Philip Giraldi writes for the Daily Caller:
As a former intelligence officer who has seen numerous overseas investigations done for clients, I can say with some confidence that the Steele Dossier is a composite of some fact, a lot of speculation, and even occasional fiction. Some indisputable and confirmable information is inevitably used to provide credibility for a lot of speculation and false stories that were intended to sow doubt and confusion.
[…]The dossier was designed to dig up “dirt” on Trump and his associates, but, more to the point, it was clearly intended from the start to do so by manufacturing and nurturing a Russian angle. It sought to discredit Donald Trump and to deceive the public, which suggests that Trump has been right all along regarding something like a conspiracy against him which included the active participation of the FBI and possibly other national security agencies.
The president also comes across as credible vis-à-vis his critics because of what has become evident since the dossier was surfaced. The clearly politically motivated multiple investigations carried out so far in which no rock has been unturned have come up with absolutely nothing, either in the form of criminal charges or in terms of actual collusion with a foreign government. And, one might add, there has been little in the way of evidence to sustain the charge that Russia sought to influence the election and might even have succeeded in doing so. But there is one thing new that we do know now: Russiagate began within the Clinton Campaign headquarters.
Clinton Inc. is on the defense after the Washington Post’s bombshell report revealing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the DNC paid for the now discredited ‘Trump Dossier.’ This week, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallow admitted to CNN that Hillary Clinton ‘may have known,’ about her campaign paying for the ‘Trump Dossier.’
A nervous Fallon claims he doesn’t know how much Clinton knew about the document’s funding.