Election security

The Steele Dossier, Hillary Clinton’s Malignant Gift to America

The Mueller investigation has concluded, and Mueller’s declaration has now entered the public record: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” But it’s worth reflecting on how the contrary view — the firm conviction that Trump didcoordinate with Russia — became so deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans. And it’s worth reflecting on why another set of Americans could look at actual, troubling evidence of Russian contacts and simply not care at all.

The answer is complex, but at its heart is a set of documents compiled into a collection known as the “Steele dossier.” The dossier, characterized by James Comey under oath as “salacious and unverified,” consisted of opposition research compiled by a former British intelligence officer and commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Taken as whole, it undermined the credibility of American intelligence agencies, corrupted elements of the media, and distorted the public debate. It may well be one of the most malignant documents in modern American history.

I’m not going to link to the dossier, but it’s worth remembering its core claim. As explained in this December analysis in Lawfare, the document not only contained claims that Russia possessed lurid, compromising information on Donald Trump, it also made the sensational allegation that there existed a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [Trump and his associates] and the Russian leadership,” including an “intelligence exchange [that] had been running between them for at least 8 years.” The very existence of this allegation detonated like a bomb in the American body politic.