Joe Rogan on russiagate: what the evidence says · JRE #2223

What the evidence says 01 / RECORD

The Steele dossier's most sensational specific allegations, including claims of direct Trump-Putin coordination and a Moscow hotel incident, were never corroborated and some were later assessed as unreliable, secondhand, or false. But the FBI's Russia investigation was not built on the dossier: the DOJ Inspector General's December 2019 report found the dossier "played no role" in the FBI's decision to open the investigation, which was instead predicated on other information, including contacts between Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and a Russia-linked figure. That same IG report found Attorney General William Barr's public characterization of the investigation's basis to be misleading, which outside legal scholars called inaccurate. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, but it documented extensive Russian government interference in the 2016 election and numerous contacts between Trump campaign associates and Russia-linked individuals. Calling the entire multi-year investigation a "hoax," or treating the dossier as its sole or primary basis, oversimplifies a mixed record: the dossier's specific claims were largely unverified or discredited, but the investigation itself had an independent, documented factual basis and yielded confirmed findings of Russian interference and campaign contacts.