A friend of my daughter was abused by a friend of her mom. He sued her for defamation. Ever heard of that kind of thing? What they win is to cause confusion and bamboozle society and prosecutors. There are many reasons, always attack is a mainstay of power.
The British courts documented in detail that dossier contents related to the parties suing had "no basis in fact" You would think that when claiming that two Alfa Bank partners funneled "illicit cash" to Russian President Vladimir Putin -- the money trail of transactions would be easy to document & prove. Even someone as inept as Steele should be able to get access to transaction records showing the money trail -- which would be the most basic layer of proof required for the dossier.
Steel was not inept, he was gathering basic opposition research intelligence which is as aforementioned just stuff picked up. No proof required for the dossier as that comes after these rumours are released and pheasants fly, or not. As part of my work in anti-poaching I (the team) had informants would we give some money or a beer to. A lot of it drunk talk and fourth hand stuff gone through through Chinese whispers. But some not and you just had to use instinct and experience. Steele's job was find a good part if the river to pan for gold, not to do the panning. Well unless the client tells him to pursue it.
What Steele created goes far beyond the standards of proper opposition research for political campaigns.
All you’ll get from that bunch is “excuses” and “what if’s”, everything except Steele was wrong. And that “wrong” was used to justify spying on US citizens and a President. When you leak information to the press and then use the press release as proof? Come’on really?
Steel gets hired to find anything salacious, damaging or just weird that could be used against Trump. He makes a dossier of his initial findings, some vetted a little, the rest not. He will have discussed what he though could be developed. Much of it is in there to justify his time, leads that did not pan out. His job done. Then bits of it get identified as hey, maybe this was provably illegal and some of it passed to investigators who engage/interview him. The US should just straight out say someone running for office as immunity from investigation as this could be seen as dirty tricks. Of course every criminal under investigation registers to run for office.
Take a look at any standard opposition research document and compare it to the Steele dossier. Proper opposition research is focused on recording their speeches at rallies, etc. and publicly known facts. This material is used to counter the politician in an election by establishing key talking points, etc. for the candidate running against them.. Opposition researchers can be seen at many political events recording what the candidate is saying. The Steele dossier is not proper opposition research -- it is fictional take from the fervid imagination of a self-proclaimed super-spy. The Steele dossier does not document facts but makes many ludicrous assertions found to be completely false.
OK, you have these then? Let's look at them. You happen to have landed on something I was recently involved with. A relative of mine in the US was planning on running against an incumbent for a local office. Almost immediately rumours about his wife having a criminal record appeared. This was in massive and daunting quantities on social media. Where this came from is her name was in a court document where she had been a witness for the defence in a shaken baby type case and oh she is black. So you show me your "standard" opposition research for a multinational operation businessman running for US president, normal opposition research for same alleged billionaire businessman. We can compare it to Steel's. I'll show you how I found that it was not the incumbent politician but a group of white nationalist fascists who completely independently decided to attack my relative with anything they could just because he was a 'kaffir lover', their actual wording despite being American not South African.