Christopher Steele

Christopher David Steele (born 24 June 1964) is a British former intelligence officer with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1987 until his retirement in 2009. He ran the Russia desk at MI6 headquarters in London between 2006 and 2009. In 2009, he co-founded Orbis Business Intelligence, a London-based private intelligence firm.

Steele became the centre of controversy after he authored a 35-page series of memos for a controversial political opposition research report later known as the Steele dossier. It was prepared for Fusion GPS, a firm hired by an attorney associated with the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign. The dossier claims, based on anonymous sources, that Russia collected a file of compromising information on Donald Trump and that his presidential campaign conspired to cooperate with the Russians in their interference in the 2016 presidential elections.

Trump and his allies have falsely claimed the U.S. intelligence community probe into that Russian interference was launched due to Steele's dossier. Contrary to these false claims, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee, among many other sources, concluded in an April 2018 report that the probe had been triggered by previous information from Trump adviser George Papadopoulos, and the February 2018 Nunes memo, written by staff members for that GOP committee, reached the same conclusion.