[The Guardian via Rolling Stone] Fresh evidence has also emerged of attempts by the Kremlin to infiltrate the Conservatives by a senior Russian diplomat suspected of espionage, who spent five years in London cultivating leading Tories including Johnson himself....The committee’s report is based on analysis from Britain’s intelligence agencies, as well as third-party experts such as the former MI6 officer Christopher Steele....
Christopher Steele became famous in the United States as the author of a "dossier" that claimed Russians had been "cultivating, supporting, and assisting" Donald Trump "for at least 5 years."
Now Steele is back, claiming that the Russians have been cultivating the Tories and Boris Johnson for . . . five years.
You can’t make this stuff up. The only thing comparable would be Iraqi defector Ahmed Chalabi lobbying for a sequel invasion after the WMD hunt came up empty, and having the same humiliated media figures and politicians reach for pompoms all over again.
Steele first appeared in connection with the Trump story as a "well-placed Western intelligence source" in a 2016 Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff. The piece claimed a Trump aide named Carter Page was discussing the lifting of sanctions with Igor Sechin, chief of the major Russian oil company Rosneft.