The author of the unverified, now infamous “golden showers” memo alleging Russia has plenty of blackmail material on Donald Trump has gone into hiding and is “terrified,” the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper reports.
Trump has derided the memo as “fake news” and a political hit job, and belittled BuzzFeed for publishing it earlier this week. Christopher Steele, 52, the former officer of the British intelligence unit M16, has disappeared himself for fear of retribution from Russia, the Telegraph said.
The newspaper said that when Steele, the co-founder of London-based Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, realized his name was going to become public, he quickly packed up and fled his home in Surrey.
The paper quoted a person close to Steele saying he was “terrified for his and his family’s safety.”
Trump mocked the findings of the report in a news conference Wednesday, especially the most explosive allegation — which is, again, totally unsubstantiated. The claim is that “TRUMP’s (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he knew President and Mrs OBAMA (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) in front of him.”
Trump said he is much too conscious of cameras in foreign hotel rooms to ever do such a thing, adding, “I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way. Believe me.”