"Intelligence report claims Russia has compromising information on Trump"

Congo Jack wrote:youd be mad too if you were being investigated over ties with russia that dont exist too rt

He. wrote:wait so what if russia leaked info? id rather know some bullshit like what hildawg was doing

He. wrote:wait so what if russia leaked info? id rather know some bullshit like what hildawg was doing

An ex-MI6 officer who is believed to have prepared memos claiming Russia has compromising material on US President-elect Donald Trump is now in hiding, the BBC understands.

Christopher Steele, who runs a London-based intelligence firm, is believed to have left his home this week.

The memos contains unsubstantiated claims that Russian security officials have compromising material on Mr Trump.

The US president-elect said the claims were "fake news" and "phoney stuff".

Mr Steele has been widely named as the author of a series of memos - which has been published as a dossier in some US media - that contains extensive allegations about Mr Trump's personal life and his campaign's relationship with the Russian state.

Among the allegations are that Moscow has a video recording of Mr Trump with prostitutes and damaging information about his business activities.

'In fear'

BBC News correspondent Paul Wood said he understood Mr Steele left his home on either Tuesday or Wednesday, before he was publicly named, and was now "in hiding".

He said he had been told Mr Steele, a father of four, had asked his neighbour to look after his three cats.

Our correspondent said he had been shown the memos about Mr Trump in October last year, when he was told Mr Steele was "in fear of his life", having spoken out about potential Russian involvement in Mr Trump's election.
He said he had been told by members of the intelligence community that Mr Steele was "extremely highly regarded" and was thought of as "competent".

...

As a member of MI6, he had been posted to the UK's embassy in Moscow and now runs a consultancy giving advice on doing business in Russia. He spoke to a number of his old contacts in the FSB, the successor to the KGB, paying some of them for information.
They told him that Mr Trump had been filmed with a group of prostitutes in the presidential suite of Moscow's Ritz-Carlton hotel.
I know this because the Washington political research company that commissioned his report showed it to me during the final week of the election campaign.

The BBC decided not to use it then, for the very good reason that without seeing the tape - if it exists - we could not know if the claims were true. The detail of the allegations were certainly lurid.
The entire series of reports has now been posted by BuzzFeed.
Mr Steele, who was initially named in the US, is believed to be a former member of the Secret Intelligence Service - MI6 - and is a director of Orbis Business Intelligence - which describes itself as a leading corporate intelligence consultancy.

Founded in 2009 by former British intelligence professionals, the firm - based in Grosvenor Gardens, central London - has a "global network" of experts and "prominent business figures", according to its website.

Orbis says it offers "strategic advice", as well as mounting "intelligence-gathering operations" and cross-border investigations.
Christopher Burrows, who is listed as a co-director of Orbis alongside Mr Steele, refused to confirm or deny whether the firm had produced the reports on Mr Trump.
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said Mr Steele had previously been an intelligence officer - rather than agent - in MI6, who would have run a team of agents as an intelligence gatherer.

However, as Mr Steele was now working in the private sector, our correspondent said, there was "probably a fair bit of money involved" in the commissioning of the reports.
He said there was no evidence to substantiate the allegations and it was still possible the dossier had been based on what "people had said" about Mr Trump "without any proof".

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Vice President Joe Biden confirmed on Thursday that the intelligence community briefed him and President Obama on the unverified report alleging President-elect Trump worked with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Biden confirmed intelligence chiefs told him and Obama about the report, which was published in full by BuzzFeed earlier this week. The officials were concerned it might leak, Biden said.

"As a matter of fact, the president was like, 'What does this have anything to do with anything?'" Biden said.

The intelligence leaders responded by saying, "Well, we feel obliged to tell you, Mr. President, because you may hear about it. We're going to tell (Trump)," Biden said.

Donald Trump has lashed out at former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, branding him a "'failed spy" who conspired with "sleazebag political operatives."

In a series of tweets posed on Friday morning, Mr Trump also said he would release a report on suspected Russian interference in the US election within the next 90 days.

In reference to the dossier, he said: "Totally made up facts by sleazebag political operatives, both Democrats and Republicans - FAKE NEWS!"

Mr Steele, a former MI6 agent, compiled a hugely controversial "dirty dossier" on Mr Trump which alleges that the Russian government has obtained "compromising" information about him, such as alleged unusual sexual escapades.

The dossier also claimed that the former business mogul's family had been a Russian intelligence asset for at least five years.

It comes after Britain was dragged into the bitter political row, following claims that the Government allowed the FBI to speak to Mr Steele shortly before he gave them the document.

It means Britain now finds itself caught in the crossfire of accusations between Russia and the US.

Mr Steele was hired by a Washington consultancy funded by Mr Trump's Republican opponents to dig for information, but he felt that what he discovered was so sensitive that it should be passed to the FBI, as well as former MI6 colleagues.

Since the dossier was made public he has gone into hiding, and friends say he fears for his live.

Mr Trump has said the claims made in the dossier are "fake news."

FBI Director James Comey briefed President-elect Donald Trump on a two-page summary of an unverified dossier claiming Russia had compromising information on the real estate mogul, CNN reported Thursday.

That contradicts claims by members of Trump’s transition team and other news outlets that intelligence officials never briefed Trump on the two-page addendum to a classified report given to President Obama and leaders in Congress about Russian efforts to interfere with the presidential election.

President-elect Donald Trump was informed about the existence of the unverified allegations against him about Russian ties after last Friday's Intel briefing at Trump Tower on alleged Russian hacking, U.S. officials told NBC News.

A senior U.S. official said that it was FBI Director James Comey himself who pulled Trump aside after the briefing and spoke with him one-on-one about the so-called "dossier," 35 pages of memos prepared by a former British spy for an anti-Trump client prior to last year's election.

As NBC News has previously reported, Trump was not told about the contents of the dossier during the formal briefing.

george lucas wrote:

He. wrote:wait so what if russia leaked info? id rather know some bullshit like what hildawg was doing

who the fuck care about hillury

None of the newly learned information relates to the salacious allegations in the dossier. Rather it relates to conversations between foreign nationals. The dossier details about a dozen conversations between senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals. Sources would not confirm which specific conversations were intercepted or the content of those discussions due to the classified nature of US intelligence collection programs.

But the intercepts do confirm that some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier, according to the officials. CNN has not confirmed whether any content relates to then-candidate Trump.

The corroboration, based on intercepted communications, has given US intelligence and law enforcement "greater confidence" in the credibility of some aspects of the dossier as they continue to actively investigate its contents, these sources say.

Flynn resigned Monday night in the wake of revelations about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.

In the waning days of the Obama administration, James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the CIA director at the time, shared Yates’s concerns and concurred with her recommendation to inform the Trump White House. They feared that “Flynn had put himself in a compromising position” and thought that Pence had a right to know that he had been misled, according to one of the officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

A senior Trump administration official said before Flynn’s resignation that the White House was aware of the matter, adding that “we’ve been working on this for weeks.”

Michael Flynn resigned Monday night as the White House national security adviser after misleading Vice President Pence and other administration officials about the nature of his conversations with a Russian envoy.

President Trump accepted Flynn’s resignation letter and appointed Keith Kellogg, a decorated retired Army lieutenant general, as acting national security adviser.

WASHINGTON — Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.

The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.

But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.

The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump. On the Russian side, the contacts also included members of the government outside of the intelligence services, they said. All of the current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the continuing investigation is classified.