A friend’s post on Facebook this weekend expressed their appreciation for a sign at the Women’s March they attended, which stated: “Golden showers bring impeachment flowers.”

I responded, “Perhaps those flowers will be no more real than the made-up showers? Folks might want to put their hopes in something more substantial than some bogus ‘dossier.'”

My friend responded that Breitbart News and Fox News were the only news outlets to label it as bogus, which I chalk up as more a negative reflection on the state of journalism in the US than anything else. Nevertheless, this prompted me to do a bit more research.

The first source I came across was from Forbes and was entitled “The Trump Dossier Is Fake — And Here Are The Reasons Why.” It was written by Paul Roderick Gregory, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, which provides his bio here. Based on his experience and publications, my assessment is that he is certainly qualified to analyze the “dossier,” of which he asserts, “The poor grammar and shaky spelling plus the author’s use of KGB-style intelligence reporting, however, do not fit the image of a high-end London security company run by highly connected former British intelligence figures.” He comments on the overall nature and effect of the document :

We have reached a sad state of affairs where an anonymous report, full of bizarre statements, captures the attention of the world media because it casts a shadow over the legitimacy of a President-elect, who has not even taken the oath of office. For example, the Trump dossier is tonight’s lead item on German state television and on BBC. False news has become America’s international export to the world media. [Bold face added by me for emphasis] 

The writer mentioned the denial of Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, that he had traveled to Prague as stated in the “dossier,” but he failed to provide additional information that was available from other sources. Specifically, DailyMail.com reported on 11 January that CNN had concluded that the Michael Cohen who had gone to Prague was a different Michael Cohen than the one who is Trump’s attorney. In fact, it was Jake Tapper of CNN whose reporting led to that conclusion, and his comments are available here on his Twitter feed.

This reporting of course adds to the speciousness of the document, and when taken with Professor Gregory’s comments, suggests that this thing is one big pile of nonsense as Trump claimed from the beginning. As to my friend’s comment to me that the CIA took the report seriously and briefed “Trump and the Obama administration a couple of months ago,” I don’t see how that adds to the credibility of the document. Indeed, a report in the Washington Post in no way draws that conclusion.

P.S.

Regarding the fact that only Breitbart and Fox have supported Trump in this matter, my conclusion is that this is a simple reflection of bias against Trump. One only has to look at the coverage of the UK tabloid DailyMail.com to get a sense of the other side of the story. Do this search on Google (site:www.dailymail.co.uk trump dossier) for an idea of what else is being said. And don’t think that the Mail’s conservative bias has turned them into Trump sycophants, given that, as reported by the BBC, Melania Trump brought suit against them and a blogger for writing that she had served as an escort in the 1990’s. They have since retracted that claim.