This Christopher Steele Roport leads to a highly critical avenue of investigation — if true, someone in the Kremlin or an ally of the Kremlin had to convey this to Donald Trump or members of his team. Any Kremlin order to not submit Romney for the position had to leave a communications trail and any seriously good investigator should be able to ferret out the communications connection. Finding and proving there exists a Kremlin/White House communications venue would likely force even some Republicans to take note. In 2016 Slate Trump Tower Reported a direct link of the Russian Alpha Bank and Trump Tower email servers. The links were broken and the trail went quiet after two discoveries and reporting. This may be an avenue for determining if a similar secretive email server was set up to facilitate Kremlin/Trump communications. The reporting by Rachael Maddow of multiple unscheduled Kremlin representatives/Trump people meetings — found and reported first by Russian Media, also stands a a potential source for a communication channel.
As further speculation, if Trump is indeed beholden to Putin and Putin’s goal is to sow discord and destabilize the U.S. on the world stage, every Trump action of late could have been ordered by Putin via this back-channel communication venue. Virtually all of Trump’s actions appear detrimental or divisive to and within our country and if he was directed on the Romney front, it’s also possible that he’s being directed on other issues. Following the communications trail could be more damning than following the money trail.