Christopher Steele, the British ex-MI6 spy who compiled the sensational Trump Dossier which lies at the heart of the Russiagate investigation, has admitted in legal proceedings that the Dossier contains information which is ‘unverified’.
Steele made his admission in a defamation case brought against him in London by businessman Alexey Gubarev who is referred to in the Trump Dossier as someone involved in the hacking of the DNC.
The claims made in the Trump Dossier about Gubarev have been discussed in detail in an interview Gubarev gave to RT of which a summary appeared on RT’s website. Parts of it read as follows
Among others, the [Trump Dossier] included Gubarev’s name and his global tech Holding XBT, which also runs a Dallas operated company Webzilla. It is alleged in the report that XBT was linked to the recent hacking scandal with the US Democratic Party and a following leak of the emails from its institutions and members.
We were shocked to find our names there,” Gubarev told RT, saying he had “never met” anyone listed in the report. “Nobody from the intelligence agency contacted me about this story… to verify this information,” he said. Neither did any journalists reach out to him, Gubarev said.
The published report is “fake news,” Gubarev said. “I still do not understand why our names [are] there and we do not understand a reason of this report in general,” he told RT.
The IT expert also noted that he is not “living in Russia for already 15 years.” Yet, the XBT chief said he and his company “are open for any investigation” and that they have “nothing to hide.”
Following the publication of the report on Buzzfeed, its author has been apparently identified, turning out to be a British ex-intelligence member, Christopher Steele. He is one of two directors at Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, a private security-and-investigations company.
Gubarev told RT he will now take legal action against Steele over false claims. “We are 100 percent filing a lawsuit against Christopher Steele who created this report and his company in the United Kingdom. We are already working on that.” The XBT chief said that a “competitor” might be behind the allegations against his company, while “another option” would be his professional activity.
“Recently I was giving some comments to Bloomberg,” Gubarev said in the interview with RT. The IT expert stated to Bloomberg that there was “no connection between Donald Trump servers and Alfa Bank servers.”
“It was a technical analysis from our site which we sent to Bloomberg.” It was reported in November that a server owned by Alfa Bank (listed in paper published on Buzzfeed), allegedly had communications with a server hosting the Trump Organization domain address. Yet there has been no serious evidence backing the claim.
Christopher Steele’s response to the court case Gubarev has brought against him is reported by the Washington Times as follows
Mr. Steele acknowledges that the part of the 35-page dossier that identified Mr. Gubarev as a rogue hacker came from “unsolicited intelligence” and “raw intelligence” that “needed to be analyzed and further investigated/verified.”
Christopher Steele’s complete Defence filed by him in the Court case can be read here.
The Washington Times reports Christopher Steele complaining that the Trump Dossier was intended to be a confidential document which was never intended to be disclosed to the public. He blames his client – a Washington based consultancy called Fusion GPS which commissioned the research which led to his compiling the Dossier – and Buzzfeed for its publication. That seems to be the heart of his defence.
Whilst the court proceedings are underway it would be wrong to comment on Steele’s defence in detail. However it is interesting that even he now admits that some of the contents of the Trump Dossier are ‘unverified” and apparently wrong.
The post Russiagate’s Trump Dossier: ex-spy admits some contents ‘unverified’ and ‘possibly wrong’ appeared first on The Duran.