(WASHINGTON) — Former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell died Monday morning due to complications from COVID-19, his family said in a statement.
“He was fully vaccinated. We want to thank the medical staff at Walter Reed National Medical Center for their caring treatment,” the family said. “We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American.”
Powell was 84 years old.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Kourtney Kardashian is ready to say “I do” to Blink-182‘s Travis Barker… because she just said “yes” to him asking for her hand in marriage.
The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star shared two ultra-romantic images to Instagram late Sunday, which show them cozying up on the beach while surrounded by a sea of red roses and flickering white candles.
She simply captioned the announcement, “forever” and tagged Barker, who repeated the caption verbatim in the comment section using all capital letters.
Meanwhile, Kim Kardashian gave her Twitter followers a closeup look at her sister’s stunning engagement ring, writing in all caps, “Kravis forever.”
The video, which is set to Bruno Mars‘ “Marry You,” zooms in on Kourtney’s oval-shaped sparkler.
This will be Barker’s third marriage. He was previously married to Melissa Kennedy from 2001 to 2002 and to Shanna Moakler between 2004 and 2008. He shares two children, 17-year-old Landon and 15-year-old Alabama, with Moakler. Both Landon and Alabama celebrated the happy news on their respective Instagram stories and congratulated their future mother-in-law.
As for Kourtney, she shares three children with ex-Scott Disick, whom she never married: 11-year-old Mason, nine-year-old Penelope and six-year-old Reign.
Kourtney, 42, and Barker, 45, were first romantically linked in 2019, but the pair insisted they were just good friends and have been for years. The two went Instagram official in February 2021.
(CHANNAHON, Ill.) — Christine Kump, of Channahon, Illinois, was newly pregnant with her second child late last year when she felt a lump in her breast.
She said it was in the same spot as a lump she had developed when she breastfed her now 3-year-old daughter, so she brushed it off as leftover scar tissue.
“When you Google it, it says it could be breast cancer, but most likely scar tissue,” Kump, 34, told Good Morning America. “I thought there’s no way I have breast cancer.”
Kump underwent IVF to get pregnant with her second child, so she also attributed the soreness she felt in her breast to side effects from the treatment. When the soreness continued and a burning sensation developed though, Kump went to see her primary care doctor.
“The doctor sent me to do an ultrasound but she wasn’t super concerned,” said Kump. “A few weeks later I went for the ultrasound and then they had me do a biopsy, which I did on Christmas Eve.”
A few days after the biopsy, on Dec. 29, 2020, Kump said her doctor called and told her she had Stage 3 invasive ductal carcinoma breast cancer.
“I was worried that I wasn’t going to make it through the pregnancy,” said Kump, who was eight weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed. “I was thinking I was going to have to write letters to my [3-year-old] daughter Susie for all of her milestones because I wasn’t going to be there.”
Because Kump had a history of cancer in her family, she underwent genetic testing and tested positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation, meaning she was at an increased risk for breast and ovarian cancers.
About 1 in every 500 women in the United States has a mutation in either her BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Because of her genetic background and because her cancer was so advanced, Kump began chemotherapy once she entered her second trimester of pregnancy, a time that doctors say is safer because the baby’s organs are more developed.
Kump was in the middle of her chemotherapy treatments in May, when she went into early labor.
She gave birth to her daughter, Vivian, on May 30, 2021, about three months before her August due date.
“She decided to show up super early,” Kump said of her daughter, who weighed 2 pounds, 10 ounces at birth and faced complications that come from premature birth. “She was intubated for six days and then was on oxygen until she could breathe on her own.”
Vivian would go on to spend the next 59 days in the neonatal intensive care unit, which was 10 minutes away from the cancer center where Kump received treatment.
“My husband and I were the only ones who were allowed to see her in the NICU,” said Kump, adding that she would go from receiving chemotherapy in the morning to visiting her daughter in the afternoon. “The NICU was the safest place for me to be because it was so clean.”
Kump continued on with chemotherapy after giving birth, completing 16 rounds in all. She finished her last treatment in August, shortly after bringing Vivian home from the NICU.
In September, Kump underwent a bilateral mastectomy.
She will next have to undergo nearly six weeks of radiation treatment, and then will undergo a hysterectomy in January since the BRCA1 gene mutation puts her at a higher risk of ovarian cancer.
Kump said she is sharing her story publicly to both raise awareness of breast cancer during pregnancy, and to encourage women to listen to their bodies and seek help if something feels off.
Breast cancer is found in about 1 in every 3,000 pregnant people, according to the American Cancer Society.
“I was taken very seriously and was diagnosed on the first time, but a lot of women are told it’s just an infection, or it’s something from breastfeeding,” said Kump, who, at 34, was six years below the recommended age of 40 to start annual mammograms. “If you think something is a little off, call your doctor, and if you don’t like the response you get from one provider, get a second opinion. It’s so important that we advocate for ourselves.”
It’s a message echoed by Dr. Mary Ahn, Kump’s breast cancer surgeon at Northwestern Medicine.
“If you’re pregnant and see changes in the breast, the majority of time it is pregnancy-related, but if there is something that feels unusual, get it evaluated. It’s better to be cautious,” she said. “We have be our own advocates, be aware of our bodies and, if there are any questions, address them with a medical professional.”
(NEW YORK) — One dad is going the extra mile for his daughter — literally.
Chris Brannigan, 41, from England, is currently walking 1,200 miles barefoot from Maine to North Carolina in order to fund research on gene therapy for his daughter Hasti, 9, who has a rare genetic disorder called Cornelia de Lange syndrome.
Although the exact number of cases is unknown, the CdLS Foundation estimates that CdLS occurs in 1 in 10,000 live births.
“If you have a rare disease you don’t have the same treatment options or the same quality of healthcare so parents like us have to fight endlessly,” Brannigan told “Good Morning America.” “The sad truth is there’s just no money for rare disease research so it’s left to families like ours to undertake these fundraising campaigns just so we can get treatments for our kids.”
The disorder affects a person’s growth and development, and symptoms include seizures, gastrointestinal problems, autistic-like behavior, heart defects, hearing loss, myopia, and body malformations and other abnormalities.
As a child gets older, more serious symptoms such as anxiety and self-injurious behavior may appear. The CdLS Foundation found that self-injurious behavior occurs in 60% of children and adults with the disorder.
“It gets worse over time,” Brannigan said. “For my wife and I, that was really frightening.”
After Hasti was born, Brannigan said he and his wife, Hengameh, “knew straightaway something was wrong.”
“She looked unhealthy to us,” he said. “She was jittery. She was underweight. When we got her home from the hospital, she had a seizure within the first 24 hours.”
Many of Hasti’s developmental milestones were delayed. Brannigan said she didn’t walk until she was almost 2 years old and didn’t feed voluntarily for the first year of her life.
“There were so many indications but the diagnostic odyssey in the rare diseases world is so long and painful,” he said.
At age 4, Hasti had blood tests done to check for CdLS but the results came back negative, much to the family’s relief.
“I sort of did a little jump for joy because we knew how difficult a condition it was, having researched it after speaking to the doctor,” Brannigan said.
To figure out what could be wrong, Hasti was then enrolled in the 100,000 Genomes Project in the U.K., where they sequenced her genome and looked for common gene errors or mutations. The project took two years, Brannigan said, and the new results showed that she did actually have CdLS.
To manage the disorder, Hasti receives a number of daily treatments, such as hormone replacement therapy via injections and speech and language therapy.
“The cycle of therapies and medical appointments is just never-ending,” Brannigan said.
The fact that CdLS is a rare disease means not much is known about it and how to treat it, which is why Brannigan said he and his wife have had to become experts on the disorder.
“If your child has something terrible like cancer, doctors know what to do because they’re well-practiced in those things,” he said. “But if your child has a rare disease, they just don’t know and that causes a lot of anxiety for parents.”
He added, “Parents have to be experts because no one else is.”
The reality of having a rare disease
After Hasti received her initial diagnosis, Brannigan said he and his wife reached out to numerous doctors around the world to ask them to take a look at gene therapy as a way to help manage the disorder.
“Through online research we came to realize that other rare conditions like spinal muscular atrophy were achieving gene therapies that were transforming children’s lives,” he said, adding that several medical professionals said they would be willing to look into it but it would take “a lot of time” and “cost huge sums of money.”
“When we realized something could be done, we were presented with a question, which was: ‘Do we do this? Do we throw everything we have at our disposal at creating a therapy for Hasti and all the other kids with CdLS? Or do we consciously not do that?'” he said. “As parents I don’t think there’s any other choice you can make. You can’t choose to not help your child.”
The family created the charity, Hope for Hasti, in order to raise the money for research into CdLS gene therapy. After consulting doctors and researchers on how much would be needed to fund the research, they set a $3 million target.
“Raising money has been incredibly hard through the pandemic so my wife and I decided that we should run a fundraising event that would help focus people on not just fundraising but also how difficult it is to manage the life of a child with a rare disease,” Brannigan said.
According to Dr. Wendy Bickmore, director of the MRC Human Genetics Unit at the University of Edinburgh, gene therapy will likely not be a cure but a way to treat some of the disorder’s symptoms.
“Gene therapy encompasses several things,” Bickmore told “GMA.” “It can be adding back in an extra copy of the gene, which has been mutated, or it can be gene editing where you go in with these CRISPR molecular scissors and try and correct the actual spelling mistake of the genome. They both have the ultimate aim of trying to repair the genetic defect.”
All of the preclinical research will be handled by the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. According to Dr. Cathleen Lutz, the lab’s senior director, they’re working with mouse models with various genetic mutations, including one with Hasti’s specific mutation. As CdLS can be caused by any number of genetic mutations, a therapy that works for one may not work for another.
“I think we all recognize we’re in uncharted territory, no one is rushing here,” Lutz told “GMA.” “We’re trying to explore the potential for these therapeutics. Even if gene therapy turns out not to be a path forward for CdLS, we’re going to have so much information to plug into new potential therapeutics.”
In a recent statement, the CdLS Foundation announced a partnership with Jackson Laboratory to coordinate research efforts for all genes implicated in CdLS. The goals of the collaboration include advancing basic science around the disorder, creating a centralized repository of existing and new mouse models with CdLS features, and testing various treatment options.
A British army major, Brannigan calls himself the “Barefoot Soldier.”
“The idea of being barefoot is to make it really difficult because Hasti’s condition makes her life incredibly challenging,” he said. “Things that other children find easy, she finds very hard. It seemed only fair that I do something that was equally difficult and challenging.”
Brannigan has already completed one barefoot walk so far. From July 6 to August 18, 2020, he walked 700 miles from Land’s End in England to Edinburgh in Scotland.
“I wounded both of my feet,” he said. “It took weeks for them to heal.”
His current walk will see him do 1,200 miles through 12 states over 53 days. So far, Brannigan’s made it well over halfway and expects to complete the journey in late October.
“It’s been incredibly painful and I think I have nerve damage in my foot,” he said. “I’ve cut my feet. I’ve stood on glass. I’ve had more blisters than I can count. I’ve encountered some really challenging road conditions and it’s slightly dangerous.”
Though Brannigan plans to finish out the walk no matter what, the kindness he’s experienced along the way has kept his spirits up. People have walked with him for parts of the journey, given him food and drink, and even housed him for a night.
“Hasti is a child like every other child who has hopes and dreams and we want her to realize those,” he said. “She deserves to be happy and healthy.”
Jimmie Allen‘s coming off a big week, as he heads into “Grease Night” this evening on Dancing with the Stars.
Not only did he and his wife Alexis Gale welcome their second daughter, Zara James, over the weekend, he also just turned in his best performance of the season last Tuesday on Disney Villains Night.
Part of Jimmie’s strategy has been to learn everything he can from folks who’ve done well on the show before.
“I was actually FaceTiming Lauren [Alaina] today, talking about the Rumba,” he told ABC Audio earlier in the season. “Talked to Nelly, AJ McLean and I talked to Chuck [Wicks]. I talked to Nick Carter, talked to Donald Driver, DeMarcus Ware, talked to BabyFace — a bunch of people that did it.”
“You know, it’s been super cool,” Jimmie continues. “Rashad Jennings, he actually won it with my partner Emma [Slater]. Kaitlyn Bristowe, that won it last year, I talked to her yesterday. It was super cool.”
Jimmie’s also relying on country fans to come through for him.
“Oh, yeah! Listen, them country music fans show up!” he says excitedly. “Okay, they show up! And I’m hoping they graded me low, so they can see the growth, and then I can come back next and try to get better.”
“Because I don’t wanna jump from sixes and fives to nines and tens…” he explains. “I kinda wanna work my way up. I don’t wanna go too high too fast.”
So far, it’s a plan that seems to be working.
Tonight, tune in to see Jimmie dance the Foxtrot to “Sandy,” starting at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
(NEW YORK) — Retired British spy Christopher Steele is stepping out of the shadows to discuss his so-called “Steele dossier” for the first time publicly, describing his efforts as apolitical and defending his decision to include the most explosive and criticized claims about Donald Trump contained in his controversial 2016 report.
“I stand by the work we did, the sources that we had, and the professionalism which we applied to it,” Steele said in a wide-ranging exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos about how he gathered his intelligence, and the life-altering events that ensued after his work and identity were made public.
The dossier’s contents, laid out in 17 memos, upended Washington and quickly ricocheted across the globe after BuzzFeed News published the bombshell reports in early 2017 — 10 days before Donald Trump was sworn into office. The salacious mix of sex, spies, and scandal made for an irresistible political drama. But the real-world implications of its claims, even though unproven, exacerbated an already fraught moment in American history.
Trump and his allies immediately lashed out at the allegations laid out in the dossier, calling it “fake news” and “phony stuff.” The president’s detractors embraced it, using it to buttress growing suspicions about what they saw as Trump’s odd infatuation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Over time, journalists and experts from both sides of the political aisle grew increasingly skeptical about the dossier’s claims, noting that despite deep investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and others, many of Steele’s allegations have never been verified, and some have been debunked.
“Everyone with whom the dossier was shared sent reporters out, tried to confirm the basic allegations within it. And it never got any traction because no one could nail anything in it down,” said Barry Meier, author of “Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies,” and a vocal critic of Steele’s.
“Bearing in mind, this was raw intelligence,” said Chris Burrows, Steele’s partner in the private investigative firm Orbis Business Intelligence. “Raw intelligence in the sense that what we sent over was the initial findings.”
Yet in many ways, the dossier proved prescient. The Mueller probe found that Russia had been making efforts to meddle in the 2016 campaign, and that Trump campaign members and surrogates had promoted and retweeted Russian-produced political content alleging voter fraud and criminal activity on the part of Hillary Clinton. Investigators determined there had been “numerous links — i.e. contacts — between Trump campaign officials and individuals having ties to the Russian government.” And, proof emerged that the Trump Organization had been discussing a real estate deal in Moscow during the campaign.
All were findings that had been signaled, at least broadly, in Steele’s work.
Cloistered in his London home and his firm’s office, Steele has never responded to his critics in public. Through all the cacophony of political rhetoric and cable news punditry, one notable voice has been missing: Steele’s.
Now, nearly five years after his report became public, Steele has broken his silence to defend his name, his credibility, and the dossier that captured the world’s attention.
“It was credible reporting,” Steele told Stephanopoulos. “We knew some of it was right, and we suspected some of it may never be provable.”
“Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier” is available Monday, October 18, on Hulu.
A sordid conspiracy
Christopher Steele penned his reports between June and December of 2016 for a law firm that represented Democrats and the campaign of party nominee Hillary Clinton. His reporting was initially meant to be internal work for the firm conducting opposition campaign research.
Over seven months, the memos laid out a series of damning claims alleging that the Russians were attempting to influence the campaign in Trump’s favor, that members of the Trump campaign had various connections and communications with Kremlin officials, that the campaign had coordinated with Kremlin officials and accepted a flow of anti-Clinton information, and, most alarmingly, that the Kremlin perhaps had materials with which it could blackmail or exercise leverage over Trump.
Steele said that as he worked on the report, he grew increasingly alarmed by the picture it was painting.
“It meant that, for the first time, there was a potentially serious situation of ‘kompromat’ against a presidential candidate. And therefore, it became much more of serious issue than we had expected,” Steele recalled. “I was surprised and shocked.”
Even before the dossier surfaced publicly on Jan. 10, 2017, the FBI and several news outlets had already seen Steele’s intelligence reports and had attempted to corroborate their contents, but could not. Within days of its publication, some allegations fell apart quickly. Reports that Trump’s personal attorney and self-described fixer Michael Cohen had relatives who maintained ties to Putin were swiftly debunked.
Trump’s allies mounted a full-fledged campaign to pick the dossier apart — and malign its author. Trump himself repeatedly lashed out at Steele and the report. At one point, then-President Trump tweeted of Steele: “This man should be extradited, tried, and thrown into jail. A sick lier [sic] who was paid by Crooked Hillary & the DNC!”
Asked if he was ever worried about Trump’s calls for his extradition, Steele at first laughed: “He also called me a liar, spelled L-I-E-R, George. So, you know, these things have to be taken, I think, with a pinch of salt.”
But Steele said that the ensuing investigations, legal fights, and withering attacks — including Trump’s claims that his reporting was a “hoax” — did take a toll.
“The idea that somebody with my track record — and I’ve never had my integrity, professionalism, or expertise on Russia questioned at any point in my career — would be inventing some strange, fabricated document or information, is absolute anathema, and I wouldn’t be a successful businessman if that were the practice,” Steele said.
The dossier did deal a series of blows to Steele’s credibility in both media and government investigations, most notably a December 2019 Justice Department inspector general report that cast doubts on his sources.
The inspector general wrote that “certain allegations” in Steele’s reporting “were inaccurate or inconsistent with information gathered by the Crossfire Hurricane team; and that the limited information that was corroborated related to time, location, and title information, much of which was publicly available.”
“Do you accept that conclusion?” Stephanopoulos asked Steele.
“I think they are putting too much store, frankly, into what FBI knew about early on in the campaign,” Steele said. “I think the FBI is generally an effective organization. I’m not sure the extent to which FBI has got good coverage of Moscow and Moscow politics and Moscow operations.”
Through it all, Steele said, he has remained confident in the broad strokes of his dossier, which he insists remain “still very credible.”
“I think there are parts of the dossier which have been stood up, there are parts of the dossier that haven’t been stood up,” Steele said. “And there are one or two things in it which have been proven wrong.”
Drafting the dossier
Steele’s firm agreed to take on the project at the behest of Fusion GPS, a Washington-based corporate research firm, in the spring of 2016. Fusion GPS’s initial client had been a Republican financier, but when Trump emerged as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, a law firm representing the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign agreed to inherit Fusion GPS’s research.
Steele said he knew within the first month of his reporting that “supporters of Hillary Clinton” were funding Fusion GPS’s work, and by extension his own.
“I didn’t know what opposition research was,” Steele said. “But from our perspective, what we were doing was very similar to other project work we’d done, which is getting human intelligence out of Russia on an issue of interest to a client.”
Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson told the Senate Judiciary Committee the assignment for Steele was relatively simple — Donald Trump had made repeated trips to Russia during his career as a real estate mogul, but not sealed any deals.
“He was the lead Russianist at MI6 prior to leaving the government and an extremely well-regarded investigator, researcher, and, as I say, we’re friends and share interest in Russian kleptocracy and organized crime issues,” Simpson testified regarding Steele. “I would say that’s broadly why I asked him to see what he could find out about Donald Trump’s business activities in Russia.”
Steele told ABC News that the mission expanded almost immediately into two main threads: “One was what the Russians were doing in terms of potential interference in the campaign; and two, what the links were between Trump and the Trump campaign and Russia,” Steele said.
“We realized it was potentially quite a big project and potentially quite a controversial project,” he added. “But frankly, George, when we went into it, we weren’t expecting to find a great deal.”
Steele soon became convinced he had wandered into something more involved, and more concerning.
The four pillars
In defending his work, Steele describes his intelligence reports as resting on “four pillars” of information that he believes have held up over time as accurate.
“One was, there was a large-scale Russian interference campaign in the American election in 2016,” he said.
“The second was that this had been authorized and ordered at the highest levels, including Putin,” he said.
“The third had been that the objective of this was to damage Hillary Clinton and to try and get this rather unorthodox candidate, Donald Trump, elected,” Steele said. “And the fourth was, there was evidence of collusion between Trump and people around Trump and the Russians.”
Part of the challenge — and the intrigue — of Steele’s reporting is that much of it is virtually impossible for lay people to verify. When the Department of Justice’s inspector general examined the dossier’s claims, he concluded that what Steele described as “raw intelligence” amounted to little more than rumor and bar talk.
Very little corroborating evidence has emerged to support the dossier. But neither, Steele points out, has there been much concrete contradictory evidence either.
His critics have taken issue with that particular line of defense.
“The common refrain when people were speaking about the dossier is, ‘Well, we don’t know if that’s not true,'” Meier said. “People who are intelligence operatives anchor their reports to rumors, to hearsay, to bar talk, to smoke. That’s the world that Christopher Steele operated in. And I guess that’s the world he continues to operate in. I prefer the world of facts. That’s the world I’m comfortable in.”
It isn’t just Steele’s critics who have accused him of trafficking in rumors. His own collector — the person who actually traveled to Russia on his behalf to gather information, including the “pee tape” allegation — later told the FBI that he “felt that the tenor of Steele’s reports was far more ‘conclusive’ than was justified,” and that “information came from ‘word of mouth and hearsay’ … ‘conversation that [he/she] had with friends over beers,'” according to a Justice Department inspector general report.
Steele suggested his collector may have “taken fright” at having his cover blown and “[tried] to downplay and underestimate” his own reporting when he spoke to the FBI. Steele added that the information he gathered passed through an important filter: his experience as an expert on Russian intelligence activities going back decades. He said his confidence in the dossier’s claims about Russia’s interest in Trump is based on his knowledge of Putin — a figure whom he has studied for decades.
“This is the M.O. of the KGB and its successor organizations,” Steele said, referring to Russia’s intelligence services.
Skeptics of Steele’s reporting, however, suggest he may have fallen victim to another trademark of Russian spy craft: disinformation. Speaking to congressional investigators in October 2019, Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council official in the Trump administration and a longtime friend of Steele’s, called Steele’s dossier a “rabbit hole.”
“It’s very likely that the Russians planted disinformation in and among other information that may have been truthful, because that’s exactly, again, the way that they operate,” Hill said.
Steele acknowledged that “there is a chance” the Russians intentionally tainted his reporting, but said he felt it was “very unlikely.”
“Ultimately, any disinformation operation has an objective,” Steele said. “Seems to me pretty far-fetched that the Russians’ objective during the campaign of 2016 was to aide Hillary Clinton and to damage Donald Trump. And I just don’t think you can get past that.”
The ‘pee tape’
One allegation from Steele’s dossier stood out immediately: a claim that the Russians had obtained a compromising video of Trump at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow in 2013. According to the dossier, the tape purportedly showed Trump “employing a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him” on a bed where the Obamas supposedly once stayed.
The supposed “pee tape” never emerged. But the claim may be the public’s most enduring symbol of Steele’s work — particularly after it became a favorite of late-night comics.
Steele told ABC News he believes the alleged tape “probably does” exist — but that he “wouldn’t put 100% certainty on it.”
When Stephanopoulos asked him to explain why the tape, if it does exist, has not been made public, Steele replied that “it hasn’t needed to be released.”
“Because I think the Russians felt they’d got pretty good value out of Donald Trump when he was president of the U.S.,” Steele said.
“[Putin] wouldn’t be releasing it in a hurry for all sorts of reasons,” he continued. “He would put it under very strict lock and key and make sure it never got out, unless he chose for it to get out.”
For his part, Trump has repeatedly and firmly denied this specific allegation. At a press conference the day after BuzzFeed published Steele’s dossier, Trump told reporters that he was “a germaphobe.” As recently as last week, Trump reportedly told donors at a private speech that he is “not into golden showers.”
Pressed by Stephanopoulos on how he can assess the likelihood of a seemingly outlandish allegation without concrete evidence, Steele cited his lengthy career as a British intelligence officer focused on Russia.
“When you’ve worked on Russia for 30 years like I have and you’ve spent as much time, sadly, in the brains of the Russian leadership as I have, you begin to understand these things,” Steele said. “And you actually sense whether something’s credible or not.”
Still defiant
Steele’s dossier took its first major hit with the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s highly anticipated report, which largely omitted mention of Steele’s name or his claims. The most significant mention of Steele was not positive.
The report cast doubt on one of the dossier’s most striking claims: that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, had traveled to Prague in the summer of 2016 for “secret meeting/s with Kremlin officials.”
Cohen has vehemently denied ever traveling to Prague or meeting with Russian interlocutors. The Justice Department inspector general reinforced Mueller’s findings, saying the FBI had determined that this specific allegation was untrue.
To this day, Steele says he remains unmoved.
“Do you accept that finding, that it didn’t happen?” asked Stephanopoulos.
“No,” Steele replied. “I don’t.”
“But the FBI looked into this and said it wasn’t true,” Stephanopoulos said.
“I don’t know to what extent they were able to look into it. I don’t know what evidence they gathered,” Steele said. “I haven’t seen any, if you like, report on that aspect. So, from my point of view, I think it’s still an open question.”
Reached for comment, Cohen sarcastically told ABC News, “I’m pleased to see that my old friend Christopher Steele, a/k/a Austin Powers, has crawled out of the pub long enough to make up a few more stories.”
“I eagerly await his next secret dossier which proves the existence of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and that Elvis is still alive,” Cohen said.
Stephanopoulos pressed Steele: “Do you think it hurts your credibility at all that you won’t accept the findings of the FBI in this particular case?”
“I’m prepared to accept that not everything in the dossier is 100% accurate,” Steele replied. “I have yet to be convinced that that is one of them.”
Dismissing claims that subsequent government reports undermined his findings, Steele argued that, in his view, Mueller’s team actually served to reinforce the broad strokes of his dossier — those “four pillars” he described.
“Those four pillars that we mentioned … when you actually look at the detail, if you’re forensic about looking at the detail of the report, then it paints a totally different picture, in my view,” Steele said. “And I think there’s a lot of supportive commentary and evidence and so on, there, for the work we had done.”
But further investigative efforts undertaken at various levels of government have appeared to confirm the notion that Steele’s reporting was at best flawed and at worst incorrect.
A bipartisan report published by the Senate Intelligence Committee in April 2020 found that Steele’s assertions about Trump campaign aide Carter Page — which accused him of conducting “secret meetings in Moscow” with Kremlin leaders — were incorrect. Page himself would later testify before Congress that he spoke briefly with a mid-level Russian official during a visit for a Moscow speech, but that the conversation was short and inconsequential.
“Other than … facts which were readily available in news reports at the time of their inclusion in the dossier — the Committee did not find any information that corroborates the allegations related to Page in the dossier,” the report concluded.
Stephanopoulos asked Steele about the FBI decision to rely in part on his work in seeking and obtaining court approval to eavesdrop on Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
“Any regrets about that?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“It had nothing to do with us,” Steele replied. “I didn’t even know what FISA was, frankly, in 2016. We were not told of any use of our material in such a process. And therefore, if there were problems with that process, they weren’t our problems, they were the problems of the people conducting it.”
A potential threat
Steele conceded in the ABC News interview that he could not provide evidence for many of his claims, including those about Page. But pressed by Stephanopoulos on some of the findings that have come up against the harshest criticism, Steele remained defiant.
“Not the ‘pee tape,’ not Michael Cohen in Prague, not Carter Page?” asked Stephanopoulos.
“None of those things, to my mind, have been disproven,” Steele replied. “They may not have been proven. And we maybe will hear more about those things as we go forward.”
Steele said he is watching American politics from a distance these days. He said he has concerns about a potential Trump return to the presidency in 2024.
“So, Donald Trump, in your view, is a continuing threat, as long as he’s an active political player, to the national security?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“A potential one,” Steele replied. “Yes.”
And as long as Trump remains active in politics, Steele contends that more evidence to support the dossier’s claims may still surface.
“I don’t think this book is finished,” Steele said. “By a long shot.”
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Sunday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
NATIONAL LEAGUE PLAYOFFS
Atlanta 5, LA Dodgers 4 (Atlanta leads series 2-0)
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE
Ottawa 3, Dallas 2
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
Jacksonville 23, Miami 20
Baltimore 34, L.A. Chargers 6
Cincinnati 34, Detroit 11
Green Bay 24, Chicago 14
Indianapolis 31, Houston 3
Kansas City 31, Washington 13
LA Rams 38, NY Giants 11
Minnesota 34, Carolina 28 (OT)
Arizona 37, Cleveland 14
Dallas 35, New England 29 (OT)
Las Vegas 34, Denver 24
Pittsburgh 23, Seattle 20 (OT)
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION PLAYOFFS
Chicago 80, Phoenix 74
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
New York 1, New York City FC 0
Vancouver 2, Sporting Kansas City 1
Vance Joy has released a new remix of his single “Missing Piece” in collaboration with electronic duo Sofi Tukker.
The updated recording adds a bit of EDM glitz the original’s shuffling, acoustic-driven earnestness. You can listen to the remix now via digital outlets.
Vance first premiered “Missing Piece” in May, marking his first new solo song since he dropped his sophomore album, Nation of Two, in 2018. The single currently sits in the top five on Billboard‘s Alternative Airplay chart.
Sofi Tukker previously landed their own alternative hit with their 2017 single, “Best Friend.”
It’s the best “get well” present he could’ve received: Elton John has scored his first number-one single on the U.K. charts in 16 years.
The song that did it for the Rocket Man is, of course, “Cold Heart,” his mashup remix with Dua Lipa. The song, which combines four of Elton’s previously released tracks, took over the top spot on the U.K.’s Official Singles Chart after three weeks at number two. It dethroned Ed Sheeran‘s “Shivers,” which has been number one for four weeks.
Last week, Ed actively encouraged his fans to stop streaming his song and stream Elton’s instead, writing, “It will be his first number one in almost twenty years and I really want it to happen…Who doesn’t wanna be knocked off [the top] by Elton anyway?”
The last time Elton topped the charts in his native country was in 2005, as a featured performer on “Ghetto Gospel,” a posthumous single by slain rapper 2Pac which samples Elton’s 1971 song “Indian Sunset.” The last time Elton had a number-one hit on his own was in 1997, with “Something About the Way You Look Tonight/Candle In the Wind ’97.”
Elton, who recently had hip surgery, posted a photo of himself celebrating while wearing a bathrobe.
“We did it – UK NUMBER 1!! I cannot begin to tell you how much this means to me,” he wrote, adding, “You’ve made me feel infinitely better after my surgery and I can’t wait for you to hear the whole of The Lockdown Sessions when it comes out next week!”
Elton’s Lockdown Sessions album also includes collaborations with Stevie Wonder, Stevie Nicks, Charlie Puth, Miley Cyrus, Lil Nas X and many more.
Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil is recovering from broken ribs after falling off the stage during his performance with his solo band on Friday at the Monsters on the Mountain festival in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
“Vince is back home and resting after breaking a few ribs on Friday night,” a message on Mötley Crüe’s Twitter feed reads. “Our love and best wishes for a speedy recovery and ready to rock in ’22!!”
According to TMZ, the incident happed a few songs into Neil’s set when he accidentally stepped off the edge of the stage and fell about four feet onto a cement floor.
TMZ reports that Vince, 60, was helped to his feet by his roadie and a security guard, and then was taken to a local hospital via an ambulance.
According to the website, Neil’s band finished up the set with guitarist Jeff Blando taking over lead vocals.
A video of the accident posted on the Metal Sludge Twitter feed shows Neil falling into a gap between the stage and the monitors. A separate fan-shot video showing a different angle of Neil’s tumble has been posted on YouTube.
Next year, Mötley Crüe is slated to team up with Def Leppard, Poison and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts on The Stadium Tour, a major U.S. trek that’s is slated to kick off June 16 in Atlanta. The tour originally was supposed to have taken place in 2020, then was postponed until this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic before being pushed back yet again because of the ongoing health crisis.
