Oh boy, that Horowitz Report is going to cause trouble

Nearly a decade before the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka met a British intelligence officer who ran the Russia desk -- and when the agent left his covert service and moved into private practice in 2010, she stayed in touch, ABC News has learned.

The two exchanged emails but never worked together, and the man, Christopher Steele, would one day re-emerge in a most unexpected way, taking a central role in the Russia scandal that consumed the early years of her father’s presidency, according to a source familiar with their past contacts.

The prior relationship came to light as investigators with the Department of Justice Inspector General’s office was looking into allegations of political bias at the origins of the Russia investigation since May 2018.

[...]

In 2007, Ivanka Trump met Steele at a dinner and they began corresponding about the possibility of future work together, the source said. The following year, the two exchanged emails about meeting up near Trump Tower, according to several emails seen by ABC News. They suggest Ivanka Trump and Steele stayed in touch via emails over the next several years. In one 2008 exchange they discussed dining together in New York at a restaurant just blocks from Trump Tower.

[...]

The inspector general's report, which was released publicly today, briefly references these past dealings. In his discussion with investigators from the inspector general’s office, Steele cited his past cordial relationship with Ivanka Trump as reason to believe that he was not biased against her.

“If anything he was ‘favorably predisposed’ towards the Trump family before he began his research,” he told the investigators, the report says.

  ABC

I don't think that necessarily follows. He may have been favorably predisposed towards Ivanka.

Steele told investigators he met with “a Trump family member at Trump Tower and ‘been friendly’ with [the family member] for some years,” even gifting the person “a family tartan," and that the idea he was biased against the family from the start was “ridiculous,’” according to the report.

[...]

President Trump and his political supporters have depicted Steele as a villain since word of his role in creating the dossier became public. The president called him “dopey” and a “failed spy” and on Twitter referred to him as “Steele of fraudulent Dossier fame” who was “tied into Crooked Hillary.”

There's probably nothing to see here, but it's interesting that this turned up in the Horowitz report. It'll give anti-Trumpers something to shout about.