https://dailycaller.com/2020/04/27/chris...kins-coie/
"A lawyer representing the DNC and Clinton campaign provided Christopher Steele with information in 2016 regarding an alleged secret communications channel between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank, the former spy told a British court last month.
That now-debunked tip, from Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann, set off a chain of events that led to Steele publishing a Sept. 14, 2016 memo accusing the founders of the bank, Alfa Bank, of having “illicit” ties to Vladimir Putin, according to a court transcript obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation....
The three owners of Alfa Bank have sued Steele in the U.S. and U.K. over the Sept. 14, 2016 memo, which is referred to as “Company Intelligence Report 112” in the dossier....
Sussmann shopped the allegations about the Alfa Bank computer servers around to others besides Steele, including to journalists and the FBI’s top lawyer.
He shared the information with reporters from the New York Times and Slate, which ran a story on Oct. 31, 2016....
It is now known that Steele was involved in one way or the other in all three of the stories. He has acknowledged in court proceedings to meeting with both reporters from Mother Jones and Yahoo, and had investigated the allegations central to the Slate story.
To further spread the Alfa Bank story, Sussmann contacted James Baker, his former DOJ colleague who then served as general counsel for the FBI. Baker told House investigators on Oct. 18, 2018 that Sussmann contacted him to share the information and that they met on Sept. 19, 2016.
That day was a busy one for the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team. The Justice Department IG report said that Steele provided six memos from his dossier to the FBI that same day...."
So the FBI got a story direct from Clinton's lawyers and then indirectly from Clinton's lawyers and opened an investigation.