weeks later in july 2016, steele sent off his second trump memo. this was the headline russia: secret kremlin meetings attended by trump adviser carter page in moscow. according to steele s sources those meetings involved a move to lift ukraine-related western sanctions against russia. on the day that report was filed, the republican national convention was getting under way in cleveland, ohio. at the time, a few american journalists were starting to see the vague outlines of a trump/russia story. trump s appointment of paul manafort as his campaign chair raised eyebrows because manafort spent years working for pro-putin politicians. what really started to give the russia story some traction was paul manafort s role. reporter: michael isikoff is a veteran investigative reporter who writes for yahoo news.
i, donald john trump do solemnly swear reporter: after donald trump took the oath of office in january 2017, a steady barrage of news reports started to reveal the character of the russian campaign to influence the american presidential election. the circulation and hyping of internal democratic party documents that had been stolen by russian hackers. fake social media profiles pushing divisive story lines and attempting to drive support for trump. thousands of russian-bought online ads targeting and trying to sway millions of american voters. and alongside those revelations, time and again previously unreported meetings between trump associates and russians linked to the putin government. both during the campaign and during the presidential transition. a storm of controversy swirling around national security adviser michael flynn. we re staying with breaking news that donald trump s attorney general met with the russian ambassador. jared kushner met with the russian ambassad
passport and said he d never even been to prague. and even though it is common to travel in europe without getting a passport stamped in every country visited, cohen s passport tweet was touted by the president elect as a definitive repudiation of the entire dossier. it s a disgrace what took place, it s a disgrace, and i think they ought to apologize to start with, michael cohen. reporter: the president elect attacked not just the dossier itself, he accused the u.s. intelligence community of leaking it. i think it was disgraceful, disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake, out. i think it s a disgrace. and i say that and i say that. and that s something that nazi germany would have done and did do. reporter: trump also lashed out at buzzfeed. buzzfeed, which is a failing pile of garbage. reporter: on top of the criticism from the president elect, buzzfeed also took heat from other journalists for
i was able to do some research on him and find out at the very least, he was who he said he was, and that he had the intelligence pedigree, that i d been told that he had. reporter: by mid october, christopher steele had filed 15 of the 16 memos that would later be called the dossier. david corn saw several of the memos. and i don t use the term dossier. because it s not really a dossier. that gives the impression of a finished product that was compiled into one single entity, one document. these were field reports. it was very much the way a reporter in the field would send notes to an editor. reporter: to try to verify the credibility of steele s memos, david corn started calling his own sources. malcolm nance was one of them. david corn, the journalist who was the first one to receive the christopher steele dossier, contacted me, and he wanted to
reporter: that salacious claim about trump s time in moscow was a small part of the first christopher steele memo. when the full steele dossier later became public, that claim would be the headline. but it was steele s broader assertions about russia s aims, russia s methods and russia s relationship with trump that would end up slow burning through the whole first year of the trump presidency. i saw the change in rich when we moved into the new house. but having his parents over was enlightening. you don t like my lasagna? no, it s good. -hmm. -oh. huh. [ both laugh ] here, blow. blow on it. you see it, right? is there a draft in here? i m telling you, it s so easy to get home insurance on progressive.com. progressive can t save you from becoming your parents. but we can save you money when you bundle home and auto.