Former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele — who provided information for the “Steele Dossier” — has finally decided to speak out and explain why he compiled the document and whether he believes the contents of the report are true.
In an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, Steele admitted that parts of the dossier cannot be cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but the former MI6 agent says one of the most salacious details is indeed factual: The infamous “pee tape” of Donald Trump with two Russian prostitutes who urinated on a bed that had once been used for former President Barack Obama.
That led Stephanopoulos to inquire:
“So how do you explain if that tape does indeed exist, why hasn’t it been released?”
Steele:
“Well it hasn’t needed to be released?”
Stephanopoulos:
“Why not?”
Steele responded:
“Because I think the Russians felt they got pretty good value out of Donald Trump when he was president of the U.S.”
Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, said in his book, Disloyal, that he looked but never located the tape in Russia:
“But I do know that the decision to go to The Act in Vegas in 2012 was made by the Agalarovs and the Russian men certainly seemed hugely entertained in a venue that boasted golden showers and fairly bristled with the energy of sex for sale. They were the same men who hosted Trump in Moscow in 2013, so it doesn’t seem entirely impossible that the amusements of a golden shower were again part of the Boss’s festivities.”
The failed, one-term former president has repeatedly denied he ever engaged in such a scene with prostitutes while he was in Moscow, even referencing it recently:
In a private speech at [a Republican donor] retreat Thursday, Trump cast himself as the GOP’s savior, saying he had brought the party back from the brink of disaster and helped Republicans hold seats on Capitol Hill—failing to mention that the party lost the White House and control of both the House and Senate under his presidency. “It was a dying party, I’ll be honest. Now we have a very lively party,” he said, to a room of senators, donors and lobbyists, according to a recording of the event obtained by The Washington Post, before boasting of all the endorsements and telephone town halls he had done in the 2020 cycle.
In Trump’s address, one of the final events of the retreat, the former president focused on re-litigating grievances he has retained since leaving office…. Unprompted, he brought up an unsubstantiated claim he had interactions with prostitutes in Moscow before he ran for president. “I’m not into golden showers,” he told the crowd. “You know the great thing, our great first lady—‘That one,’ she said, ‘I don’t believe that one.’”
To paraphrase the Bard of Avon, The tangerine-tinted buffoon doth protest too much.