This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Mission Implausible is now something you can watch.

Just go to YouTube and search Mission Implausible Podcasts or click on the link to our channel

in our show notes.

I'm John Seifer.

And I'm Jerry O'Shea.

We have over 60 years of experience as clandestine officers in the CIA,

serving in high-risk areas all around the world.

And part of our job was creating conspiracies to deceive our adversaries.

Now we're going to use that experience to investigate the conspiracy theories everyone's talking about,

as well as some you may not have heard.

Could they be true, or are we being manipulated? We'll find out now on Mission Implausible.

Our guest today is Christopher Steele. Christopher is a former British intelligence officer and

longtime Russia specialist who founded the private intelligence firm, Orbus Business Intelligence.

He's the author of unredacted Russia Russia, Trump, and the Fight for Democracy.

And in 2016, Christopher produced a series of intelligence memos that were leaked and widely called

the Steele dossier, containing allegations about Russia's interference in the U.S.

election and links between Trump world and the Kremlin.

When BuzzFeed published the memos in early 2017, without Steele's permission, the dossier became a cultural and political accelerant, treated by some as proof and others as garbage. Steele then fought himself in a prolonged storm of political attacks, referrals, and investigations and lawsuits, including Trump's failed UK suit against Orbis. It ended with a court ordering Trump to pay substantial legal fees.

So welcome, Christopher. Great to have you with us. Thank you for having me all.

So Trump sued you. Has he paid? I didn't expect that as the first question. I don't know if there's a conspiracy surrounding this. It's not rocket science, but he seems to

...