some elements of the dossier have been verified. a number remain neither verified nor proven false. but none so far have been publicly disproven. the ranking democrat on the intelligence committee in the house is california congressman adam schiff. when you look at just what has become public, some of the public information is very much in line with what is reported in that dossier. reporter: msnbc contributor john mclaughlin spent 40 years analyzing the dark arts of counterespionage for the cia. he said that while the broad themes of the dossier do seem to be bearing out, collusion is a hard thing to prove. if you re looking at the fact pattern that we have here, involving a number of figures in the trump administration, having had one interaction or another with the russians, whether financial or otherwise, you know, if you re in the intelligence business, that still amounts to smoke. reporter: it may be only smoke, but there seems to be a lot of it, billowing up from
page served as an intermediary with the russians. trump s personal lawyer michael cohen traveled to prague to meet with russians trying to cover up the scandal. damaging allegations about trump and his dealings with russians. reporter: the reaction from the trump camp was immediate and furious. the buzzfeed memo is total complete garbage is what it is. reporter: the trump associates named in the dossier vehemently denied any wrongdoing. paul manafort said the allegations were a democrat party dirty trick and completely false. it s so crazy that it s laughable. reporter: carter page admitted he had been to russia, but insisted he had gone on personal business, not as trump s russian go-between. i had no dealings in russia that would directly that had anything to do with the trump campaign. reporter: as for michael cohen, trump s lawyer, he tweeted a picture of his
what was fast becoming the worst kept secret in washington. the question we ask ourselves, why would we keep this from our audience? reporter: at 5:20 p.m. on january 10th, buzzfeed hit publish. all 35 pages of the dossier went online with a warning that the allegations are unverified and the report contains errors. and that was really our main goal in our summary of it, was to say very, very clearly, we haven t verified this. there are some, as you say, minor, but real errors in it that could give you pause and here s what we know about where it comes from. reporter: it was explosive stuff, and not just the lewd allegations. there were other serious charges, names named in black and white. the public was seeing it all for the first time. according to the dossier s unnamed sources, campaign chairman paul manafort managed a conspiracy of cooperation with the russians. foreign policy adviser carter
senior state department personnel pushed back alerting both capital hill and the press. what was concerning to those state department officials who talked to our colleagues is that they felt that this was not in the best interest of the u.s. and was too premature to be considered. steele s point one, intel from russia to the trump camp. steele s point two, the trump camp acting to help russia on both ukraine and on sanctions. point three, before u.s. intelligence agencies made public their conclusion that american democracy was under an orchestrated attack from russia, christopher steele had reported in the dossier, quote, kremlin behind recent appearance of dnc e-mails on wikileaks. the intelligence community now says that is true. we also now know that the russian hack of the dnc and the weaponization of stolen democratic e-mails through
as part of last week s classified intelligence briefing regarding russian efforts to undermine the u.s. election. reporter: that report set off alarm bells in the new york offices of buzzfeed news. as was true at several other news organizations, reporters at buzzfeed had obtained a copy of christopher steele s memos. we looked at things that seemed confirmable. reporter: ben smith is buzzfeed s editor in chief. he said buzzfeed was not able to verify claims in the dossier, but smith felthat su a dossier was being taken seriously by u.s. intelligence, that itself was news. we knew that this document was being circulated, talked about, and in some cases acted upon, at the very highest levels of government. and you see important decision-makers, making decisions about how they are relating to the administration, how they re thinking about russia, that are explained by this piece of dark matter. reporter: ben smith and others at buzzfeed felt it was time to let their audience in