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The Trump-Russia dossier is a private intelligence dossier of 17 memos that were consecutively written from June to December 2016 by former MI6 intelligence officer Christopher Steele. The memos allege that Russia has been cultivating a relationship with Trump for decades, that the Kremlin favored Trump in the U.S. presidential election, and that the Kremlin took various actions during the 2016 election to promote his candidacy and oppose Hillary Clinton's. The document claims that several of Trump's associates, in particular campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump's personal attorney Michael D. Cohen, and Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page, were in communication with Russian contacts and worked with the Russians on various activities to promote Trump's candidacy. Those included planning the hack of Democratic National Committee emails and their subsequent leaking, arranging coverups and cash payments, and promising favorable policies toward Russia if Trump was elected. The document also claims that the Russians possessed compromising information about Trump which could make him subject to blackmail. Trump and Putin have repeatedly denied the allegations.

Cultivation, conspiracy, and cooperation

• Allegation: That Russia has been "cultivating, supporting and assisting" Trump for at least five years.

• Commentary: Although the dossier alleges (in June 2016) that the Kremlin had been cultivating Trump for "at least five years", they had been interested in him since his first visit to Russia in 1987. Luke Harding asserts that: "The top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his 1987 Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB... The spy chief wanted KGB staff abroad to recruit more Americans." Harding then gives a detailed description of the process of cultivation used by the KGB. He posits that the KGB may have opened a file on Trump as early as 1977, when he married Ivana Trump (née Zelníčková), and that they were closely observed and analyzed from that time on.

• Allegation: That a "regular exchange between Mr Trump surrogates and Kremlin actually dates back eight years."

• Allegation: That there was a "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between and the Russian leadership" to interfere in the 2016 election to Clinton's detriment.

• Denial: Trump and Putin have repeatedly denied the allegations.

Key roles of Manafort, Cohen, and Page

• Allegation: That Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had "managed" the "well-developed conspiracy of cooperation", and that he used "Carter Page and others as intermediaries" between the campaign and high-level Kremlin officials.

• Allegation: That Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, played a critical role in the Trump–Russia relationship by arranging cover-ups and deniable cash payments.

• Allegation: That Trump's foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, was involved in plans regarding the leaking of the stolen DNC emails, plotting the DNC hack with Russian agents and Trump's team, and arranging an $11 billion quid pro quo deal for Trump with Rosneft oil company.

Why Kremlin backed Trump and opposed Clinton

• Allegation: That Russia supported Trump because he was "viewed as divisive in disrupting the whole US political system" and to "sow discord and disunity within the U.S. and the West".

• Commentary: According to Aiko Stevenson, some of Trump's actions seem to align with "Putin’s wish list", which "includes lifting sanctions on Russia, turning a blind eye towards its aggressive efforts in the Ukraine, and creating a divisive rift amongst western allies." Trump has "called Nato, the centrepiece of Transatlantic security 'obsolete', championed the disintegration of the EU, and said that he is open to lifting sanctions on Moscow."

• Allegation: That Vladimir Putin was "motivated by fear and hatred" of Hillary Clinton.

Kompromat on Trump and Clinton

• Allegation: That kompromat exists on Trump in the form of blackmailable behavior. Harding has posited that the collection of kompromat on Trump could have started as early as 1977.

• Allegation: That Putin ordered the keeping of a secret dossier on Hillary Clinton. It dated back to the time of the Clinton presidency and was comprised mainly of eavesdropped conversations, some from bugging devices and others from phone intercepts. It did not contain "details/evidence of unorthodox or embarrassing behavior", but focused more on "things she had said which contradicted her current positions on various issues". It had been collated by the FSB and was managed by Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary.

Blackmailable behavior by Trump

• Allegation: That Trump was compromised with the blackmailable acts of paying bribes and engaging in "perverted sexual acts" in Russia.

• Allegation: That Trump "hated" Obama so much that he hired the Presidential suite of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow and had prostitutes perform a "golden showers" show in front of him in order to defile the bed used by President and Mrs. Obama on a previous visit. The incident was reportedly secretly filmed and recorded by the FSB for potential blackmail.

• Denial: Trump has denied this allegation.

• Allegation: That "our separate sources also described 'unorthodox' and embarrassing behavior by Trump over the years" that could be used for blackmail.

• Allegation: That Trump had explored the real estate sectors in St Petersburg and Moscow, "but in the end Trump had had to settle for the use of extensive sexual services there from local prostitutes rather than business success".

• Denial: Trump has denied this allegation.

Activated blackmail threat

• Allegation: That the Kremlin has enough "embarrassing material" (kompromat) on Trump "to be able to blackmail him if they so wished", but it has "promised not to use 'kompromat'...as leverage, given high levels of voluntary co-operation forthcoming from his team".

• Commentary: It was because Christopher Steele believed that Trump was actually being blackmailed that he became "very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat". This concern led him to go to the FBI with his initial findings in early July 2016. Luke Harding states that "Steele was shocked by the extent of collusion his sources were reporting." Steele told friends: "For anyone who reads it, this is a life-changing experience." He felt that what he had unearthed "was something of huge significance, way above party politics". Howard Blum described Steele's rationale for becoming a whistleblower: "The greater good trumps all other concerns." Steele was so "alarmed" by his findings, that he showed them to FBI agents in Rome in early July. Their reaction was "shock and horror". Glenn R. Simpson of Fusion GPS later revealed that "Steele severed his contacts with the FBI before the election following disclosures that the bureau’s inquiry had found no connection between Trump campaign and Russia and concerns that it was being 'manipulated for political ends by the Trump people'."

DNC email hack

• Allegation: That "Trump’s team secretly plotted the DNC hack with Russian agents. It claims that key figures in Trump’s entourage – his personal lawyer Michael Cohen and former foreign policy aide Carter Page – were involved in the conspiracy. Other names implicated include Paul Manafort, a former campaign manager."

• Allegation: That the operation had been done with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team.

• Allegation: That Russia was responsible for the DNC email hacks and the recent appearance of the stolen DNC e-mails on WikiLeaks. The reason for using WikiLeaks was "plausible deniability".

• Allegation: That Trump's foreign policy adviser Carter Page had "conceived and promoted" the idea that the DNC emails to WikiLeaks should be leaked during the Democratic convention, “to swing supporters of Bernie Sanders away from Hillary Clinton and across to Trump".

• Allegation: That "Trump literally paid for them with his foreign policy platform" by dropping "Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue".

• Allegation: That the hacking of the DNC servers was performed by Romanian hackers ultimately controlled by Putin and paid by both Trump and Putin.

• Allegation: That Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, had a secret meeting with Kremlin officials in Prague in August 2016, where he arranged "deniable cash payments" to the hackers and sought "to cover up all traces of the hacking operation", as well as "cover up ties between Trump and Russia, including Manafort's involvement in Ukraine".

• Denial: Trump and Cohen have denied the allegations. Cohen said that between August 23 and August 29 he was in Los Angeles and in New York for the entire month of September. There is no record of him entering Prague by plane, but Respekt magazine revealed that he could have entered by car or train from a neighboring country in the Schengen Zone.

Kickbacks and quid pro quo agreements

• Allegation: That former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who had requested Russian military intervention in Ukraine before he fled to Russia in 2014, told Putin he had been making supposedly "untraceable" "kickback payments" to Paul Manafort, who was Trump's campaign manager at the time.

• Allegation: That the Trump campaign engaged in a "Ukraine-WikiLeaks quid pro quo" agreement "to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue" in exchange for Russia leaking the stolen DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

• Commentary: Business Insider described and NPR reported that: "Diana Denman, a Republican delegate who supported arming U.S. allies in Ukraine, has told people that Trump aide J.D. Gordon said at the Republican Convention in 2016 that Trump directed him to support weakening that position in the official platform."

• Commentary: Luke Harding considers this allegation to have been confirmed by the actions of the Trump campaign: "This is precisely what happened at the Republican National Convention last July, when language on the US's commitment to Ukraine was mysteriously softened. Meanwhile, in a series of tweets, Trump questioned whether US allies were paying enough into Nato coffers."

• Allegation: That Trump's foreign-policy adviser, Carter Page, arranged a quid pro quo deal in which the Trump administration would get a 19% stake (ca. $11 billion) in Rosneft oil company in exchange for Trump lifting the Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia after his election. Page confirmed, on Trump's "full authority", that this was Trump's intent.

• Commentary: This deal has been described by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen in Newsweek as a quid pro quo deal that "colloquially, if not in the legal sense,... is called treason". In Paste Magazine, Jacob Weindling described this deal as a "potential scandal so big, words don't exist to convey it." He further stated: "I want to take a moment to stress this potential revelation. In exchange for dropping sanctions that were levied for invading an ally , the president of the United States would receive a personal stake in a Russian oil company. Treason doesn't even begin to describe it."

See also

• Cyberwarfare by Russia
• Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations
• Foreign electoral intervention
• Links between Trump associates and Russian officials
• Russian espionage in the United States
• Special Counsel investigation (2017–present)
• The Plot to Hack America
• Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
• Trump: The Kremlin Candidate?

References

1. Vogel, Kenneth P.; Haberman, Maggie (October 27, 2017). "Conservative Website First Funded Anti-Trump Research by Firm That Later Produced Dossier". The New York Times.
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4. ^ Stefansky, Emma (November 11, 2017). "Trump: I Believe Putin "Means It" When He Denies Election Meddling". Vanity Fair. Retrieved January 25, 2018.
5. ^ Withnall, Adam; Sengupta, Kim (January 12, 2017). "The 10 key Donald Trump allegations from the classified Russia memos". The Independent. Retrieved December 29, 2017.
6. ^ Sumter, Kyler (November 16, 2017). "The five most interesting claims in the Donald Trump dossier". The Week UK. Retrieved December 24, 2017.
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10. ^ Harding, Luke (2017). Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. Vintage. ISBN 978-0525562511.
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    Quote: So this change on Ukraine definitely came from Trump staffers — not from RNC staffers.

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    Quote: Chris said he was very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat and said he wanted to -- he said he thought we were obligated to tell someone in government, in our government about this information," Simpson said. "He thought from his perspective there was an issue -- a security issue about whether a presidential candidate was being blackmailed.

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    Quote: I'm telling you emphatically that I've not been to Prague, I've never been to Czech , I've not been to Russia.

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    Quote: According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 'A Czech intelligence source told the Respekt magazine that there is no record of Cohen arriving in Prague by plane, although the news weekly pointed out he could have traveled by car or train from a nearby EU country, avoiding passport control under Schengen zone travel rules.'

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Further reading

• Harding, Luke (November 19, 2017). "The Hidden History of Trump's First Trip to Moscow". Politico Magazine (an excerpt of his book Collusion).
• Harding, Luke (November 16, 2017). Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0525520931.

• 2016 documents
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• Donald Trump controversies
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• Foreign influence in national elections
• Media-related controversies in the United States
• Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
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