Byron York: Spinning in circles on the Trump dossier

Byron York on the "Russian Dossier"

It's always important to understand how you know what you know, or what you think you know. It's particularly important in the case of the Trump dossier.

Consider the increasing number of claims that the incendiary allegations of the dossier "check out," in the words of New York Times columnist Bret Stephens.

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"What's relevant is [Steele's] credibility, the reliability of his sources and the truthfulness of their claims," Stephens wrote recently. "These check out."

But do they? In reality, most reasonable people not named Mueller would have to say we don't know.

"As it relates to the Steele dossier, unfortunately the committee has hit a wall," Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr noted last month. The committee's investigation, the best probe outside of the Mueller special prosecutor operation, has not even been able to discover who Steele's sources were, Burr said.

So how do outsiders conclude that the document's key allegations check out? How do they know what they know?

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Voila: Isikoff reported, accurately, U.S. intelligence agencies received intelligence reports on Page's trip. The alleged actions involving Page that Isikoff reported -- attributed to a "Western intelligence source," which was some reporters' shorthand for the former British spy -- lined up precisely with the contents of Steele's dossier. (Even John Sipher conceded that, "Admittedly, Isikoff's reporting may have relied on Steele himself for that information.")

Given all that, Stephens' point that the dossier "checks out" is basically saying the dossier proves the dossier.