After nearly three years of investigation, Steele’s major anti-Trump allegations remain unverified. The FBI and the Obama Justice Department relied on Steele’s information to claim there was probable cause that Carter Page was a clandestine agent of Russia, yet Page has never been charged with a crime. And Mueller closed his investigation by concluding that there was no Trump–Russia conspiracy. There is no credible reason to believe the collusion narrative. There is, however, a great deal of reason to suspect that the Russian regime used Steele to channel disinformation into the intelligence and foreign-policy arms of the United States government.

Deripaska, Surkov, and Trubnikov were not informing on the Kremlin. These are Putin’s guys. They were peddling what the Kremlin wanted the world to believe, and what the Kremlin shrewdly calculated would sow division in the American body politic. So, the question is: Did they find the perfect patsy in Christopher Steele?