“The latest dossier defense, offered up by Arthur Snell, a managing director at Steele’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, suggests that former FBI cybersecurity official Anthony Ferrante has validated the dossier.
Arthur Snell (Credit: public domain)
Anthony Ferrante (Credit: public domain)
But what Snell failed to disclose is that BuzzFeed News reportedly paid Ferrante $4.1 million to investigate only a narrow part of the dossier as part of a lawsuit that the website faced for publishing Steele’s report.
Ferrante was unable to corroborate Steele’s allegations, despite the hefty payday. But that didn’t stop Orbis from citing the former FBI official in its latest dossier defense.
“Orbis maintains the highest standards of professionalism. We stand by the integrity and quality of our work,” Snell wrote in the letter to The Sunday Times.
Snell, whose letter is entitled “Trump-Russia dossier was valid,” was responding to a Sunday Times story published on Jan. 26 that criticized Steele’s work.
“You ignore more recent assessments of Steele’s work by intelligence professionals such as John Sipher, Chuck Rosenberg, and Anthony Ferrante,” wrote Snell.
Sipher is a former CIA officer, and Rosenberg is a former FBI chief of staff to James Comey. Both wrote essays defending aspects of the dossier, but that was before the release of the special counsel’s report and the inspector general’s report, both of which undermined key allegations in the dossier. (Read more: The Daily Caller, 2/27/2020) (Archive)