Elon Musk’s “Steele Dossier” post gets brutal fact checks

Elon Musk’s “Steele Dossier” post gets brutal fact checks

June 2, 2024 / Kevin harson /


Elon Musk’s claim that the so-called “Steele Dossier” was “unquestionably election interference” has been brutally fact-checked on X, formerly Twitter, over the weekend.

Musk, who purchased the social media platform in 2022, suggested in an X post on Saturday that former President Donald Trump had been the victim of a “double standard” when he was convicted in New York on Thursday on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Daniels alleged she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, which he has denied.

Manhattan prosecutors said that Trump’s falsification of the records, which involved listing the hush money payments as “legal fees,” was part of an illegal conspiracy to prevent former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, from defeating him in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has maintained his innocence and says the case is politically motivated. His legal team says they will fight the case, which will include an appeal, if necessary.

X owner Elon Musk is seen in Bali, Indonesia, on May 19. Musk was fact-checked by several X users over the weekend after claiming that former President Donald Trump was the victim of a “double…


SONNY TUMBELAKA/AFP

The largely discredited Steele Dossier consists of opposition research that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign commissioned from former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele in 2016. It contains unverified intelligence reports on Trump’s relationship with Russia.

In a response to a post from right-wing activist Jack Posobiec, Musk argued that Clinton was guilty of election interference in 2016 because her campaign paid Steele and listed the payments on Federal Election Commission (FEC) forms as “legal services,” accusing New York of unfairly prosecuting Trump, but not Clinton.

The Clinton campaign and the DNC paid $113,000 in 2022 to settle an FEC investigation into whether or not a violation of federal campaign finance laws had been committed by hiding the payments to Steele, the Associated Press reported in March 2022.

“This seems like a double-standard,” Musk wrote on Saturday. “The Steele Dossier was unquestionably election interference.”

In addition to New York lacking the jurisdiction to prosecute Clinton on a federal matter, multiple X users fact-checked Musk over timing that calls his “election interference” claim into question—the Steele Dossier was unknown to the public until it was published by Buzzfeed in January 2017, two months after the presidential election took place.

“The Steele Dossier wasn’t released until Jan 2017,” wrote user @TimHannan. “This guy is such a tool.”

“1. The Steele Dossier was released in 2017, so it clearly wasn’t interference with the 2016 election,” X user @deangloster wrote. “2. When DJT sued claiming there were lies in the Steele Dossier, he lost and had to pay $382,000 attorneys’ fees to Steele.”

“This is the problem with this hellscape you have created @elonmusk- this is false,” wrote user @kevinlh1975. “The Steele dossier wasn’t released until 2017. Maybe you should stick to things you know.”

Newsweek reached out for comment to X, Musk, and Trump and Clinton’s offices via email on Sunday.

Trump suffered blow in British court earlier this year when his lawsuit against Steele’s company Orbis was thrown out and he was ordered to pay legal fees. The suit argued that Trump’s reputation had been damaged by the dossier’s “shocking and scandalous” false claims, the AP reported.

In 2022, a U.S. court dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against Steele, Clinton and federal law enforcement officials, while rejecting his claim that the dossier made him a target in the separate Mueller investigation into Russian 2016 election interference.

Mueller’s 448-page report released in 2019 revealed the findings of the two-year investigation that looked into whether members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 presidential election. The probe did not uncover collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Trump has consistently denied any allegations that he’s tied to Russia and has described such allegations, including Mueller’s investigation, as the “Russia hoax.”

Meanwhile, shortly after the guilty verdict in Trump’s New York criminal case was announced on Thursday, Musk wrote in an X post that the former president had been convicted on “a trivial matter” and claimed that “anyone is at risk of a similar fate.”

The former president has repeatedly protested his innocence and argues that all of his ongoing legal issues are part of a “witch hunt” by Democrats and “election interference” as he campaigns for a return to the White House as the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee.