BuzzFeed editor defends publishing ‘Steele dossier’ one year later

BuzzFeed News Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith on Tuesday defended the website’s publication of a controversial dossier tying President Trump to Russia a year ago, saying the document “is unquestionably real news.”

Smith wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times that publishing the dossier was the right decision because of the role the document has played in the investigations into Russia’s election interference.

The memo, which was written by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele and backed by the firm Fusion GPS, included unverified allegations about Trump that linked him to Russia.

“Without the dossier, Americans would have found it difficult to understand the actions of their elected representatives and government officials. Their posture toward Mr. Trump was, we now know even more comprehensively than we did in January 2017, shaped by Mr. Steele’s report,” Smith wrote.

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“The Russia investigation, meanwhile, didn’t turn out to be some minor side story but instead the central challenge to Mr. Trump’s presidency,” he continued.

Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee last August that an informant from the Trump campaign had gone to the FBI and backed up some of the claims in the document, according to testimony released Tuesday.

A source close to Fusion GPS, however, told The Hill on Tuesday that Simpson misspoke, mischaracterizing a tip that an Australian diplomat gave the bureau related to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos.

Smith wrote that while he and others at BuzzFeed understood why some opposed their publication of the document, they “never bought the notion, made by the traditionalists, that a main threat to journalism is that journalists might be too transparent with their audience.”

“I haven’t had a single person approach me to say, ‘I wish I hadn’t read the dossier, and wish I had less insight into the forces at play in America.’ Do you feel that way? Does anyone?” Smith wrote.

BuzzFeed News had faced criticism for publishing the dossier last year because of the unverified claims included in the document.

The dossier has played a central role in the investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The Washington Post reported last year that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research behind the dossier.

The conservative Washington Free Beacon initially funded the project through Fusion GPS, setting in motion the opposition research that led to the dossier.