As far as I have seen, there is no evidence that Steele presented this to journalists prior to the election ... merely his claim.
Consider a different scenario: this dossier was never meant to see the light of day because it would have been shredded in five minutes, as indeed was the case.
The purpose of the dossier, and the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. which we now find out was a set-up arranged by Fusion GPS, was to give the FBI enough supposed evidence for a FISA warrant to bug Trump and his associates. No one expected they would find “evidence” of collusion with Russia. What they expected to find was lots of nefarious dealings, but it turns out, much to their disappointment that with Trump, what you see is pretty much what you get.
Step 2: Hillary is elected, and the dossier is never found out to be the fake basis of the wiretaps that uncovered the unrelated dirt that won her the election.
But then she isn’t elected, and all of the above is going to come out, so they then need to spin the story about collusion in the press, to cover their own butts.
In that scenario, we have Watergate on steroids, with the press playing Nixon’s praetorian guard.
Very well said. Thank you.
Beautiful....excellent destruction. I agree completely.
Oops....make that excellent “deconstruction”.......although you did some great destruction to the dossier invention.
Actually there is evidence...
On October 31, 2016, a week before the election, Mother Jones reported that a former intelligence officer, whom they did not name, had produced a report based on Russian sources and turned it over to the FBI.
Other news reports were referencing information in the hands of the fbi...
To the larger point, the actual dossier was not meant to see the light of day. It was meant to serve as probable cause for a FISA warrant and to plant negative collusion news in the media.