CHRISTOPHER Steele, the retired British spy responsible for preparing the dossier suggesting US president-elect Donald Trump is being blackmailed by Russia, has gone into hiding.

Reports suggest that Steele believed his life was in danger and left his home on Tuesday or Wednesday, asking a neighbour to look after his three cats.

Steele’s explosive 35-page dossier contains many allegations, most of them currently unsubstantiated. The most lewd is that the soon-to-be 45th President of the United States had been filmed in a Moscow hotel room, enjoying a niche sexual act that involved prostitutes defiling a bed slept in by Barack Obama.

Trump denied that charge at an incredible press conference on Wednesday, saying he couldn’t have taken part because of his “germaphobia”. He also dismissed other claims in the dossier about the Kremlin’s closeness to his campaign, and to his businesses, as “phoney stuff”.

It was, in many ways, the press conference that was heard round the world. Trump criticised the US intelligence agencies for leaking the dossier to the press, and then laid into the press for publishing the dossier.

Wednesday was, the Washington Post said, “a mad, mad, day in American politics”. That paper also tentatively asked: “Is it also our new normal?”

James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, spoke to Trump after the conference, denying that it was the intelligence community who had leaked the dossier. The next day the president-elect tweeted: “James Clapper called me yesterday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated. Made up, phony facts. Too bad!”

Clapper’s statement, however, was more nuanced, saying simply: “The [intelligence community] has not made any judgement that the information in this document is reliable.”

The Russians have denied any involvement, with their embassy in London even suggesting that it was Britain rather than the Kremlin who was trying to destabilise Trump: “Christopher Steele story: MI6 officers are never ex: briefing both ways – against Russia and US President,” the embassy tweeted.

Steele, a former MI6 officer, is now the director of Orbis Business Intelligence. He spent years working under diplomatic cover for MI6 in Russia and is said to be highly respected in the shadowy world of espionage.

According to the New York Times, it was a wealthy Republican donor who first commissioned the report through Fusion GPS, a Washington firm headed by a former Wall Street Journal reporter. When Trump became that party’s candidate, Democrat supporters came forward in order to pursue it.

It’s understood that Steele then handed it to both the FBI and a number of media organisation some weeks ago.

However, John McCain, the senior Republican, also handed the dossier to the FBI when he was made aware of its contents. Carl Bernstein, the Watergate reporter, said that McCain had been handed the document by a former British ambassador to Moscow.

This led to Sir Tim Barrow, Theresa May’s new ambassador to the EU, and Britain’s former man in Moscow, being forced to deny responsibility.

Labour MP Mary Creagh has called on Boris Johnson and the Foreign Office to explain how much they know about the dossier. The official spokeswoman for Prime Minister Theresa May refused to comment on the allegations in the dossier, but confirmed “former employees” of the government were involved in pulling the dossier together.

Meanwhile, the director of the US Office of Government Ethics said Trump’s plan to hand his sprawling business empire over to his two oldest sons was “wholly inadequate”. Ethics czar Walter Shaub said: “The plan the [president-elect] has announced doesn’t meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting, and that every president in the past four decades has met.”

Precedent is for the incumbent to have sold-off all corporate assets and place remaining profits in a government-approved blind trust.

In emails between the Office of Government Ethics and Trump’s transition team, obtained by the Associated Press, Shaub openly pleads with Trump to reconsider his plan, arguing that divestiture is the easiest way to avoid conflicts of interest.

Trump’s attorney, Sheri Dillon of firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius, was also at the press conference on Wednesday where she detailed the new arrangement for the president-elect’s business empire.

Eric and Donald Jr would pursue new deals only in the US and not abroad, she said, and they would not discuss details with their father – though it is unclear how that promise will be regulated.

By not divesting, the Trump family – and ultimately Trump – could profit from decisions made in the White House.

According to Companies House, Donald J Trump is still an active director in five companies in the UK, including his two golf courses in Scotland.

At the news conference, Trump declared that he could continue to run his businesses and be president. That is consistent with his earlier statement: “I can be President of the United States and run my business 100 per cent, sign checks on my business.” Trump said. “The law is totally on my side, meaning, the President can’t have a conflict of interest.”

At the press conference, Trump had illustrated how sprawling and massive his empire is, by piling all his paperwork on to a table placed stage right for the world’s media to see.

Later on, one member of the world’s media looked a little closer and discovered that all the paper stuffed into many of the brown folders was blank.