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In view of the FEC statement from 2022, I'm somewhat worried about the present wording of following paragraph in the section Steele dossier#Legal status and comparison to Trump Tower meeting:
I do not doubt that the Bump statement [1] from 2018 should be considered as a reliable source, stating the full legality of the dossier, as in the quoted paragraph. I also note that as regards the main point, the question of the legality in employing and contacting non-US citizens for an investigation about possible illegal actions of a political opponent on one hand, vz. receiving aid and/or money from a foreign government in order to facilitate a certain (federal) election result on the other, there seems to be no difference between Bump's opinion 2018 and FEC's finding after more than 3 years of processing. Indeed, as you can see from FEC's letter, there were accusations that the HRC campaign or their agents had violated 52 U.S. Code § 30121; these accusations vere duly investigated by FEC; and they were dismissed.
However, the claim that "Steele's work was a legal, declared, campaign expense" and "FEC law allows such declared campaign expenditures" according to the opinion expressed by FEC "probably" does not mean that declaring this expense as for "legal service" was legal. Neither the HRC campaign and nor DNC accepted that declaring this particular part of the expenses as violations of 52 U.S.C. § 30104(b)(5)(A) and (b)(6)(B)(v) and 11 C.F.R. § 104.3(b)(3)(i); but both agreed to pay the fines demanded by FEC, and not to contest this legally. Therefore, IMHO, we cannot reasonably retain the paragraph exactly as it is.
@ Valjean and Soni: I see in your earlier discussion that you both think that one should avoid unnecessary duplications in the article (and in general). I concur. However, this leaves me with a problem. It would be simple to enlarge the offending paragraph with a notice that indeed the FEC has found probable cause for the HRC campaign and the DNC to have wrongly booked payments for an in itself perfectly legal investigation; but this more or less should duplicate the text about this in the section Steele dossier#Hiring and initial reports. Another possibility would be to remove just both occurrences of the word "declared" from the paragraph; but it then probably would not quite be in accordance with the given source (Bump). Do you have any suggestions for resolving this?
One possibility I thought of is to insert an {{ anchor}} at the earlier paragraph treating FEC's findings and the fines, and then change the paragraph to something like the following:
What do you think? JoergenB ( talk) 23:26, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
By contrast, Steele's work was a legal, declared, campaign expense [1] and did not involve any voluntary offer of aid to the Clinton campaign from the Russian government. FEC law allows such declared campaign expenditures, even if the aid is performed by foreigners. [1]
Bump explains that: [1]
President Trump has deliberately and regularly conflated the two, arguing that the former meeting was innocuous and that the real malfeasance—the real collusion—was between Clinton's campaign and those Russians who were speaking to Steele. Trump is incorrect. There is no reason to think that Clinton's campaign is culpable for any illegal act related to the employment of Steele and good reason to think that the law was broken around the meeting at Trump Tower—and that members of the Trump team might face legal consequences.
In March 2022, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the DNC $105,000 and the Clinton campaign $8,000 for misreporting those fees and expenses as "legal services" and "legal and compliance consulting" rather than "opposition research". [2] [3]
Jörgen, tusind tak for dine forbedringer til artiklen. -- Valjean ( talk) ( PING me) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
I believe the source is unreliable and should not be used at all. I was able to see an archived copy of it, Philip Bump's Why the Trump Tower meeting may have violated the law — and the Steele dossier likely didn’t as of August 2018. Some of the article's false or misleading statements: Natalia Veselnitskaya has "connections to the Russian government" (she was once employed in the Moscow prosecutor's office and knows Yuri Chaika if that's what this vagueness means), that she "apparently proceeded to outline how a businessman facing questionable criminal charges in Russia allegedly made donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign" (what we actually know is that her focus was the Magnitsky Act though she may have known about a company that donated to the DNC), "Steele’s research involved talking to Russian government officials" (in fact major sources were people like Danchenko i.e. not even in Russia), "members of the Trump team might face legal consequences" (it's six years later and they didn't), the so-called offer from Ms Veselnitskaya was "part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump" (which leaves out that those words are not from her but from non-Russian Rob Goldstone who later said he had no idea what he was talking about), and of course the main menu item "There is no reason to think that Clinton’s campaign is culpable for any illegal act related to the employment of Steele" (yet the FEC fined her and the DNC due to probable cause to believe there was misreporting). It's no wonder to me that Jonathan Turley, who is a real lawyer, included this article in a selection of Mr Bump's errors. Peter Gulutzan ( talk) 00:57, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
Jonathan Turley
Natalia Veselnitskaya has "connections to the Russian government"
"Steele’s research involved talking to Russian government officials" (in fact major sources were people like Danchenko i.e. not even in Russia)
"members of the Trump team might face legal consequences" (it's six years later and they didn't)
the so-called offer from Ms Veselnitskaya was "part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump" (which leaves out that those words are not from her but from non-Russian Rob Goldstone who later said he had no idea what he was talking about)
and of course the main menu item "There is no reason to think that Clinton’s campaign is culpable for any illegal act related to the employment of Steele" (yet the FEC fined her and the DNC due to probable cause to believe there was misreporting)
Jonathan Turley, who is a real lawyer
My post was a response in the previous thread, Valjean split it off and added a "WaPo ..." heading. In case that confused anyone: it's about the use of Mr Bump's article in the section "Legal status and comparison to Trump Tower meeting". Peter Gulutzan ( talk) 17:56, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
BTW, I think we have strayed into NOTFORUM territory, and I'm certainly guilty in that regard. This is not the place to carry on a meta-discussion about Turley, Russian interference, and many other related matters. We need to stick to the point of the "Legal status and comparison to Trump Tower meeting" section, so I'll try to do better.
Bump is not the only RS who accurately makes the point that the DNC/Clinton oppo research was legal, including the hiring of Steele, something the leaders of the Clinton campaign were not involved in and did not know about for some time. Also, other RS than Bump contrast the legal Steele/Fusion GPS oppo research with the illegal/unpatriotic and eager acceptance of many forms of Russian help by the Trump campaign. See: "The truth about Russia, Trump and the 2016 election", by Glenn Kessler.
Legitimate questions were raised by JoergenB when he started this thread, and I think he did an admirable job of fixing the problems. -- Valjean ( talk) ( PING me) 19:40, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
![]() | Warning: active arbitration remedies The contentious topics procedure applies to this article. This article is related to post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people, which is a contentious topic. Furthermore, the following rules apply when editing this article:
Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page. |
![]() | Before requesting any edits to this protected article, please familiarise yourself with reliable sourcing requirements. Before posting an edit request on this talk page, please read the reliable sourcing and original research policies. These policies require that information in Wikipedia articles be supported by citations from reliable independent sources, and disallow your personal views, observations, interpretations, analyses, or anecdotes from being used. Only content verified by subject experts and other reliable sources may be included, and uncited material may be removed without notice. If your complaint is about an assertion made in the article, check first to see if your proposed change is supported by reliable sources. If it is not, it is highly unlikely that your request will be granted. Checking the archives for previous discussions may provide more information. Requests which do not provide citations from reliable sources, or rely on unreliable sources, may be subject to closure without any other response. |
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Steele dossier article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
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|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
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1,
2,
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9,
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12,
13,
14,
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18,
19,
20,
21,
22,
23,
24,
25,
26,
27Auto-archiving period: 30 days
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![]() | The contents of the List of Trump–Russia dossier allegations page were merged into Steele dossier on March 2, 2018. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
![]() | This article was nominated for deletion on 14 January 2017. The result of the discussion was Snow keep. |
While the biographies of living persons policy does not apply directly to the subject of this article, it may contain material that relates to living persons, such as friends and family of persons no longer living, or living persons involved in the subject matter. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately. If such material is re-inserted repeatedly, or if there are other concerns related to this policy, please see this noticeboard. |
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A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
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In view of the FEC statement from 2022, I'm somewhat worried about the present wording of following paragraph in the section Steele dossier#Legal status and comparison to Trump Tower meeting:
I do not doubt that the Bump statement [1] from 2018 should be considered as a reliable source, stating the full legality of the dossier, as in the quoted paragraph. I also note that as regards the main point, the question of the legality in employing and contacting non-US citizens for an investigation about possible illegal actions of a political opponent on one hand, vz. receiving aid and/or money from a foreign government in order to facilitate a certain (federal) election result on the other, there seems to be no difference between Bump's opinion 2018 and FEC's finding after more than 3 years of processing. Indeed, as you can see from FEC's letter, there were accusations that the HRC campaign or their agents had violated 52 U.S. Code § 30121; these accusations vere duly investigated by FEC; and they were dismissed.
However, the claim that "Steele's work was a legal, declared, campaign expense" and "FEC law allows such declared campaign expenditures" according to the opinion expressed by FEC "probably" does not mean that declaring this expense as for "legal service" was legal. Neither the HRC campaign and nor DNC accepted that declaring this particular part of the expenses as violations of 52 U.S.C. § 30104(b)(5)(A) and (b)(6)(B)(v) and 11 C.F.R. § 104.3(b)(3)(i); but both agreed to pay the fines demanded by FEC, and not to contest this legally. Therefore, IMHO, we cannot reasonably retain the paragraph exactly as it is.
@ Valjean and Soni: I see in your earlier discussion that you both think that one should avoid unnecessary duplications in the article (and in general). I concur. However, this leaves me with a problem. It would be simple to enlarge the offending paragraph with a notice that indeed the FEC has found probable cause for the HRC campaign and the DNC to have wrongly booked payments for an in itself perfectly legal investigation; but this more or less should duplicate the text about this in the section Steele dossier#Hiring and initial reports. Another possibility would be to remove just both occurrences of the word "declared" from the paragraph; but it then probably would not quite be in accordance with the given source (Bump). Do you have any suggestions for resolving this?
One possibility I thought of is to insert an {{ anchor}} at the earlier paragraph treating FEC's findings and the fines, and then change the paragraph to something like the following:
What do you think? JoergenB ( talk) 23:26, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
By contrast, Steele's work was a legal, declared, campaign expense [1] and did not involve any voluntary offer of aid to the Clinton campaign from the Russian government. FEC law allows such declared campaign expenditures, even if the aid is performed by foreigners. [1]
Bump explains that: [1]
President Trump has deliberately and regularly conflated the two, arguing that the former meeting was innocuous and that the real malfeasance—the real collusion—was between Clinton's campaign and those Russians who were speaking to Steele. Trump is incorrect. There is no reason to think that Clinton's campaign is culpable for any illegal act related to the employment of Steele and good reason to think that the law was broken around the meeting at Trump Tower—and that members of the Trump team might face legal consequences.
In March 2022, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the DNC $105,000 and the Clinton campaign $8,000 for misreporting those fees and expenses as "legal services" and "legal and compliance consulting" rather than "opposition research". [2] [3]
Jörgen, tusind tak for dine forbedringer til artiklen. -- Valjean ( talk) ( PING me) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
I believe the source is unreliable and should not be used at all. I was able to see an archived copy of it, Philip Bump's Why the Trump Tower meeting may have violated the law — and the Steele dossier likely didn’t as of August 2018. Some of the article's false or misleading statements: Natalia Veselnitskaya has "connections to the Russian government" (she was once employed in the Moscow prosecutor's office and knows Yuri Chaika if that's what this vagueness means), that she "apparently proceeded to outline how a businessman facing questionable criminal charges in Russia allegedly made donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign" (what we actually know is that her focus was the Magnitsky Act though she may have known about a company that donated to the DNC), "Steele’s research involved talking to Russian government officials" (in fact major sources were people like Danchenko i.e. not even in Russia), "members of the Trump team might face legal consequences" (it's six years later and they didn't), the so-called offer from Ms Veselnitskaya was "part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump" (which leaves out that those words are not from her but from non-Russian Rob Goldstone who later said he had no idea what he was talking about), and of course the main menu item "There is no reason to think that Clinton’s campaign is culpable for any illegal act related to the employment of Steele" (yet the FEC fined her and the DNC due to probable cause to believe there was misreporting). It's no wonder to me that Jonathan Turley, who is a real lawyer, included this article in a selection of Mr Bump's errors. Peter Gulutzan ( talk) 00:57, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
Jonathan Turley
Natalia Veselnitskaya has "connections to the Russian government"
"Steele’s research involved talking to Russian government officials" (in fact major sources were people like Danchenko i.e. not even in Russia)
"members of the Trump team might face legal consequences" (it's six years later and they didn't)
the so-called offer from Ms Veselnitskaya was "part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump" (which leaves out that those words are not from her but from non-Russian Rob Goldstone who later said he had no idea what he was talking about)
and of course the main menu item "There is no reason to think that Clinton’s campaign is culpable for any illegal act related to the employment of Steele" (yet the FEC fined her and the DNC due to probable cause to believe there was misreporting)
Jonathan Turley, who is a real lawyer
My post was a response in the previous thread, Valjean split it off and added a "WaPo ..." heading. In case that confused anyone: it's about the use of Mr Bump's article in the section "Legal status and comparison to Trump Tower meeting". Peter Gulutzan ( talk) 17:56, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
BTW, I think we have strayed into NOTFORUM territory, and I'm certainly guilty in that regard. This is not the place to carry on a meta-discussion about Turley, Russian interference, and many other related matters. We need to stick to the point of the "Legal status and comparison to Trump Tower meeting" section, so I'll try to do better.
Bump is not the only RS who accurately makes the point that the DNC/Clinton oppo research was legal, including the hiring of Steele, something the leaders of the Clinton campaign were not involved in and did not know about for some time. Also, other RS than Bump contrast the legal Steele/Fusion GPS oppo research with the illegal/unpatriotic and eager acceptance of many forms of Russian help by the Trump campaign. See: "The truth about Russia, Trump and the 2016 election", by Glenn Kessler.
Legitimate questions were raised by JoergenB when he started this thread, and I think he did an admirable job of fixing the problems. -- Valjean ( talk) ( PING me) 19:40, 10 May 2024 (UTC)