According to this article in Mother Jones from October 31, 2016 (this is the first mainstream media article I have seen that directly references/quotes the dossier): http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave...
Steele denied in October 2016 that his "US company" client (the DNC) instructed him to go to the FBI. But then again, Mark Elias has been denying that the DNC funded this dossier for a year:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/10/25/fusion-gps-fallou... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/fbi-chief-gi...
In June 2016, a request to the Fisa court for surveillance of the Trump campaign was turned down. In July, the dossier was delivered to the FBI. In October, the Fisa surveillance request was granted. However, this Fisa court request was NOT about Carter Page - Page had been under FBI surveillance since a FISA court ruling in 2014: http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/politics/paul-manafort-governm...
Also, the entire point of providing links is to back claims, you need to now provided additional links to the ones you just made. (EDIT: Now provided. Thank you).
I'm still baffled why these reasonable concerns, no context being provided, is receiving a ridiculous number of downvotes.