Humint isn’t completely reliable, as Steele himself stated. He said some things were more likely to be true than others, particularly those that were corroborated through different avenues. He was professional. It was the reaction that wasn’t, and of course he was scapegoated for doing his job properly.
Nevertheless, saying that just because things haven’t been proven yet means that they’re untrue isn’t even a fallacy, it’s a fantasy. Looking at you, Trumpists.
Certain allegations in the dossier have subsequently been verified.
The main one being that Trump was the Kremlin’s favored candidate. This is pretty huge and it’s somewhat remarkable that anyone could have missed it.
Among other minor revelations is that Carter Page’s Russia trip included secret meetings with high level Rosneft and Kremlin officials. Page initially denied that these meetings took place, but later admitted that they occurred confirming reports in the dossier.
I’m pretty sure this was widely speculated about prior to the dossier being compiled. (I had this type of thing in mind when I wrote in my initial post on the subject “… which was not known prior to its publication …”)
My recollection is that Page acknowledged having minor interactions with these people, of the mix-and-mingle type that you would expect from two people attending the same conference. The people he acknowledged meeting were not the same people he was alleged by the dossier to have met. Best as I can tell, the only thing confirmed was that a guy who lectured at a conference in Russia met some Russians along the way. Nothing prescient about that.
This is completely separate issue from what we’ve been discussing. But fine, moving on …
I’ve covered this ground already. Steele is a standup guy by all accounts. Not disputing that. The problem with relying too much on his reputation is that he was hired for the specific purpose of coming up with damaging info on Trump. He wasn’t hired to “find out the facts, whatever they might be”.
It’s (somewhat) like a guy hiring a lawyer with an excellent reputation to represent him. No matter how competent that lawyer, you couldn’t treat what he says about that case as if he were an unbiased outside observer commenting on the case.
In that same way, you can’t compare Steele’s reliability when working for an intelligence agency - where the goal is to find out the truth - to his reliability when doing opposition research - where the goal is to dig up negative things about the other guy.
Your recollection is incorrect.
This is not typical mix-and-mingle.
Here’s a question for you. I wonder if you can answer this. You’ve ostensibly quoted a summary of a portion of Page’s testimony but with no link. And you’ve also cited it in a completely distorted manner, where the distortions just happen to favor the point you’re trying to make. Why is that?
Here’s a link to Page’s actual testimony. The discussion you’re referring to is on pages 138-140. And Page most definitely does not say that there was any discussion of a “payoff” or that anything was “offered” to him. He pretty emphatically denies that there was any suggestion of his involvement in anything to do with such a sale. Rather, that he doesn’t recall whether the topic of the potential sale came up at all but that it may have come up in passing because it was industry chatter at the time.
This is hugely different in context of this discussion. What’s up?
Because I copied and pasted directly from the cite I linked to earlier in my immediately previous post.
After rereading his testimony right now, I am more convinced than ever that the Rosneft guys offered him a payoff. Thanks for the link. Saved me the time of digging it up.
I’m not sure if you’re confused about what this discussion is about or if you’re just trying to save face by doubling down.
What we’re discussing is whether any significant facts revealed by the Steele dossier were subsequently confirmed. Your incorrect quote alleging that Page acknowledged having discussed a payoff offered a smidgeon of support for that. But since in fact Page said nothing of the sort, you have nothing. The fact that you personally are “more convinced than ever” is of no relevance to this (or anything else).
The dossier alleged that Page met with Russian oil company execs and high up Kremlin officials. Page initially denied that any such meetings occurred. He later confirmed the dossier to be correct. This is a significant fact revealed by the dossier.
Here we go round the mulberry bush …
After rereading a lot of Carter Page testimony, I’m starting to see why you are so enamored with him. You have similar rhetorical styles.
I get that you think Page’s contacts with Russians were normal mix and mingle and not shady in the least but your position does not align with the facts.
Carter Page, a self professed unofficial advisor to the Kremlin, denied then later admitted meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia in Moscow, while he was working for a campaign that was secretly being aided by the Kremlin at the time.
The problem with dealing with someone like yourself, so completely untethered to the facts, is that there are no limits at all on what you can spew out, and it gets tedious to document that you’re wrong.
Carter Page “admitted meeting” the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia in the form of a 5-10 second greeting/handshake interaction. (See the testimony transcript linked above, pages 36 & 111.)
Furthermore, the dossier did not allege that Carter Page had ever met the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia (it alleged meetings with other officials).
[I don’t believe you that Carter Page denied meeting the guy before “admitting” it, but it’s irrelevant to the dossier issue and I can’t be bothered to look this up.]
To reiterate what I said before, Carter Page acknowledged interacting with some Russian energy and government officials while at a public energy conference in Russia. There’s nothing at prescient about that.
I believe that suffices and I don’t anticipate responding further to more of the same from you.
I find a fundamental problem of giving Carter Page’s account of events any deference in terms of being a basis for ground truth. The guy is a complete nut.
Knock it off. If you want to engage in minutiae about the dossier, alleged coordination with Russians, etc. that’s fine and this is the place for it. This is not the place to insult other posters.
[/moderating]
That’s very possible. But the point here is that he did not confirm the dossier allegations, in any meaningful sense.
You want to say you think he’s lying and/or that you trust the dossier over him, that’s something else. But you can’t say that he confirmed the dossier allegations in his congressional testimony when he pretty explicitly said the opposite (unless you characterize the dossier allegations so vaguely and broadly so as to be virtually meaningless).
On the one hand, it took some tooth pulling just to get him to admit that all of the meetings and conversations he was said to have had, he actually had. (Note: He confirmed the existence of conversations, not the content.) Generally, that would be pretty good evidence that he did do something bad, just as it would be very telling if it is indeed provable that Cohen was in Prague.
On the other hand, it’s just as likely that he confirmed them with the hope that by doing so, it would help to keep himself in the news.
Ultimately, Page is such an unreliable witness that - like Veselnitskaya - there’s not much value in analyzing his answers.
That seems a bit circular. Page’s story is that virtually none of these meetings were really meetings in any real sense, they were all or virtually all just perfunctory greetings or the like. As he put it, he “met” them (or may have met them, in some cases), he didn’t “have a meeting” with them. Assuming that happens to be true, then his point was that he didn’t really have any meetings with any of these people, and only acknowledged later having met them when pressed about it because he was covering all his bases and didn’t want to be accused of lying if it later emerged that he shook hands with so-and-so (a reasonable fear, IMO).
Of course, he might be lying about all of that. But either version would explain that “it took some tooth pulling”. So you can’t prove which version is correct from that fact.
My sense is that Mueller has lost interest in Page, and he will ultimately turn out to have been a red herring. Just another of a series of oddballs and fringe characters who managed to insinuate themselves into the thinly-staffed Trump campaign. But time will tell.
But, as said, it took a great deal of tooth pulling to even have him admit that he’d ever even done more than give a presentation to college students, let alone go to Rosneft, let alone meet with the CFO, let alone merely shake hands with him (or wherever it actually ended up at).
Acting guilty is, in general, evidence of a guilty act. It’s not as conclusive as admitting to it, nor physical evidence, but it raises the odds by a hefty chunk.
As I have pointed out before, the question isn’t whether evidence is good, it’s how much evidence there is and the probability that none of it is evidence of criminality.