[_dain_]

>2. It says the Steele dossier is largely discredited - I wasn't aware of any discrediting, let alone total. I don't know why the author thought this spin was necessary for the article.

If you aren't aware of it, that's on you. Frankly it amazes me that people still think it's real.

[notavalleyman]

Maybe, but I am not including it in any of my articles, so it's not really on me to know everything about it.

Another user provided an NYT link which suggested it was real, but only indicative and not necessarily factual.

https://archive.ph/2fHH5

[stephen_g]

The dossier was real (as in it was written by who it said it was written by), it’s just that most of the content in it was sourced from people who were either lying or fed false information.

[colpabar]

How can a document be "real" if it's full of "not necessarily factual" claims?

[db48x]

It’s a real dossier full of hearsay, lies, calumny, etc. Steele was paid to assemble it, by a lawyer working for Hillary Clinton no less, for the express purpose of smearing Trump in the hopes that something would stick.

[KennyBlanken]

https://archive.ph/2fHH5#selection-519.0-523.134

> Mr. Trump and his supporters have long sought to use the flaws of the dossier to discredit the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — and the nature of numerous links between Russia and the Trump campaign — as a “hoax." But the available evidence indicates that the dossier was largely tangential to the Russia investigation. Here is a look at the facts.

> The F.B.I. launched the investigation in July 2016, and a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, eventually took over. His March 2019 report detailed “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign” and established that “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

> Beyond its narrow role in facilitating the F.B.I.’s wiretap of Mr. Page, the dossier’s publication had the broader consequence of amplifying an atmosphere of suspicion about Mr. Trump.

> Still, the dossier did not create this atmosphere of suspicion. Mr. Trump’s relationship with Russia had been a topic of significant discussion dating back to the campaign, including before the first report that Russia had hacked Democrats and before Mr. Steele drafted his reports and gave some to reporters.

> Among the reasons: Mr. Trump had said flattering things about Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, kept bringing on advisers with ties to Russia, had financial ties to Russia, publicly encouraged Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton, and at his nominating convention, the party dropped a plank that called for arming Ukraine against Russian-backed rebels. In March 2017, the F.B.I. publicly acknowledged that it was investigating links between Russia and Trump campaign associates.

[bena]

It's real, it exists.

But people who want to ignore it like to pretend it's something that it's not. It's raw intelligence. It's saying "Hey, here are things we heard you should check out."

It's a lot like the VAERS database. It doesn't prove anything on its own, but it can indicate things we should look into more closely.

And that's how a lot of people treated it: These are things we should probably check out.

[xienze]

> But people who want to ignore it like to pretend it's something that it's not. It's raw intelligence. It's saying "Hey, here are things we heard you should check out."

“Hey, I heard a few things about Biden raping babies, you should check it out.”

See how it might be important to use more than “raw intelligence” about “stuff you should probably check out” as the basis for an investigation and media witch hunt?

[bena]

You check into things in accordance to the credibility of the person making the claims.

It would not take long to see that Biden doesn't rape babies. Hell, a lot of what was in the Dossier was not looked into because they just dismissed it out of hand.

This kind of casual dismissal and reductio ad absurdum you're engaging in is an attempt to distract from the very real crimes very real people were very really arrested for doing regarding things described in the document.