President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have spent months and months trying to tear down and discredit the information contained in the Christopher Steele Dossier, which alleges a potentially treasonous quid pro quo between the Donald Trump for President campaign team and agents of the Russian Federation in order to tilt the 2016 election in his favor.
Their efforts will come to naught, however, as the Guardian is now reporting that the FBI is assessing the contents of a second Trump-Russia dossier that “independently set out many of the same allegations” contained in the Steele Dossier.
This new document was compiled by political activist and journalist Cody Shearer, and while Shearer does not have a background in espionage, the fact that the FBI is “assessing details in the ‘Shearer memo’ and is pursuing intriguing leads” indicates that they are taking its contents very seriously indeed.
And yes, the Shearer memo does contain allegations that Donald Trump has been compromised by Russian authorities, who filmed him engaging in salacious activities, allegedly with prostitutes, while on a 2013 trip to Moscow – the now infamous “pee tape.”
The Shearer memo was given to the FBI by Steele himself in October 2016.
A quick online search reveals Shearer is already one of the right-wing’s favorite Clinton boogeymen, with the pretentiously conservative National Review dismissing him as an “unsanctioned diplomat, private eye, and Clinton flunky.”
This means that the Shearer memo will only solidify the perception in the minds of Trump fans that this is all a baseless Clintonite conspiracy by the “deep state” – but if the FBI is taking both of these documents seriously, there’s a reason they’re doing so.
In any case, the fact that two separate sleuths arrived at these conclusions independently on top of all the other evidence that has been revealed to the public and considering the president’s extremely suspicious behavior since the election, there’s definitely some serious fire behind all this smoke.
Original reporting by Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Nick Hopkins @ the Guardian
