By Chuck Ross, The Daily Caller

The New York Times published an article over the weekend laying out a new original story for the FBI’s investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with the Russian government.

The infamous Steele dossier was not the catalyst for the investigation, according to four unnamed government officials who spoke to The Times. Rather, a drunken barroom conversation that Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had with an Australian diplomat in London in May 2016 was what led to the FBI probe.

Democrats and liberal pundits touted the story, which they said showed that Republicans have been overly focused on the dossier’s significance to the Russia investigation.

But some congressional Republicans, conservative pundits and a former Trump campaign adviser who has been interviewed extensively by Russia investigators aren’t buying the new spin.

They assert that there is still ample evidence that the FBI relied on the dossier for its investigation. They also question why, after the FBI/DOJ have dodged questions about the dossier for nearly a year, U.S. government officials have just now started leaking information that downplays the document’s significance to the Russia inquiry.

“It’s too convenient,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee, told The Daily Caller of the Times’ article.

“The Democrats touted the Steele dossier’s conspiracy theories all year. But now, with the dossier’s credibility in tatters, they’re suddenly claiming that it was a totally irrelevant document all along,” another source familiar with the congressional Russia investigations told TheDC.

Read the rest of this article at The Daily Caller.