December 27, 2018: The Steele Dossier Was often Correct

 

12/27/18: Nineteen months ago, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to lead an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

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The Steele Dossier was often correct.

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Today a possible bombshell exploded. 

Just hours ago, McClatchy reported that cell phone records in the hands of Mueller’s team show signals from a phone number registered to Michael Cohen were bounced off a tower near Prague in August 2016. 

Picturesque Prague, Czech Republic.

To understand the explosive nature of this development – if proven true – you have to go back to the famous Steele dossier, which first came to light in January 2017. The handiwork of Christopher Steele, a former British spy, the most salacious revelations involved Donald Trump – in a Moscow hotel in 2013 – with prostitutes peeing – a nightmare version of Clue. 

That story, of course, has never been proven and the president has labeled the dossier “a pile of garbage” ever since.

 

Nevertheless, several allegations have proven true. Keith Schiller, Trump’s bodyguard has admitted that while he and Trump were staying in Moscow in 2013, the Russians did offer to send five prostitutes up to Trump’s room. We know that General Flynn did visit Moscow and did take pay from the Russians. Steele reported that first. Steele claimed the Russians were involved in a sophisticated internet campaign to harm Hillary Clinton and boost Trump. Steele was also right when he reported that Carter Page, a Trump adviser, met with Russian officials in Moscow in the summer of 2016. 

Recently, we learned that the dossier was spot on again. “The Kremlin’s cultivation operation on TRUMP also comprised offering him various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia,” Steele reported. Michael Cohen, who also figures in the dossier, has admitted negotiations related to building a Trump Tower in Moscow continued until at least June 2016. Rudy Giuliani let slip recently that negotiations for a deal may in fact have continued up till Election Day, when for obvious reasons the deal had to be killed. (See: 12/17/18.) 

Now, today’s revelation threatens to drive one of the last nails required to seal the Trump coffin. Steele’s sources told him two years ago that Cohen had traveled to Prague in the summer of 2016. Cohen was there “to clean up the mess” created by media reports about Paul Manafort’s “corrupt relationship” with Russian oligarchs, also since proven correct, and Page’s suspicious Moscow trip. According to Steele, “Kremlin officials” were going to help Cohen with a cover up if they could. 

Here’s how he put it in the dossier: 

The agenda [for the meeting/s] comprised questions on how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the CLINTON campaign and various contingencies for covering up these operations and Moscow’s secret liaison with the TRUMP team more generally.

 

Cohen’s meeting with Russians, if proven to have occurred, would be the very essence of collusion, or what would legally be “conspiracy.” 

We know Cohen has always waved his passport at reporters when asked about any trip, showing it had never been stamped for a visit to the Czech Republic. For a long time, the trail appeared to fizzle. Last April, however, McClatchy reported that sources were saying Mueller could prove Cohen traveled to Germany, then hopped a train to Prague. Since he never left the European Union, his passport would not have been stamped and he could cross into the Czech Republic unnoticed. 

Cohen has denied this latest report. Since he has been cooperating with Mueller’s team, a denial, at first glance, seems to put the rumor to rest. “Why would he lie now?” the logic goes. The question is what is Cohen saying behind closed doors? If he admits, or has already admitted, that as representative of the Trump campaign he and the Russians were working on a cover up, this would be akin to the Watergate moment when it was revealed Nixon made tapes.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (9/3/21): This allegation, that Cohen had gone to Prague, was never proven. McClatchy seems to have been in error. 

The blogger feels stupid for once.