Chris Steele Clings to Fabricated Stories of Cohen in Prague and Trump-Russia Pee Tapes
I have been asked to outline why the author of the “Steele Dossier”, former British intelligence officer Chris Steele, is doubling down on two central and disproven claims within his dossier.
In this preview segment of the Chris Steele interview with George Stephanopoulos, you will note that Steele denies two major flaws in his dossier: (1) the Russian pee-tapes story of Trump having Russian hookers peeing on him in a Moscow hotel; and (2) Michael Cohen traveling to Prague to facilitate the Trump-Russia collusion.
Both of these claims are ridiculous and debunked by Robert Mueller and FBI investigations, yet Chris Steele stands by them. There is an obvious reason why Steele must stick to those claims; however, few people understand the deep background of both claims. CTH knows the likelihood of both false claims and as a consequence we see the motive for why Steele needs to stick to them. First, watch this preview segment (prompted):
It is highly likely that John Durham knows the exact origin of the Pee-Tapes and Cohen in Prague story. It is also likely when this interview took place that Chris Steele did not know what Durham and Aldenberg know, well, until now. {Hi Chris} Whether Durham does anything to hold Steele accountable will depend on whether Durham is going to act on the criminal referral he was given for Nellie Ohr {Go Deep}. I do not hold any level of confidence.
That said, let me explain why each of those fabricated elements of the Steele Dossier must be retained or else Steele opens himself up to a much larger issue. You’ll understand why he cannot admit they are false when you understand where he likely got the information. We shall start with the origin of the Pee Tapes story, and embed a bunch of links for those interested in going deep.
♦ The story of the Russian hookers peeing on Donald Trump almost certainly came from a Russian billionaire named Oleg Deripaska.
Christopher Steele was actually a contracted employee of Deripaska, at least Deripaska was paying Chris Steele for some type of work in the U.K. Oleg Deripaska is a typically sketchy wealthy Russian with some quirky aspects to his humor. Oleg’s U.S. lawyer was a guy named Adam Waldman. You might remember that Adam Waldman was also the legal liaison between Chris Steele and SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner {Go Deep}.
Adam Waldman is the connective tissue between Chris Steele, Oleg Deripaska and another name from the SSCI, former staffer Dan Jones. When Senator Chuck Grassley wanted to question the lawyer/lobbyist Adam Waldman, Waldman lied to avoid testimony {Go Deep}. Unfortunately it was a line of Senate query that was quickly dropped.
Oleg Deripaska was on his yacht in the summer of 2016 with a sketchy Russian sex/intelligence worker named Anastasia Vashukevich (27). [Both Pictured Left]
Vashukevich is the Belarusian woman who was being held in a prison in Thailand under charges of recruiting women to act as prostitutes and escorts. {Go Deep}
Ms. Vashukevich name surfaced early in 2018 when CNN claimed she had dirt on Trump and “tapes” of some sort relating to Deripaska and his activities with contacts around the 2016 election. [More Backstory]
In the height of the Trump-Russia madness, CNN sent Ivan Watson to Thailand to interview Ms. Vashukevich in the hopes that she could validate the “hookers” and “pee-tapes” material that was in the Steele Dossier. However, by the time CNN arrived, Anastasia changed her mind.
It turned out the recording Ms. Vashukevich was promoting/leveraging, was actually a recording of Oleg Deripaska; and, at his request she returned them to him.
FOX NEWS: […] Vashukevich told The Associated Press that she had turned over audio recordings to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whose conversations about election interference she claimed to have taped.
She has said she provided “escort” services to Deripaska, who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and who has links to Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager now being tried in the United States on money laundering and other charges.
Speaking to an AP reporter in the courtroom in Pattaya, Vashukevich said she had promised Deripaska she would no longer speak on the matter, and that he had already promised her something in return for not making that evidence public. (read more)
The tapes Ms. Vashukevich was discussing at the time (trying to leverage her way out of jail) was a previous recording by Deripaska of a conversation between Oleg and his retained employee Christopher Steele about then presidential candidate Donald Trump. This is the conversation where Trump, Russian hookers and pee-tapes came up. Keep in mind, Oleg likely knew what Steele’s questions were for; Oleg knew what Chris Steele did for a living, and Oleg had a motive to snark at the entire operation and U.S. election.
Deripaska didn’t trust anyone related to intelligence operations in either the U.K or the U.S, and Deripaska had previously been burned by the FBI in 2009 after they asked for his help. {Go Deep}
In 2009 the FBI, then headed by Robert Mueller, requested the assistance of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska in an operation to retrieve former FBI officer and CIA resource Robert Levinson who was captured in Iran two years earlier. The agent assigned to engage Deripaska was Andrew McCabe; the primary FBI need was financing and operational support. Deripaska spent around $25 million and would have succeeded except the U.S. State Department, then headed by Hillary Clinton, backed out.
In the summer of 2016, Steele was under retainer by Deripaska and also working for Fusion-GPS. In hindsight, the conversation was almost certainly part of the research Steele was doing for his Fusion-GPS assignment and assembly of the dossier into Trump. Oleg was an easy and obvious source, and Anastasia Vashukevich just happened to be with Oleg when the conversation took place. She snagged the tapes upon departure, she was busted in Thailand and tried to use the info to get out.
Keep in mind, in September of 2016 Andrew McCabe was Deputy Director of the FBI, when two FBI agents approached Deripaska in New York – asking for his help. The FBI request was for Deripaska to outline Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort as a tool of the Kremlin. Deripaska once hired Manafort as a political adviser and invested money with him in a business venture that went bad. Deripaska sued Manafort, alleging he stole money. However, according to a John Solomon article, despite Deripaska’s disposition toward Manafort, he viewed the FBI request as absurd. He laughed the FBI away, telling them: “You are trying to create something out of nothing.”
After Trump won the 2016 election, the entire apparatus of the U.S. intelligence system and DOJ turned on Deripaska because he now represented a risk {Go Deep}.
Chris Steele is sticking to that story of the pee-tapes because his connection to Oleg Deripaska, Adam Waldman, SSCI Chairman Mark Warner, Dan Jones, Fusion-GPS, Glenn Simpson, Nellie Ohr and Bruce Ohr is very prickly when it comes to his participation and intentional fabrication.
♦ The origin of the Michael Cohen in Prague is even more convoluted. However, that story connects to the recently highlighted connection between Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann and Rodney Joffe. While working for Perkins Coie, Sussmann also represented Rodney Joffe, a cybersecurity expert referred to in Durham’s indictment as “Tech Executive-1.” In 2016, Joffe, who has not been previously identified, worked with researchers to collect internet data about the Trump Organization that Sussmann took to the FBI. {Go Deep} You’ll see where Joffe surfaces toward the end.
The Michael Cohen in Prague story originates in the research conducted by Fusion-GPS after Glenn Simpson hired former CIA open-source researcher, Nellie Ohr.
Mrs. Nellie Ohr was the wife of DOJ-NSD lawyer Bruce Ohr who was also the primary 2016 conduit between Chris Steele and the FBI.
In September 2015, Nellie Ohr was hired by Fusion-GPS (Glenn Simpson) to work on the Trump research project {Go Deep}. In April 2016 Fusion-GPS was contracted by Clinton Campaign, through Perkins Coie, specifically to use their previous research and help fabricate evidence that Donald Trump and his associates were in collusion with the Russians. Fusion-GPS then contracted with Christopher Steele for the creation of the Trump-Russia dossier which later became the “Steele Dossier.”
For all intents and purposes, Christopher Steele was a laundry operation where he was given information from Nellie Ohr (and others), washed it, and then passed it back to his DOJ contact Bruce Ohr, who then passed it along to the FBI seemingly washing away the originating political fingerprints of Fusion-GPS and Nellie Ohr.
After the laundry was discovered; and after Bruce Ohr was demoted from his position at the DOJ; he was later interviewed by FBI investigators where Bruce Ohr passed along a thumb-drive with the total of his wife’s research. However, when he did that the Fusion GPS header was stripped (link).
It’s worth remembering here that Nellie Ohr’s involvement in the scheme was considered such a risk that the New York Times even ran an article saying Nellie Ohr did not work on the dossier. However, both Bruce Ohr and Nellie Ohr gave testimony that she did. The way Bruce Ohr described it, his wife’s research was like an additional dossier assembled from Fusion GPS research to augment what Steele was separately providing the FBI.
In October of 2018 Mrs. Nellie Ohr was questioned by a House committee about her involvement with Fusion-GPS while working as a paid contract agent for the firm. Additionally, she was questioned on: her relationship with the dossier origination; her contacts with Christopher Steele; her role and responsibility within Fusion as it related to the Trump project; and the nature of the communication between herself and the participating players inside and outside of government.
Mrs Ohr invoked spousal privilege to protect any communication between herself and her husband.
We now know that in 2016 a cybersecurity expert named Rodney Joffe was under contract with Perkins Coie and collaborating with researchers to collect internet data about the Trump Organization that Clinton Lawyer Michael Sussmann took to the FBI.
So we know the FBI was getting research information from Nellie Ohr via Chris Steele, and from Rodney Joffe via Michael Sussmann.
What do Nellie and Rodney have in common? They are both HAM Radio operators. What a coincidence.
There is every indication the Michael Cohen visiting Prague story originated from Nellie’s research and was passed along to Chris Steele becoming a point in his dossier. An unfortunately named art dealer from New York was likely mistaken for President Trump’s lawyer.
Former Senate Intelligence Committee lead staffer Dan Jones was working with Glenn Simpson at Fusion-GPS. Fusion-GPS contracted with Nellie Ohr in “late 2015”. This is the exact same time when thousands of unauthorized “contractor searches” were taking place within the NSA/FBI database. This is where the Ham radio comes in handy to receive, share and discuss information from database extraction.
Nellie Ohr then sends research outcomes to Chris Steele for the dossier assembly; and the dossier is then laundered back to Bruce Ohr and FBI for use in their operation against the Trump campaign. Meanwhile, Simpson and Jones are leaking to the media who are writing articles. Nellie then captures those articles to validate material in the dossier; puts the citations on a thumb-drive and gives it to Bruce. Again, it’s the same damn origin.
Chris Steele is not defending his lies, he is defending the mistaken research of Nellie Ohr.
For obvious reasons, Chris Steele cannot reveal where he got both points of erroneous information without exposing himself to the legal ramifications that accompany a group of political operatives successfully weaponizing the FBI against a U.S. presidential candidate. This is not conspiracy theory, this is a factual conspiracy.
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