Trump–Russia dossier

The Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier, is a private intelligence of 17 memos that were consecutively written from June to December 2016 by former MI6 intelligence officer Christopher Steele. It contains allegations of misconduct and conspiracy between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russian government before and during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, much of it detailing alleged cooperation between the campaign and Russians to interfere in the 2016 presidential election to benefit Trump. The contents of the dossier were published in full by BuzzFeed on January 10, 2017.BuzzFeed's decision to publish the dossier was met with criticism from some mainstream media outlets.

Parts of the dossier have been confirmed, while others have yet to be proved or disproved, including, as 2017 drew to a close, the dossier's allegations of collusion. The media, intelligence community, as well as most experts have therefore treated the dossier with caution, though Trump himself denounced the report, calling it "fake news". In February 2017, it was reported that some details related to conversations between foreign nationals had been independently corroborated, giving U.S. intelligence and law enforcement greater confidence in aspects of the dossier as investigations continued.

The dossier was produced as part of opposition research during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. After Trump emerged as the probable Republican nominee, attorney Marc Elias of the Perkins Coie law firm retained American research firm Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research about Trump on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton presidential campaign. Fusion GPS later contracted Steele to compile the dossier. Following Trump's election as president, Steele continued working on the report, with funding from Democrats ceasing and financing finally coming directly from Glenn R. Simpson of Fusion GPS. The completed dossier and its information was then passed on to British and American intelligence services.

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