It appears that one of the reasons that Trump may have assumed he was being blackmailed by Comey when he was told after his election about the salacious allegations in the Steele dossier is that just before the election a Russian contact of Michael Cohens emailed to say "don't worry about the photos from your Miss Universe trip to Moscow, I've stopped them coming out of Russia". As detailed in Mueller (Vol. II, footnote 112), and further in Bloomberg News.
Yes, this has been widely reported. Such photos were supposedly in the possession of a Russian real estate mogul that Trump interacted with while in Russia. Remember the peepee tape? The President's lawyers was in communication with Russians about it, and gladly accepted Russian help on this topic. But accepting Russian help and paying for Russian help are two different things, and as long as Trump maintains that his pro-Russia policy stances and the easing of sanctions were coincidental, and not "payment" for Russia's help in getting him elected, then he's off the hook for criminal conspiracy. That's basically the root of his conspiracy defense, that he conspired with Russia because he honestly loves Russia and not because he was trying to break the law. The fact that Russia has spent decades cultivating Donald Trump's love with financial support for his failing businesses is apparently not relevant, though I would call that a classic KGB tactic.
So despite Trump and his campaign being aware of the Russian efforts to help him, seeking out that help, and expecting to benefit from that help, Mueller decided it wasn't criminal because he was ignorant of the laws making it a crime. If you can't prove criminal intent, you can't successfully prosecute a conspiracy case. Not that Mueller thought he could prosecute a president anyway, for anything at all.
The peepee tape stuff is just another example of the ways the Russians tried to help him, just like the promised dirt on Hillary at the Trump Tower meeting. Also just like the Trump Tower meeting, the specific offer in that case (stopping the release the hotel photos with the peepee hookers) turned out to be a farce, an effort by the Russians to gain influence over Trump without actually doing anything. It looks like they didn't actually have the pictures, just like they didn't actually have new dirt on Clinton. But they told Trump that they did, to cultivate his support, and for that purpose whether or not you can actually deliver on your promises is irrelevant.
Cultivating a foreign asset is all about building loyalty and support. It's about managing people's expectations, currying their favor, and building on their allegiances by appealing to their motivating desires and guiding principles. For Trump, that means a) money, and b) insulting and denigrating his perceived enemies. Russia squarely nailed both of those.
Sadly, republicans seem to think that Russian interference in the American election is fine, but that investigating that interference is a crime against the country.
Giuliani has repeatedly gone on TV to say there's nothing wrong with accepting help from the Russians, and
Kushner says that the investigation into that interference is "way more harmful" than the interference itself. You know your country has lost when a foreign power convinces part of the country to hate the other part more than their shared enemies.