damning claims in his report. george stephanopoulos one-on-one with christopher steele. here s jon karl. reporter: christopher steele, the former british spy who set off a political firestorm in the united states about donald trump s alleged ties to russia, is now speaking out in public for the first time in an exclusive interview with george stephanopoulos. give mee a declarative sentence. christopher steele is a patriot. somebody who has professional integrity and expertise and somebody who is a true friend and ally of the united states. reporter: steele authored the infamous steele dossier, which presented some allegations about russian interference which proved to be accurate, but others, including a salacious claim that the russians may have had a video of trump watching prostitutes in a moscow hotel room, are either unproven or discredited. an investigation by the justice department s inspector general
released the aid, yes, after he got caught. where does the impeachment go from here? my guest this morning, house intelligence committee chairman democrat adam schiff and republican senator roger wicker of mississippi. plus, the infamous steele dossier. a big focus of congressional republicans. steele dossier. steele dossier. christopher steele . i ll talk to the men who hired steele about the dossier and the fallout. i have more black people supporting me in the community. how sturdy is joe biden s african-american support. joining me is nbc news correspondent katy tur. neal katyal, former north carolina governor pat mccrory. eliana johnson, editor in chief of the washington free beacon and michael eric dyson. welcome to sunday. it s meet the press.
welcome back. a few things were cited more often by republicans in the impeachment hearings than the so-called steele dossier. the steele dossier, its author, christopher steele, and fusion gps were mentioned 32 times by house republicans. the dossier said the republicans had dirt on mr. trump that could be used to blackmail him. republicans have argued the salacious dossier is evidence russians were working with democrats to spear mr. trump. now the two men who created fusion gps have written a book. and glenn simpson and peter frisch, the founders of the company, join me now. gentlemen. good morning. welcome to meet the press. nice to be with you. peter, why did you feel the need to write this book? and i say this because it also means revealing a lot of secrets. right. well, thanks for having us on. we wrote the book to tell the real story of the steele
we had legal bills. rudy giuliani attacking you this week, making claims. and you confronted him. that s right. i wanted to put him on notice that we re just not going to let him deliberately lie about us. let s be clear, he s not confused. he s deliberately lying. we re going to respond when people deliberately lie about us, especially if it s the president of the united states s lawyer. peter and glenn, the book, it is a fascinating read, no matter what you think of the steele dossier, if you talk about it, you should read this book. and then start talking about it again. when we come back, the democratic race. african-american support is keeping joe biden s candidacy afloat, but can he count on keeping it? that s next. i wish i could shake your hand. granted. only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. itso chantix can help you quit slow turkey.
russia. but it doesn t make logical sense for it to be a democratic conspiracy if half if the first half of the investigation was paid for by republicans. let me ask this about the steele dossier. some of the larger findings, some could argue, have been proven true. trump is vulnerable to russian blackmail was one of the allegations. a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between the trump campaign and russia. trump knew and approved of wikileaks. but none of those allegations have been proven. do you still stand by them? first, it s important to remember who christopher steele is, a former british intelligence officer who rose to run mi-6 s russia desk. this is one of the most capable and one of the most knowledgeable experts on russia in the world today. and he he had spent a lot of time going through the dossier to sort out information from disinformation, credible facts from noncredible facts. let me ask this, you guys, and glenn, one of the odder coincidences is the