoxed”: then why didn’t they ask Fusion to keep the dossier secret? > [@](#): > > There is more to the investigation than the dossier. But Fusion and Steele have nothing to do with any of that. This thread is about the dossier. > [@](#): > > There is a lot of signal intelligence, human intelligence, etc. that may have all shut down the day Buzzfeed released the dossier. Minus that, it’s conceivable that the investigators would have been able to keep collecting material and getting a chance at finding a smoking gun. It’s also possible that everything tightened up in September 2016, and so by the time Buzzfeed released, there was no harm on that front. If the FBI was worried about any of that then they would have told Steele and I’m pretty sure he would have held the dossier back. But the FBI made no request. And Steele (based on the recently released transcripts) began to believe the FBI was compromised. They don’t even think that the dossier got to Comey. The concerns about the dossier back then had nothing to do with the FBI investigation, but to do with verification of the dossier. It wasn’t just Buzzfeed that had the dossier. They all had it. And they were all sitting on it. My question in the beginning was were the media right to withhold this document from the public? Is that their role? The latest: an editorial in the NYT from the Buzzfeed editors: > **[Opinion | I’m Proud We Published the Trump-Russia Dossier (Published 2018)](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/opinion/im-proud-we-published-the-trump-russia-dossier.html)** > > The president called the Steele report “fake news.” A year later, it’s clear that’s not the case. > [@](#): > > But we never bought the notion, made by the traditionalists, that a main threat to journalism is that journalists might be too transparent with their audience. Keeping the reporting process wrapped in mystery only helps those who oppose the free press. This is why The New York Times posts leaked audio recordings, and why news organizations routinely publish raw court documents underlying their articles. > > We strongly believed that publishing the disputed document whose existence we and others were reporting was in the public interest. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buzzfeed-were-right-to-publish-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier/777161/87 "2018-01-11T03:02:38Z")
I don’t really understand what the controversy is. The “dossier” was basically private detective work, not some top-secret CIA mission involving sensitive national security material. I don’t know whether Buzzfeed made the ‘right’ decision in releasing the dossier but in the tradition of the Pentagon papers and in the American free press, they did. There are different ethical dimensions to consider, but ultimately, the people have a right to know if their elections have been potentially compromised, if their president is capable of being blackmailed by a foreign adversary, and if the majority party is seemingly willing to abdicate its responsibilities to investigate potential treason. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buzzfeed-were-right-to-publish-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier/777161/88 "2018-01-11T14:17:59Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > The press had a responsibility to publish. Buzzfeed were right to publish. The rest of the media should be standing behind Buzzfeed: not throwing them under a bus. Go back to McBride’s question: > [@](#): > > So what good does printing this do if it can’t be established as fact? There’s the problem. The media these days prints any old shit it wants without corroboration or factual investigation. Books get printed where the author later says that the book was bullshit. TV stories are run that later have to be retracted, if they ever are. And the vast majority of people don’t seem to care any more. They then wonder why those of us that do care say that the media is corrupt and produces fake news. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buzzfeed-were-right-to-publish-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier/777161/89 "2018-01-11T15:15:11Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …Fusion were a private company who engaged a British citizen to find out information from Russian sources regarding an American subject. > > If the FBI, the New York AG, the NSA were all conducting investigations, why would the actions of a private company flummox them? > > The FBI knew what Fusion were up too. If they didn’t want to get “flummoxed”: then why didn’t they ask Fusion to keep the dossier secret? > > But Fusion and Steele have nothing to do with any of that. This thread is about the dossier. > > If the FBI was worried about any of that then they would have told Steele and I’m pretty sure he would have held the dossier back. But the FBI made no request. And Steele (based on the recently released transcripts) began to believe the FBI was compromised. They don’t even think that the dossier got to Comey. > > The concerns about the dossier back then had nothing to do with the FBI investigation, but to do with verification of the dossier. It wasn’t just Buzzfeed that had the dossier. They all had it. And they were all sitting on it. My question in the beginning was were the media right to withhold this document from the public? Is that their role? > > The latest: an editorial in the NYT from the Buzzfeed editors: > > [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/opinion/im-proud-we-published-the-trump-russia-dossier.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/opinion/im-proud-we-published-the-trump-russia-dossier.html) I feel like you’re trying to argue with someone, and that the someone isn’t me. I didn’t say anything related to almost anything you have written. We don’t have a control case for what would have happened had history gone a different way. That is my point, that is all that I have said or argued. If you think that you know that everything has played out in the best possible way, then just be happy with your confidence. But unless you have some evidence that we have sufficient information to know exactly how Buzzfeed affected the FBI’s investigation and, further, that it aided them to such an extent that Donald Trump would have never been arrested if it weren’t for that, then I’m going to remain unconvinced. The fact that Donald Trump is still president would strongly seem to counter the idea that reality has played out in the best possible manner. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buzzfeed-were-right-to-publish-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier/777161/90 "2018-01-11T22:39:15Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I feel like you’re trying to argue with someone, and that the someone isn’t me. I didn’t say anything related to almost anything you have written. …of course it relates. Further on this below. > [@](#): > > We don’t have a control case for what would have happened had history gone a different way. That is my point, that is all that I have said or argued. If you think that you know that everything has played out in the best possible way, then just be happy with your confidence. And this is the case for every single news story ever. What is it, about this story in particular, that makes things different? Every time anything happens there is potential for multiple timelines. > [@](#): > > But unless you have some evidence that we have sufficient information to know exactly how Buzzfeed affected the FBI’s investigation and, further, that it aided them to such an extent that Donald Trump would have never been arrested if it weren’t for that, then I’m going to remain unconvinced. Remember how I wrote that post that you dismissed as irrelevant? It applies here. It doesn’t matter if Buzzfeed affected FBI’s investigation. Because the dossier was information gathered by a private organization, filled with information that wasn’t secret, that the FBI did not object to a public release. I don’t need to provide evidence on how Buzzfeed affected the FBI investigation because my position is that Buzzfeed, absent either any requests or concerns for national security, was right to publish. (And remember: Fusion did everything it could to co-operate with the FBI until it started to appear the the FBI might have been compromised.) You say you “remain unconvinced.” What is it, exactly, are you unconvinced of? > [@](#): > > The fact that Donald Trump is still president would strongly seem to counter the idea that reality has played out in the best possible manner. Its my turn to ask you: what does this have to do with this thread? Donald Trump would still be president if Buzzfeed had published or not. Nobody thought that publishing it would result in the “best possible timeline.” So the fact that Donald Trump is still president isn’t counter to any idea posed by this thread at all. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buzzfeed-were-right-to-publish-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier/777161/91 "2018-01-11T22:50:29Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > Go back to McBride’s question: > > There’s the problem. The media these days prints any old shit it wants without corroboration or factual investigation. Books get printed where the author later says that the book was bullshit. TV stories are run that later have to be retracted, if they ever are. …do you hold the opinion that the dossier has no corroboration and was compiled with no “factual investigation?” Because while I agree that the media shouldn’t print “any old shit” I don’t think that the dossier fits that bill. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buzzfeed-were-right-to-publish-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier/777161.md?page=4)