From The Telegraph Jan. 11:
[For months, (Steele) had been playing a dangerous game; tipping off journalists about what he said he had discovered from his sources in Russia about Donald Trump’s alleged dealings with the Kremlin, as well as claims that the FSB had hugely compromising information about Mr Trump’s activities during visits to the country.]
By seeding the news media for months with fantastic stories about Trump, Steele the ex-UK spook, was running a disinformation campaign. The purpose was to prompt reporters to begin digging into Trump’s “links to Russia” and discover incriminating facts that Steele couldn’t find on his own.
Apparently the news media couldn’t confirm anything Steele gave them and the “Dossier” bore no fruit. Steele then handed off the fictitious memos to the FBI in London and later to John McCain when the FBI failed to act quickly.
“One of his key contacts, David Corn of the political blog Mother Jones,”
actually, that’s pretty much all you need to know about Steele and his fake report.