What is the full Steele dossier about?
Executive summary
The Steele dossier is a 35‑page collection of short intelligence memoranda compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele in 2016 alleging contacts, kompromat and coordination between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian officials; it was produced as raw, unvetted human‑intelligence reporting rather than a finished analytical product and became a flashpoint in U.S. politics after its limited circulation to authorities and its full publication by BuzzFeed in January 2017 .
1. Origin, authorship and structure
The dossier originated when Fusion GPS, a research firm hired by Perkins Coie on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC, contracted Steele’s London firm Orbis to collect human‑intelligence reporting between June and December 2016; Steele ultimately produced 16 memos in that period (a 17th was added later) that together total about 35 pages and are organized as discrete numbered reports or memoranda .
2. What the reports actually allege
Taken together the memos allege a range of contacts and operational relationships between Trump associates and Russian officials, claims of Russian‑sourced kompromat (including salacious allegations), and assertions about Russian direction or support for hacking and information operations against the Clinton campaign and U.S. interests; individual claims vary in specificity and sourcing, from named interlocutors to second‑ or third‑hand reporting .
3. Purpose, product type and how Steele presented it
Steele and supporters have said the memos were “raw” human‑intelligence reporting—prepublication notes or leads intended to prompt further investigation, not finished intelligence judgments—and Steele did not synthesize or render “bottom‑line” assessments inside the dossier itself .
4. Financing, dissemination and public release
Money for the research flowed from the Clinton campaign and the DNC to Perkins Coie, which hired Fusion GPS, which paid Orbis approximately $168,000 to produce Steele’s reports; Steele shared summaries with journalists and U.S. officials, and while some intelligence and law‑enforcement channels received limited versions, BuzzFeed published the full memoranda online on January 10, 2017, against Steele’s wishes .
5. How U.S. intelligence and investigators used it
U.S. intelligence agencies treated the dossier as one piece of raw reporting among many: it was discussed in intelligence briefings to senior officials, appended in summary form to classified assessments, and parts were used by the FBI as leads to investigate potential links—agents interviewed some of Steele’s sources and the FBI opened probes that incorporated lines of inquiry raised by the reporting [1].
6. Corroboration, disputes and legal fallout
Elements of the dossier have been corroborated, contradicted, or remain unverified; some reporting anticipated events later substantiated by indictments and intelligence findings while other high‑profile claims—most notably some salacious allegations and specific meetings—have been challenged or not substantiated in public records, spawning defamation lawsuits and partisan attacks that alternately portray the dossier as prophetic or fraudulent .
7. Why the dossier matters now: interpretation and legacy
The dossier’s significance lies less in being a single evidentiary cornerstone than in its role as a road‑map that fed investigative leads, its exposure of the interplay between opposition research and intelligence, and the political storm that followed its leak and publication—debates over vetting, source reliability, campaign finance transparency and the proper handling of raw intelligence continue to animate assessments from across the political spectrum and from analysts who both validate parts of Steele’s methods and criticize gaps or sourcing .