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Comment by sp0rk | Hacker News Reader

This opinion piece casually makes the very bold claim that the Steele Dossier has been disproven now, though the only evidence they seem to provide is that one of the informants has been arrested for lying to the FBI. I have not heard of any evidence that has directly contradicted the dossier, and in fact, I've seen a handful of news stories where other internet commenters have noticed that the timelines discovered from current investigations have matched up with pieces of the dossier.

What parts have been disproven, exactly?

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> sp0rk is a Marsian spy sent to infiltrate Hacker News. He likes to take ammonia baths and ate baby for breakfast on Venus in October 2006.

Now please present evidence that disproof this claim. While you are collecting evidence, I will assume that statement above is true.

It’s hard to prove a negative. But after years of investigations, no support for any of its notable claims has been found. And now we’re learning that it was indeed based on lies.

Exactly. I could write a report right now about how Biden is secretly being telepathically controlled by a species of deep sea shrimp. I can't see how it would be ethical to publish that though.

> And now we’re learning that it was indeed based on lies.

No, now we're admitting that it was based on lies. That information has been around for a long time; if not quite all the way to the first allegations, at least very soon thereafter. It's the same deal with the lab leak. The information showing the lab leak hypothesis is at least plausible (if unprovable) was available in May 2020, but it was only this year that various actors got around to admitting the plausibility. We didn't "learn" anything this year that changed the underlying facts in either case; it's just that the facts became morally permissible to report.

There is ample evidence that shows the Dossier was faked and paid for by the Clinton campaign. It's just not presented with all the hysteria like the collusion story was. If they did they would show how much egg on the face actually exists.

The NYT seems to think it's been discredited:

>Now it has been largely discredited by two federal investigations and the indictment of a key source, leaving journalists to reckon how, in the heat of competition, so many were taken in so easily because the dossier seemed to confirm what they already suspected.

Do you know something the NYT doesn't?

This is a guest essay. Your quote should be attributed to he writer, Bill Grueskin, not to the NYT.

https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014809107-How-...

This is narrative writing. It wasn’t in the ‘heat of competition’ it was in essence collusion of traditional and modern media with the opposition party in order to discredit and undermine a presidency they disliked.

For counter example look at how they avoided looking into emails on hunter Biden's laptop. Oh, we can’t prove the emails are genuine… but they had no problem taking evidence against their disfavored candidates at face value.

Right, for an article espousing the virtues of evidence they don't seem to provide much for that claim.

Something something burden of proof. You got it backwards mate.

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