It was published by BuzzFeed News on January 10, 2017, without Steele's permission. It also alleges that Russia sought to damage Hillary Clinton's candidacy. The dossier's 17 reports allege that Trump campaign members and Russian operatives had conspired to cooperate in Russia's election interference to benefit Trump. Steele, a former head of the Russia Desk for British intelligence (MI6), was writing the report for the private investigative firm Fusion GPS, who were paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The dossier is an unfinished 35-page compilation of raw intelligence based on information from initially anonymous sources known to the author, counterintelligence specialist Christopher Steele.

Some have been publicly confirmed, others are plausible but not specifically confirmed, and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven.

While Steele's documents played a significant role in initially highlighting the general friendliness between Trump and the Putin administration, the veracity of specific allegations is highly variable. Several key allegations made in June 2016 were later corroborated by the January 2017 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, namely that Vladimir Putin favored Trump over Hillary Clinton that he personally ordered an 'influence campaign' to harm Clinton's campaign and to 'undermine public faith in the US democratic process' that he ordered cyberattacks on both parties and that many Trump campaign officials and associates had numerous secretive contacts with Russian agents. The Steele dossier, also known as the Trump–Russia dossier, is a controversial political opposition research report written from June to December 2016, containing allegations of misconduct, conspiracy, and cooperation between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the government of Russia prior to and during the 2016 election campaign.

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