Steele lashed out in response to Durham’s report, which laid out in painstaking detail many of the flaws, errors, and fabrications in the dossier. The FBI relied heavily on Steele’s report to bolster its investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia. Steele’s report claimed that the Trump campaign had a “well-developed conspiracy of coordination” with Russia to influence the 2016 election. He claimed the Kremlin had a sex video of Trump in Moscow from 2013.

But no evidence has emerged to support any of those allegations. And Steele’s sources and sub-sources have either acknowledged they fabricated the claims or said they were embellished in the dossier. Steele’s primary source for the dossier, Igor Danchenko, told the FBI in 2017 that he never received evidence of a Trump sex tape.

According to Durham, Danchenko lied about his contacts with a Belarusian-American businessman he claimed was a major source for the dossier. Danchenko told Steele and the FBI that the businessman, Sergei Millian, provided crucial information about Trump’s links to Russia. Steele told Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators in September 2017 that Millian was a main source for his report. But Durham, who reviewed Danchenko’s phone and email records, determined that Danchenko “simply fabricated” his interactions with Millian.

[Steele’s denials are performative. He’s providing cover for media outlets that don’t want to admit they either got snookered or were in on the hoax. As Chuck Ross points out later, Durham wasn’t the first to discredit the Steele dossier claims; Michael Horowitz did as well in his IG report. — Ed]