SAY THIS ABOUT Ivanka Trump: she doesn’t kiss and tell.

The most titillating detail in the IG report, it turns out, is that Christopher Steele, the erstwhile British super-spy and the author of the “dossier” that bears his name, had a “personal” relationship with a member of the Trump family. Julia Macfarlane at ABC News confirmed that said family member was—mirabile dictu—the president’s favorite daughter:

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. And the two did meet at Trump Tower according to the source. The inspector general’s report mentions a meeting with a “Trump family member” there. 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.

“[D]ining together in New York at a restaurant just blocks from Trump Tower” sounds suspiciously like “going out on a date.”

Wait—were Chris and Vanks, like, a thing?

Parkhomenko might be right to still not believe this rumor—or rumour, I suppose—because it’s probably all smoke and no fire (although the smoke is sultry and the fire is hot). Most likely, Steele, who in 2008 was about to launch his own business in the private sector, was working a deep-pocketed potential client and nothing more.

On the other hand…I mean, it’s certainly possible. Consider: At the time, Steele’s life was in flux. He was 44 years old, in what would be his last year at MI6. His wife Laura, with whom he had two children, was terminally ill. A year later he was a widower, and had left the spy game to form his own company, Orbis. Would he have enjoyed the flirtations of a young American beauty (the above photo is from 2009, before Ivanka went Kremlin Barbie and began speaking like post-Ray of Light Madonna) at such a tumultuous time in his life? Put it this way: he’d have rather dined with her than, say, Eric.

Ivanka, meanwhile, was on the rebound. The then-27-year-old had just been unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend of three years, Jared Kushner, because [checks notes] his parents objected to their relationship. That must have stung on multiple levels. Then she chanced to meet a distinguished British gentleman—a fucking spy, no less? That’s, like, some romance novel shit right there. Christopher Steele? More like Danielle Steele.

The IG report also contains this tidbit, as Macfarlane explains:

Steele said he was “favorably disposed” toward the Trump family — and not remotely biased against [Donald] Trump — because of his relationship with [Ivanka], according to the report by the Inspector General of the Justice Department. The report notes Steele said that he had even given [Ivanka] a sentimental gift, “a family tartan from Scotland” — the homeland of Trump’s late mother.

A family tartan, eh? That could be a shrewd business move, like when that Russian oligarch gave Kushner some soil from his ancestral hometown. But it’s not a stretch to suggest there was more to Steele’s being “favorably disposed.” Could it be that the couple met for a romantic dinner à deux within walking distance of Trump Tower, and then repaired to Ivanka’s swanky apartment for a little (wink wink, nudge nudge) dessert? That’s not only within the realm of possibility, it’s in a penthouse suite in a skyscraper in the realm of possibility’s capital city.

If the rumor is true—and for the record, I totally “ship” the couple, as the kids say—there’s a lot to unpack.

For starters, it’s astonishing that we didn’t find out about this until now. Which begs the question: Did her father know? Did her husband? Or did they both hear about it recently, just like the rest of us?

Wait—so all this time Donald Trump has been attacking Steele, he didn’t realize his own pride & joy “knew” him? Maybe that was the cause of Trump’s panic-attack-like symptoms that sent him to Walter Reed late one Saturday night. Not only did he learn that there was a rival for his daughter-wife’s affections—another older man, superior to him by every available metric—but it’s Chris Fucking Steele, who knows all about his Russian whoremasters and seedy sexual peccadilloes. So much so that the whole affair might have been an expert piece of spycraft:

I have to correct my friend Zev. This is not a honeypot. This is—wait for it—a Steele trap!

One also wonders if Steele’s shall-we-say knowledge of Ivanka Trump in any way informed his decision to include this lurid paragraph in his very first intelligence report:

…TRUMP’s (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he knew President and Mrs. OBAMA (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him.

Three different sources—D, E, and F—confirm that story, by the way. Could Ivanka have leaked intel about her father’s urinous kink in the afterglow of their lovemaking?

Eh, I’m not convinced. Steele didn’t cheat on his infirm wife. The true nature of the “personal relationship” between Donald Trump’s daughter and his ex-MI6 investigator did not involve smashing. This was just a bizarre coincidence.

But, as Hemingway wrote: Isn’t it pretty to think so?