ROGER KIMBALL: We Are Finally Uncovering the Center of the Scandal of the Steele Dossier.
“Those who lack delicacy hold us in their power.”
I have always liked that mot from the English essayist William Hazlitt.
I’d wager Hillary Clinton and her minions, very much including the discredited spook Christopher Steele, like it too.
For how long did “the Steele dossier,” that rancid pile of anti-Trump lies, rumors, fantasies, and fabrications monopolize the public’s attention?
Remember, it took more than a year before we learned that the dossier was not a dossier, i.e., a collection of basically verified information about a subject, but merely opposition “research,” i.e., completely unsubstantiated stories, covertly paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Thousands of news stories were published about the Steele Dossier. Journalists picked over its every allegation, pretending to weigh each charge and track down every outlandish story.
The entire apparat of the FBI, aided by our so-called “intelligence” agencies wheeled into action.
Poor, doddering Robert Mueller, who claimed at a Congressional hearing not to be familiar with “Fusion GPS,” the group that siphoned money from the Clinton campaign, via the Perkins Coie law firm, to Steele, was the titular head of an investigation that lasted for well nigh two years.
Mueller’s extended inquiry, which came up with no evidence of collusion between Donald Trump and the Russians, cost the American taxpayers some 40 million dollars.
It also destroyed the lives and careers of several Trump allies.
But speaking of lacking delicacy, just a few weeks ago Christopher Steele sat for a highly touted interview on Hulu with the Clinton apparatchik George Stephanopoulos.
That embarrassing performance was billed in advance as finally, at last, vindicating the dossier.
It did nothing of the kind.
Had Steele, had Stephanopoulos, had Hulu had any delicacy, they would not have engaged in that farce.
But they lacked delicacy, and so television audiences were treated to another overproduced sack of lies and misrepresentations.
Speaking of television personalities lacking delicacy: Rachel Maddow’s Shocking New Low.
If I were Rachel Maddow and had a record of saying things on air like, “Above all else, we know this about the now-famous dossier: Christopher Steele had this story before the rest of America did. And he got it from Russian sources,” news like the Dolan item would make me furious. Not only did she flog the Steele document for years, she specifically hyped its credibility on the grounds of how it was put together, and by whom.
Now, we find out that the actual construction of the reports was like something out of a Three Stooges episode, with Igor, Chuck, and a Bronx Zoo zebra standing in for Moe, Larry, and Curly. The mere fact that some of Steele’s supposed “Russian sources” turned out to be this absurd stateside parade would have any honest journalist fuming.
Rachel not only isn’t upset, she’s expressing pride in having been burned, and is digging in for more.
Related: Russiagate has no rock bottom: The indictment of the Steele dossier’s key source newly humiliates the Clinton campaign, FBI, and US media.