An AP review finds that the Steele dossier appears to be a mixture of revelations, fiction and disinformation.

No one has painted a more vivid portrait of a purported alliance between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia than a former British spy named Christopher Steele.

Steele’s once-confidential campaign memos were published just before Trump’s inauguration, unleashing tales of cavorting prostitutes and conniving campaign aides on secret sorties with agents of the Kremlin.

Ever since, the credibility of these Democratic-funded memos — the so-called Steele dossier — has remained the subject of both official investigation and political sniping.

In the 18 months since the dossier’s release, government inquiries, criminal cases and authoritative news reports have begun to resolve at least some of the questions surrounding the memos.

As a whole, the Steele dossier now appears to be a murky mixture of genuine revelations and repurposed history, likely interspersed with snippets of fiction or disinformation, an Associated Press review finds.

It remains unclear if the Trump campaign, in the end, secretly acquired Russian information and, if so, whether Trump himself was aware and involved.

For his part, Trump has dismissed the memos as “fake news” and parlayed “no collusion” into the Twitter tagline of his presidency. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied his government meddled in the election.

In libel lawsuits, four wealthy Russians take more specific exception to the dossier.

The Russians sued Steele and BuzzFeed, the online news outlet that published the memos in January 2017. Three of the men — all owners of the Moscow-based financial-industrial conglomerate called Alfa Group — also have sued Fusion GPS, the research company that enlisted Steele under a contract with a law firm connected to the Democrats.

Russian tech entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev and the Alfa Group owners — Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan — all say they had nothing to do with the events described in the dossier.

Any actions ascribed to the four Russians have never been independently confirmed by official investigations or authoritative news reports.