by Chuck Ross Defenders of the FBI’s activities during the 2016 campaign have adopted a familiar refrain over the past 28 months to describe the Steele dossier, that infamous document that served as a road map for the conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. “It’s raw intelligence,” according to countless politicos and pundits, including CNN contributor Asha Rangappa, Democratic Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, former CIA executive John Sipher and numerous other commentators. The spy term, which describes information directly from a source that has not been fully analyzed, is intended to downplay the dossier’s significance to the collusion narrative. Christopher Steele, the dossier author, gathered his intelligence from a trusted network of sources, the argument goes, and provided it to seasoned investigators to analyze. But the charitable defense faces new challenges, especially in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report. The problem with the “raw intelligence” canard is that it ignores questions about how Steele obtained his information and what the former spy did with it once he received it. The FBI also treated Steele’s allegations as more than mere raw intelligence. The bureau relied heavily on Steele’s work, even though it was unverified, to obtain spy…
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