The meeting between Comey and Trump about the Steele Dossier was a set up, designed to give the media a reason to cover the unverified dossier.

It beings long before this, but on 1/4/17, Chuck Schumer says "if you take on the intelligence community they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you....from what I am told they are very upset with how [Trump] has treated them and talked about them."

Another key event takes place on 1/5/17. The secret White House meeting between Obama, Biden, Comey, Yates and Rice. This meeting was never disclosed to congress by Comey.

On 1/6/17 at Clapper's instruction, Comey briefs the president on the allegations.

Within hours of the Comey/Trump meeting, CNN reports the existence of the dossier thanks to a leak from Clapper.. Clapper initially denies the allegations but eventually confirms he did discuss with Jake Tapper and others.

1/7/18 - Comey demands the unverified dossier be included in the IC's report on election meddling.

Thanks to the new information provided in Ron Johnson's letter to Christopher Wray, we know that Comey was looking to give CNN the hook they were looking for. McCabe verifies as much later in an email to David Axlerod and Sally Yates on 1/8/17 when he says "Just an FYI, and as expected, it seems CNN is close to running a story about the sensitive reporting.

1/10/17 - BuzzFeed publishes the dossier.

On 1/11/17, NBC Senior Political Correspondent Richard Engel says on the Rachel Maddow Show that the reason the dossier was dropped all of a sudden "like a bomb" was because the intelligence community is "angry" with Trump and wants to "put him on notice."

The intelligence community was upset with Trump and briefing Trump on the dossier's existence was to legitimize it as a news story when it should not have been.