Yeah, I didn't say that nor meant to imply it. I was assuming that he made the FBI aware of the context in which he had made the dossier, at the time he started sharing it with them.

What I'm saying is, it wasn't - as far as I've seen - the DNC or the Clinton campaign that told Steele to pass this information on to the FBI. Until I see evidence showing otherwise, I'm assuming what the articles are saying about him choosing to do so himself.

And then that means that in fact a source who's been working with the FBI for a long time, on his own initiative, decided 'hey, here I've got something that the FBI should know' (he also shared it with British intelligence, being British). He decided that he had something which was solid enough that based on his earlier cooperation with the FBI, he thought it was worth passing on, independently of what his client wanted to do with the same information. At that point it's up to the FBI to verify the information and do something with it - or not. And they did take quite some time between receiving the dossier and the FISA application - which, one hopes, they would've spend independently verifying the dossier.

As long as Steele didn't lie to the FBI about the source of his funding and as long as his reports to the FBI made clear which level of certainty he had for the different items in the dossier, it's actually hard to see what either he or the DNC are supposed to have done wrong with the dossier as such. If there's wrongdoing, as the memo suggests, then it's on the part of the FBI and Obama-era DoJ for not submitting relevant information to the FISA court. But I'll wait for more details to judge on that part.