Washington Post edits and adds editor’s notes to at least a dozen Steele dossier stories

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The Washington Post has amended at least a dozen reports investigating the genesis and fallout of the Steele dossier, an opposition research project that is almost certainly a work of total fiction if not Russian counterintelligence propaganda.

Two articles in particular, one from 2017 and one from 2019, have undergone significant edits, with major portions of the reporting removed entirely. Both stories also bear lengthy editor’s notes.

The 2017 story, titled originally, “Who is ‘Source D’? The man said to be behind the Trump-Russia dossier’s most salacious claim,” identified businessman Sergei Millian as a key source for the dossier. Millian, for his part, adamantly denies contributing to the effort to collect dirt on former President Donald Trump.

The 2017 Washington Post article has been amended to remove the assertion that Millian served as a source for the dossier. A video summarizing the report’s original topline has also been removed. The headline likewise has been changed so that it now reads, “Sergei Millian: High-level access to Trump or unwitting bystander?”

The second article, titled originally, “Sergei Millian, identified as an unwitting source for the Steele dossier, sought proximity to Trump’s world in 2016,” also reported Millian was the source of some of the most sensational information contained in the dossier, including that former President Donald Trump once procured prostitutes in Russia to engage is sex acts involving urine.

However, it’s increasingly likely Millian never said anything of the sort. It’s increasingly likely he never even served as a source on the dossier. It’s increasingly likely the source who fed bizarre and wild claims about Trump into the dossier was actually a Democratic Party operative with close ties to the Clinton 2016 presidential campaign.

The 2017 Washington Post report bears an editor’s note, which reads:

The original version of this article published on March 29, 2017, said that Sergei Millian was a source for parts of a dossier of unverified allegations against Donald Trump. That account has been contradicted by allegations contained in a federal indictment filed in November 2021 and undermined by further reporting by The Washington Post. As a result, portions of the story and an accompanying video have been removed and the headline has been changed. The original account was based on two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide sensitive information. One of those people now says the new information “puts in grave doubt that Millian” was a source for parts of the dossier. The other declined to comment.

The 2019 article, whose headline now reads, “Belarus-born businessman sought proximity to Trump’s world in 2016,” now carries the following editor’s note:

An earlier version of this story published on Feb. 7, 2019, referred to previous reporting in The Washington Post that Belarusan-American businessman Sergei Millian had been a source of information for a dossier of unverified allegations against Donald Trump. In November 2021, The Post removed that material from the original 2017 story after the account was contradicted by allegations in a federal indictment and undermined by further reporting. References to the initial report have been removed from this piece.

The Washington Post has likewise corrected and amended nearly a dozen separate stories.

The edits come after the Department of Justice indicted the dossier’s primary source, Igor Danchenko, who may or may not be in bed with Russian intelligence, on five counts of lying to federal investigators about how and where he got his supposed information.

Danchenko is accused specifically of lying about uncovering a “conspiracy of cooperation” between Moscow and the Trump 2016 campaign. He is accused of fabricating several other key claims, including that he got some of his information from Millian, which obviously undercuts the credibility of an already dubious project.

Bear in mind as you read this that the dossier was used by the FBI to secure authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to spy on onetime Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The dossier also served as the foundation for the press’ frantic yearslong Russian collusion coverage, which ultimately went nowhere.

If you feel compelled to applaud the Washington Post for cleaning up its previous reporting on Millian, resist the urge. It’s in this position precisely because it got sloppy. Had the Washington Post applied more scrutiny to its coverage of the dossier, especially its core claims, many of which are absurd on their face, the paper wouldn’t be in the embarrassing position of issuing multiple corrections and editor’s notes. The dossier was a dubious piece of work from the get-go, and there was never a good reason for major newsrooms to treat it as anything but.

So, no: The Washington Post doesn’t deserve credit for doing its job after it failed to do its job. You don’t get a gold star for cleaning up a mess you should have never made in the first place.

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