I've earlier speculated that, given that Hillary's disreputable-to-the-point-of-absurdity "researchers" Sidney Blumethal and Cody Shearer were actually the major ghostwriters of what we call the "Steele Dossier," and that Christopher Steele was brought on mainly as a Front Man, a "cleanskin," whose name slapped upon the Blumenthal/Shearer joint production would lend it a veneer of credibility that the names Blumenthal and Shearer would not.

Allegation laundering, I'm speculating.

This is just a speculation. I don't have any facts that establish it, only that suggest it as a possibility. Such as the now-admitted fact that Shearer and Blumenthal continued feeding Steele their own "intelligence" (I can't put enough sneer-quotes around that word in this context) and that Sidney Blumenthal was, for reasons not yet explained, interviewed in connection with the "Steele" Dossier.

Almost as if he knew something about it.

Well, now there's a new bit of data: Cody Shearer is the guy who obtained, supposedly, "intelligence" from an unknown foreign (RUSSIAN) source about Trump supposedly staging a Urinary Olympics with prostitutes, kompromat material claimed to be in the hands of the KGB successor organization the FSB, and then passed this splashy, stinky tip to Christopher Steele.

Oh, by the way: Christopher Steele only began work on "his" dossier in June 2016. But in August 2016, Shearer was already peddling this outlandish bit of dezinformazioniya to the press.

Which suggests that maybe Shearer was already working on this smear campaign before Steele was hired.

Chuck Ross:

Which might be why someone would want to erase the title "The Blumenthal/Shearer Dossier" and rewrite it as "The Christopher Steele Dossier."

Because we all know that Christopher Steele is an unquestionably reliable man who would never lie to the FBI, except those times when he did lie to the FBI resulting in the FBI firing him as their special foreign friend.

Did he? Did he write it, or did he just edit it?

I mean, I "wrote" this post. But you'll notice -- it seems to contain an awful lot of Chuck Ross' reportage in it.

The article notes that Sheaer and Steele "share common friends."

Now, I can't quote the whole thing, and it's worth the read in full: I omitted the parts about how one of Hillary's minions in the State Dept. Derp State helped shepherd this document to the FBI.

Here's a question for ya: Why did Steele present his document to State, knowing that the FBI was actually the agency that would be tasked with investigating such claims?

He's not a naif (we're told -- he's James Bond, practically!), and he's worked for the FBI before.

So why is he passing this to State?

Where Hillary's flunkies work?

And why did Shearer also pass his bullshit to a State Department official, when Hillary Clinton has been his patron and client for 30 years?

I would imagine the answer in both cases is to create layers of separation insulating the men responsible from these memos from the memos, and to create the illusion that this is Definitely Not the Work of Hillary Clinton.

Nope, these are just dossiers, Definitely Not Paid for By Hillary Clinton, showing up as hot tips at Hillary's State Department, and then being passed by one of her employees to the FBI.

I'm sure she didn't know about any of this.