By now, most politically literate Americans understand that the Steele dossier — the infamous, much ballyhooed collection of 2016 opposition research memos — was either reckless fantasy or deliberate defamation. But what many still don’t grasp is how that discredited document could become central to criminal charges against Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and John Brennan.

They pushed it. They knew better. And now a case is building.

The dossier’s known falsity

On July 28, 2016, CIA Director John Brennan briefed top Obama administration officials — including President Obama, FBI Director James Comey, Vice President Joe Biden, and National Security Adviser Susan Rice. Brennan reported that the Clinton campaign intended to frame Donald Trump by blaming Russian interference on him. This strategy, he explained, aimed to distract from revelations that the Democratic National Committee had rigged its primary against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

If the dossier was a cartoonish act of election interference, then its creators and knowing advocates should face prosecution.

At the same time, the FBI Special Agent Michael Gaeta alerted his superiors that ex-British spy Christopher Steele was compiling a salacious dossier on behalf of Clinton’s campaign. Brennan passed this intelligence to the FBI as a criminal referral.

So what did Clinton, Brennan, and Comey do with that knowledge?

Clinton approved and oversaw the media blitz. Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri and Clinton herself pushed the Russia-Trump collusion narrative exhaustively to the press and to DNC delegates — statements that were knowingly false.

That alone opens the door to criminal charges: false statements to federal officials and the press to advance an operation built on fabricated intelligence.

Brennan’s role in spreading a lie

Brennan, for his part, played both sides. He privately briefed White House officials about the hoax but reportedly gave false information to legislators like Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who used it to smear Trump publicly.

Despite knowing the dossier was unverified, Brennan insisted it had “the ring of truth” and fought to attach it to the January 6, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment as “Annex A.” In May 2023, Brennan denied to the House Judiciary Committee that he pushed the dossier’s inclusion. That claim was contradicted by a December 2016 email he wrote. Lying under oath about that decision could carry criminal consequences.

Comey’s FISA cover-up

Then-FBI Director James Comey didn’t just accept the hoax. He institutionalized it.

Comey approved the October 2016 FISA warrant applications that relied on the Steele dossier. He failed to inform the court that Steele’s work was a Clinton campaign product. Deputy Director Andrew McCabe tried to downplay the dossier’s origins in the FISA applications — and it’s hard to believe Comey was shut out of the discussion.

In December 2016, Obama ordered the professionally prepared honest draft of the ICA to be changed to include a discussion of Vladimir Putin’s alleged “hack and leak” program to assist Donald Trump in the election.

Brennan and Comey knew of this ordered change and later inserted the dossier’s summary into the ICA. They knew that at least that portion of the assessment was false, especially since many of Steele’s sources were themselves tied to the Kremlin.

Put simply: They pushed Kremlin-fed lies to frame Trump — under the pretense of exposing Kremlin interference.

The Russian cast behind the dossier

The dossier’s roots tell the real story.

Fusion GPS, led by Glenn Simpson, contracted Steele while simultaneously working for Russian oligarch Denis Katsyv — who wanted to roll back the Magnitsky Act. Simpson also helped orchestrate the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting involving Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. While promising dirt on Clinton, Veselnitskaya’s real mission was lobbying against Magnitsky sanctions.

Steele, meanwhile, had previously worked for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. His key source? Igor Danchenko, a Brookings Institution analyst who had tried bribing U.S. officials for classified information and claimed ties to “Putin’s Rasputin” Vladislav Surkov and Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin.

Danchenko’s supporting cast in his “peeing prostitutes” fraud included Russian PR agent Charles Dolan and Olga Galkina, a former Russian state media operative who bragged to friends ahead of the election about landing a job in Clinton’s State Department.

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Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

Mueller made it worse

Shockingly, Robert Mueller’s special counsel office hired Danchenko, approved $200,000 in payments to him, and requested another $346,000 — while giving him access to sensitive U.S. intelligence operations against Moscow. That’s how far the collusion hoax went: Federal law enforcement paid a likely Russian operative to help “investigate” Russia.

Then there’s Susan Rice’s January 2017 memo, which confirmed that Comey planned to withhold Russiagate intelligence from the incoming Trump administration. Comey even memorialized his secretive maneuvering against Trump in five classified memos — personal notes meant to serve as a post hoc CYA roadmap.

Mueller’s team adopted many of the dossier’s core themes, particularly the “Putin hack and leak” narrative — despite clear technical evidence that the DNC data was downloaded internally, not hacked externally.

No expiration date on treason

Fortunately, Brennan’s 2023 testimony — potentially perjurious — could extend the statute of limitations. That gives Justice Department investigators more time to piece together a conspiracy that stretches from the Clinton campaign to the FBI and CIA and all the way to the Oval Office.

And all of it can be traced back to Steele’s dossier, a cynical exercise that dwarfs any prior American political scandal. If the dossier was a cartoonish act of election interference, it follows that its creators and knowing advocates should face prosecution. The dossier was more than another media smear against Donald Trump. It was a coordinated disinformation operation built on Russian sources, laundered through federal agencies, and weaponized against a sitting president.

If that isn’t criminal, what is?