REUTERS/Itar Tass
British spy Christopher Steele, the ex-MI6 agent behind the infamous Trump dossier, also wrote a report concluding that Vladimir Putin’s former media czar and Russia Today founder Mikhail Lesin was beaten to death in a Washington, D.C. hotel in 2015 by an oligarch’s hired thugs, sources told BuzzFeed News. Lesin’s official cause of death was declared an accident, claiming the executive got very drunk and fell in his hotel room, which resulted in blunt-force injuries on this body. BuzzFeed News previously reported he died the night before he was set to talk to the U.S. Department of Justice about the inner workings of the media outlet. Steele’s report is said to claim the assailants were state security agents who worked on the side for an oligarch close to Putin—and were hired only to beat him up but they took it too far. The report was given to the FBI while the Bureau was aiding DC Police with the case, and was accompanied by three other independent reports coming to the same conclusion as Steele had. The FBI declined to confirm of deny the reports existence, and Steele’s business partner declined to comment.