I'd bet that one of the most shocking things to Steele was the la-de-dah attitude of so many in the Trump campaign to what he was finding out. I am persuaded that these fuckers just didn't see anything wrong with their corrupt and unethical ways, mostly because they didn't know any better or didn't care what the boundaries were. Whether they are psychopathic or sociopathic I'll leave to mental health professionals.

If you read the guardian article, it becomes clear that US intelligence agents had no fucking clue that our democracy was being compromised. Other foreign services had to hit them with the clue stick "Wake up, dumb-for-asses!"

Then they did find out, and investigated things and found them to be true. AND THEN WENT SILENT.

By the time Obama found out, the election was over.

Putin fucked us over to be sure, but we made it easy

He just totally chickened out on telling the truth to preserve his "legacy". Obama was by and large and good president but he totally fucked us by not coming out forecefully on this issue He played right into Russia/orange assface/mcturtles traitorous plan.

But I agree with your assessment of Obama in this

I expect push-back, but have felt from the first time I heard this news that Obama make a huge, country changing mistake by not treating this as the emergency and national threat it truly was and probably far worse than he imagined.

And to my point of the FBI dragging it's feet,

A bureaucratic response to the dossier was not made official until McCain gave it to Comey in early December 2016, and then it was sent to Obama ( as described in the end of the Guardian Story )

And again, per the linked article, because the FBI was looking the other way and Comey announced the Clinton thing in October, Steele got upset and leaked the contents of the dossier to David Corn.

It is implied that the dossier was known but not official prior to that.

Obama coulda-shoulda-woulda been more forceful before the election, but especially afterwards while aware of the situation and still in charge

... McTurtle's position.

That's still Monday morning quarterbacking though, if Obama thought Red Don had a chance to win because of Russia then I think it would've been all hands on deck full alarms.

... right that it should've been a shout loud and high on Russia no matter what.

Allowing Red Don's crew to get away with it s a big yeah, go ahead for the rest of the KGOP to do it too we wont do anything about it.

I see LBJ made the same mistake IMHO

Obama had the House and Senate leadership in the WH for a conference, to tell them about the Russian involvement (before the election). McConnell and Ryan told him they didn't believe it and if he went public with the information they would say he was trying to influence the election. As a result, Brennan and Clapper released a statement on a Friday afternoon, again, before the election. Fifteen minutes after they released the statement, the news about Trump and Billy Bush's recorded comments about women were released. Frontline did a two-part program about Putin's involvement in the election, a few weeks ago, and Rachel Maddow devoted over half her program to discuss the issue (just recently). As Rachel said, "was it just a coincidence the statement from Clapper and Brennan was buried 15 mins after it was released?"

Obama didn't have a report on it until Dec of 2016

He must have had other information on collusion ( I think the face book ads for instance )

But the Guardian story seems to indicate the FBI withheld the Steele dossier information from him

Russian interference vs Trumps Russian connections as described in the Steele dossier

to the traffic they were listening in on between Trumps circle and Putin's people.


https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029846888

If that’s the case it’s great that Mueller has/is looking at it but also makes it unfit for public consumption without much further investigation. That and people from all walks of life often embellish a bit when talking about their own work. As much material as it covers that would provide a wide range of arguments to simply dismiss the whole thing.

With Mueller it’s a different story and might lead to a lot more. Through the investigation finding the truth also means you uncover the inaccuracies. If an original sources of an inaccuracy can be found there might be more there. Why did they provide the information? Who did they hear it from?

I’m sure Mueller is well down that path. I can’t imagine how intense and exciting his job must be.