Shearer Dossier Revealed

Tonight, we revisit the Shearer dossier.

First covered by the great Lee Smith in this 2018 write up, to my knowledge this document has not been made public until now (though I had seen a private copy sometime last year). Recently, a source provided another copy of the file.

It is interesting that he offers names for hearsay allegations but becomes more vague when it comes to the central allegation of Trump being compromised by the FSB. With a single 15 minute phone call, his “friend” is able to establish that yes, Donald Trump is compromised by the FSB.

A little inside baseball is that the FSB and GRU are rivals within Russian intelligence, so it’s actually somewhat destructive to the collusion narrative that he says the FSB has compromised Trump.

It’s remarkable that this document was ever seen as bolstering the collusion narrative.

Perhaps most notable is the “encrypted communications system” which is a clear reference to what would become the Alfa Bank allegations. In his 2018 article, Bob Baer told Lee Smith that his recollection of the phone call with Shearer was that it occurred in March or April of 2016.

That becomes critically important, because it means the Clinton campaign was aware of what is quite clearly a reference to the Alfa Bank allegations before any cyber researchers “stumbled” upon the activity.

Interesting.

Even if Baer was wrong about the timing (and it seems easy enough to check his phone records), there would be worthwhile questions about Shearer’s knowledge and inclusion of this bit in his dossier.

If we were forced to make a guess at the timing based on context, Fusion GPS (references to Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch) was hired in April 2016. The references to them having materials on Paul Manafort could easily be April or May 2016. The exclusion of any references to Carter Page, or later allegations could possibly set June 2016 as the latest month this document was written.

Overall, this is laughable and embarassing for the US media outlets that trotted this out as corrobrative of anything.

Our work continues.