ABC News reports that Steele first met Ivanka Trump at a dinner in 2007, which was nine years before her father was elected president of the United States. At the time, she was executive vice president of the Trump Organization — where she managed foreign real estate projects, and some of those projects were in parts of the world where Steele’s security firm, Orbin Business Intelligence, was doing business.
The two of them, according to e-mail exchanges obtained by ABC News, discussed the services that Orbin could possibly offer the Trump Organization in non-U.S. markets. Trump and Steele stayed in touch in the late 2000s and considered working together — although it never came about.