Hillary Clinton and the DNC Funded Trump-Russia Dodgy Dossier - Report

from Sputnik News:

The controversial and infamous Trump-Russia dossier that alleges US President Donald Trump is little more than a Kremlin puppet was in part funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, the Washington Post has reported.

The dossier, which was compiled by the research firm Fusion GPS, was originally commissioned by unknown right-wing sources while Trump was making his bid for the Republican candidacy. When it became clear the iconic businessman would win the nomination in spite of establishment opposition, the Republican donors stepped aside — but someone else took their place.

According to the Post, the new donors were the Clinton campaign and the DNC. This was done through Washington lawyer Marc Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie. The newspaper’s anonymous sources said the two organizations shared the cost, but they would not provide a specific dollar sum. None of the parties involved responded to requests for comment.

Kenneth Vogel, a New York Times reporter, claimed in a tweet that Elias told him “you (or your sources) are wrong” and “vigorously pushed back” on the story when Vogel himself tried to report on it. Elias himself has not commented on the latest report. Maggie Haberman, another New York Times correspondent, also appeared to condemn the delayed revelation, noting that people involved in funding the dossier “lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

When I tried to report this story, Clinton campaign lawyer @marceelias pushed back vigorously, saying “You (or your sources) are wrong.” https://t.co/B5BZwoaNhI

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) October 24, 2017

usion GPS claims that the original purpose of the dossier was simply to discredit Trump by revealing negative information about his past business dealings. However, once the DNC and the Clinton campaign hired them, they retained former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who worked undercover in Moscow for several years. Around the time Steele joined the project, the dossier had narrowed its focus to alleged ties between Trump and Moscow.

The stop-and-start dossier, which has been abandoned by its benefactors no less than three times, eventually grew to 35 pages.

Perkins Coie reported that the Clinton campaign paid them $5.6 million between June 2015 and the end of 2016, while the DNC paid them $3.6 million between November 2015 and the present day. It isn’t known how much of that money was passed on to Fusion GPS to work on the dossier.

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