Trump-Russia dossier author Christopher Steele backs out of public appearance
Christopher Steele, the British spook who authored a largely unverified dossier about President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, has backed out of plans to speak by video at a pro-democracy gathering in Baltimore next week, according to conference organizers.
The planned speaking engagement, which had not previously been reported, would have marked his first public appearance since the publication of the explosive dossier aside from brief statements he made to the media in March 2017.
Steele, a former MI6 officer, had been scheduled to speak about disinformation next Thursday at the Reawakening the Spirit of Democracy Conference at the George Peabody Library in Baltimore.
Steele was scheduled to speak on a panel moderated by Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum. The panel is set to feature Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia under Barack Obama, and Ed Lucas of the Center for European Policy Analysis, according to conference organizer Uriel Epshtein said.
Though Steele is listed as a speaker in promotional materials, Applebaum said that he had gotten “cold feet” last week and canceled. She added that he backed out on advice of counsel. An email sent to Steele’s private intelligence firm, Orbis, was not immediately returned.
Steele’s reports, commissioned by Hillary Clinton’s campaign via the private Washington research firm Fusion GPS, consisted of anonymously sourced reporting that alleged a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between Trump, his lieutenants and the Kremlin.
The reports, which circulated among U.S. intelligence officials beginning in summer 2016 and were later published by BuzzFeed, helped set off a chain of events that led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. In the years since Steele authored his reports, evidence has emerged of extensive contacts between Trump’s aides and various Russian state-aligned actors. But many of the most salacious allegations in Steele’s reports remain unconfirmed or partially debunked.
In October, Steele made rare on-the-record comments to an editor for Vanity Fair, writing in an email, “In these strange and troubling times, it is hard to speak unpalatable truths to power, but I believe we all still have a duty to do so.”
Steele’s abortive reemergence in the spotlight comes at a time when Mueller is reportedly close to wrapping up his investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Next week’s conference, which will continue without Steele, “will examine and wrestle with the underlying threats to liberal democracy and propose strategies to reinvigorate it,” according to promotional materials.
The conference is set to feature several establishment mainstays from both political parties, including Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), former Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and former George W. Bush undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The conference is organized by the Renew Democracy Initiative, which is chaired by chess grandmaster-turned-Russian-opposition leader Garry Kasparov.