US

CNN’s Erin Burnett Reveals How Little She Knows About Steele Dossier

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
Font Size:
  • CNN’s Erin Burnett claimed Friday that the Steele dossier was first funded by Republicans, an allegation that has long been debunked. 
  • Burnett also said a report published by a CNN contributor on behalf of BuzzFeed supported the dossier’s claims about a Russian tech executive alleged to have hacked Democrats’ computers during the 2016 campaign.
  • But the report stopped far short of providing evidence that the Russian, Aleksej Gubarev, hacked computers. 

CNN anchor Erin Burnett made multiple false claims Friday about the Steele dossier, including the long-debunked assertion that the salacious anti-Trump report was first funded by Republicans.

During her show, Burnett also falsely claimed that a newly released report produced on behalf of BuzzFeed News supported allegations that dossier author Christopher Steele made about Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian tech executive. She also asserted, without citing evidence, that many of the claims made in the dossier have been verified.

“New tonight, President Trump slamming the Steele dossier on Twitter calling it the, quote, ‘fake dossier paid for by crooked Hillary,'” Burnett began, referring to a Trump tweet earlier on Friday.

“Let’s just make sure we share the facts with you,” said Burnett. “It was paid for, right, by a conservative website funded by a Republican donor. That was the firm that paid for the dossier to get it started. As far as it being fake, we have a lot we don’t know. We do know several allegations in the dossier are true and tonight we’re learning more.”

In reality, Steele was working for Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm that was hired by the Clinton campaign and DNC to investigate Donald Trump. Prior to being hired by Democrats, Fusion GPS worked for The Washington Free Beacon, a website funded by Republican billionaire Paul Singer. That contract ended when Trump won the Republican primaries.

And contrary to what Burnett claimed on her show, none of the dossier’s key allegations about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia have been verified in the two-plus years since its publication. And one of its most serious claims — that Michael Cohen visited Prague to pay off hackers — was disputed by the former Trump attorney during a sworn congressional hearing in February.

Burnett joins a long list of journalists who have made the false claim about the dossier’s funding. Former FBI Director James Comey has also falsely claimed Republicans first funded Steele’s report. (RELATED: Media Still Pinning Still Dossier On Republicans)

WATCH:

During her show, Burnett touted a report produced by Anthony Ferrante, a former FBI agent who was hired by BuzzFeed as part of its legal battle with Gubarev.

Steele claimed in one of his dossier’s memos that Gubarev was recruited under “duress” by Russian spies and played a “significant” role in hacking Democrats’ computer systems. Gubarev sued Steele and BuzzFeed, which published the dossier Jan. 10, 2017, for defamation.

Ferrante’s final investigative report and deposition were unsealed Thursday along with a slew of other documents from the lawsuit.

Ferrante, who was paid $4.1 million by BuzzFeed, found no evidence supporting the key claim about Gubarev. Instead, he determined only that Gubarev’s companies “have provided gateways to the internet for cybercriminals and Russian state sponsored actors to launch and control large scale malware campaigns over the past decade.”

Ferrante, who joined CNN as a contributor in January, also dinged Gubarev for failing to “actively prevent cybercriminals from using their infrastructure.”

Gubarev’s lawyer, Evan Fray-Witzer, dismissed the BuzzFeed-funded report in a statement Thursday.

“Buzzfeed spent $4.1 million on a team of former FBI agents to try to prove that Gubarev and his companies did what was alleged in the Steele Dossier and came up empty-handed,” he said.

“The Dossier didn’t say: ‘hey, someone might have misused XBT’s networks as part of the hack of the DNC,'” said Fray-Witzer.

“The Dossier directly and unequivocally accused Alex Gubarev of having been corrupted by the FSB and having personally hacked (or directed others to hack) the DNC. And that defamatory statement was, and is, a lie, plain and simple.”

Fray-Witzer also noted Gubarev has not been approached by special counsel Robert Mueller. Gubarev and his companies have also not been mentioned in Mueller’s indictments of Russian nationals accused of hacking Democrats’ email systems.

While Burnett was quick to claim that parts of the dossier have been verified, CNN has generally avoided discussing a recent development that undercut one of the Steele report’s most startling claims: that former Trump fixer Michael Cohen visited Prague during the 2016 campaign to pay off hackers.

That allegation suffered a fatal blow Feb. 27, when Cohen denied during a congressional hearing that he has ever visited Prague or the Czech Republic. (RELATED: Michael Cohen Puts Dagger In Heart Of Steele Dossier)

CNN’s own Jake Tapper has also undercut the Cohen allegation. On Jan. 11, 2017, the day after BuzzFeed published the dossier, Tapper claimed on air that a U.S. government official told him a different Michael Cohen had visited Prague. Tapper and CNN have since not revisited that statement.

Cohen’s Prague denial was mentioned on Burnett’s show Friday, but it came at the tail end of the segment fluffing the dossier’s claims about Gubarev.

Follow Chuck on Twitter

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel