More from Jane Mayer's ridiculous Christopher Steele article. This is the tidbit that's getting a good deal of play in the media.
One subject that Steele is believed to have discussed with Mueller’s investigators is a memo that he wrote in late November, 2016, after his contract with Fusion had ended. This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as “a senior Russian official.” The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he’d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney. (During Romney’s run for the White House in 2012, he was notably hawkish on Russia, calling it the single greatest threat to the U.S.) The memo said that the Kremlin, through unspecified channels, had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions, and who would coöperate on security issues of interest to Russia, such as the conflict in Syria. If what the source heard was true, then a foreign power was exercising pivotal influence over U.S. foreign policy—and an incoming President.
As fantastical as the memo sounds, subsequent events could be said to support it. In a humiliating public spectacle, Trump dangled the post before Romney until early December, then rejected him
Now note the timing.
Steele writes his memo in late November. The famous Romney Trump dinner happened on Nov 29. Trump continues considering him in December. That's despite this supposed Kremlin intervention.
Jane Mayer surreally spins this as supporting Steele's claim, even though it actually contradicts it. So she has to retreat into yet another conspiracy theory in which Trump only pretended to consider Romney.
But there's no reason to believe that Trump was only pretending. Romney had a lot of similarities to the guy he eventually picked. Like Tillerson, Romney was a successful business leader with international experience who looked the part.
To believe this memo, you have to accept that...
1. The Kremlin could just order Trump not to pick Romney
2. Trump would do it, but would pretend not to do it in order to humiliate Romney
Or you could go with Occam's Razor and say that...
3. Steele was following the political news. He made a plausible guess that Romney wouldn't be picked. And rolled it into his conspiracy theories. The only way to disprove the Steele memo would have been for Trump to have picked Romney. And then in the next memo, Steele would have discovered that Romney had also secretly visited Moscow and cavorted with Russian prostitutes.
Mayer wanted to cite this as supporting evidence, but instead it suggests that Steele was making things up.
Finally, Trump has been far more supportive of Ukraine than Obama. The media continues to be obsessed with the Russian sanctions, but Trump instead provided Ukraine with meaningful military aid. That's the opposite of what Moscow wants.