Behold the Slow Demise of the Trump/Russia Dossier

An extraordinary new investigation from the news outlet Tablet has shed some extremely damning light on the already-suspicious relationship between the FBI, Fusion GPS, and that pesky Trump “dossier” that appears to have set so much of this conspiracy-fueled witch hunt in motion. According to the story, which was based entirely on information already released to the public (making it all the more amazing that their writers could put this together in a way that the media has thus far failed to do), there is cause to think that former British spy Christopher Steele did not have as much to do with that dossier as we thought.

They point to a Facebook post written this summer by Mary Jacoby, the wife of Glenn Simpson – the founder of Fusion GPS.

“It’s come to my attention,” she wrote, “that some people still don’t realize what Glenn’s role was in exposing Putin’s control of Donald Trump. Let’s be clear: Glenn conducted the investigation. Glenn hired Chris Steele. Chris Steele worked for Glenn.”

Oh, may their hubris be their downfall. And Simpson’s downfall, this may be.

Now if we are to take his wife’s word for it, we can come to the conclusion – as Tablet did – that much of the dossier’s (already limited) credibility is shot. Because it wasn’t really put together by this famed, respected former MI:6 agent; it was funded and INVESTIGATED by Simpson, whose biggest credit is a stint with the Wall Street Journal. We’re not saying he’s a hack, but he’s not a former spook by any means. And there’s certainly no reason to believe he could uncover a story that the rest of the media was unable to uncover. We’re sure he put Hillary Clinton’s money to good use, but that’s the thing about throwing money around: You never know if you’re actually getting the goods…or if people are just telling you what you’re paying them to tell you.

Tablet goes on to demonstrate how Steele’s connections inside the Russian Federation were at least 25 years out of date by the time he was hired by Fusion and the information that found its way into the dossier sounded just like the kind of nonsense locals might throw around to impress an ex-pat snooping around for a story. The outlet surmised that the FBI and the rest of the intelligence community was uniquely susceptible to this nonsense, simply because the state of our Russian sources was so poor at the time the dossier came across the president’s desk.

Could it be that this dossier – which likely sparked the fuse that culminated in the Trump/Russia investigation – is nothing more than rumors dug up (or made up) by a former Wall Street Journal reporter who was being paid by Trump’s political opposition? Could it be that nothing in that dossier has any relationship to the truth? That, at best, it is the product of Russian officials playing with journalists-turned-spies who fancied themselves warriors for Hillary Clinton?

Yes, it’s possible. And with every passing day, it slides a little further beyond “possible” and into the category of “likely.”