Trump–Russia dossier allegations

The Trump-Russia dossier is a private intelligence of 17 memos that were consecutively written from June to December 2016 by former MI6 intelligence officer Christopher Steele. The memos allege that Russia has been cultivating a relationship with Trump for decades, that the Kremlin favored Trump in the U.S. presidential election, and that the Kremlin took various actions during the 2016 election to promote his candidacy and oppose Hillary Clinton's. The document claims that several of Trump's associates, in particular campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump's personal attorney Michael D. Cohen, and Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page, were in communication with Russian contacts and worked with the Russians on various activities to promote Trump's candidacy. Those included planning the hack of Democratic National Committee emails and their subsequent leaking, arranging coverups and cash payments, and promising favorable policies toward Russia if Trump was elected. The document also claims that the Russians possessed compromising information about Trump which could make him subject to blackmail. Trump and Putin have repeatedly denied the allegations.

The dossier contains multiple allegations, some of which are currently unverified and others for which possible verification is classified. Some allegations in 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.

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