Did the Cooked-Up Steele Dossier Trigger the Entire Russia Probe?

From Ace of Spades:

The FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump-Russia affair shortly after receiving the first installment of an anti-Trump dossier from a former British spy working for the Hillary Clinton campaign. What congressional investigators want to know is whether that was a coincidence or not. 

The first report in the dossier compiled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele was dated June 20, 2016. Steele told the left-leaning publication Mother Jones that he took the first part of his dossier to the FBI "near the start of July." James Comey, when he was FBI director, told members of the House Intelligence Committee the Trump-Russia investigation began "in late July." 

So the timeline is: The first dossier report was June 20, Steele approached the FBI near the start of July, and the FBI began its investigation in late July. Steele's first dossier installment, the June 20 document, cited a "senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure" and a "former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin." It reported that "Russian authorities had been cultivating and supporting US Republican presidential candidate, Donald TRUMP for at least 5 years" and that "the TRUMP operation was both supported and directed by Russian President Vladimir PUTIN." 

Also citing a "senior Russian financial official" and a "close associate of TRUMP who had organized and managed his recent trips to Moscow," the dossier said Russians had been feeding Trump "valuable intelligence" on Clinton "for several years." 

The report also said "TRUMP's (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton hotel, where he knew President and Mrs. OBAMA (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show in front of him." 

The action was all captured by hidden cameras, the dossier said. The FBI was very interested in Steele's report, according to Mother Jones' David Corn, who was personally briefed by Steele...

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.