Author of dirty dossier admits it was unverified

Washington Times:

Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the infamous anti-Donald Trump dossier, acknowledges that a sensational charge his sources made about a tech company CEO and Democratic Party hacking is unverified.

In a court filing, Mr. Steele also says his accusations against the president and his aides about a supposed Russian hacking conspiracy were never supposed to be made public, much less posted in full on a website for the world to see on Jan. 10.

He defends himself by saying he was betrayed by his client and that he followed proper internal channels by giving the dossier to Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, to alert the U.S. government.
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Barristers for Mr. Steele and his Orbis Business Intelligence firm filed their first defense against a defamation lawsuit brought by Aleksej Gubarev, chief executive of the network solutions firm XBT Holdings.

Mr. Steele acknowledges that the part of the 35-page dossier that identified Mr. Gubarev as a rogue hacker came from “unsolicited intelligence” and “raw intelligence” that “needed to be analyzed and further investigated/verified.”

Mr. Steele’s court filing portrays him as a victim of Fusion GPS — the Washington firm that hired him with money from a Hillary Clinton backer.

Fusion specializes in opposition research for Democrats and circulated the Steele dossier among reporters in an effort to injure the Trump candidacy and presidency. Mr. Steele said he never authorized Fusion to do that.

“The defendants did not provide any of the pre-election memoranda to media organizations or journalists. Nor did they authorize anyone to do so,” Mr. Steele said through his attorney. “Nor did they provide the confidential December memorandum to media organizations or journalists. Nor did they authorize anyone to do so.”

“At all material times Fusion was subject to an obligation not to disclose to third parties confidential intelligence material provided” by Mr. Steele and his firm Orbis, the court filing reads.
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This is a pretty interesting response to the lawsuit.  However, that last quoted sentence is a suspect proposition since the document would have little value to Fusion if they could not use it to damage a political opponent.  But the meat of the statement demonstrates just how dodgy the document was.