Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund a political research firm that produced a dossier of allegations about President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.
That’s according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke Tuesday evening to The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential client matters.
The person says the arrangement, first reported by The Washington Post, was coordinated by a lawyer for the campaign and the DNC and his law firm. That lawyer, Marc Elias, did not immediately return an email seeking comment Tuesday.
The person says the political research firm, Fusion GPS, had approached Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, about doing continued research into Trump’s international business connections.
Representatives for Fusion GPS declined to comment.
The Washington Post broke the story: Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.
After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the firm in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPS’s research into Trump was funded by a still unknown Republican client during the GOP primary.
(AP)
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10 Responses
Yes, I think it’s called opposition research when you pay money to someone to dig up dirt on your opponent. It doesn’t seem that anyone is accusing these DNC, etc of making up the dirt, but only of paying a firm money to find it. Sounds like they would have to be silly not to do this.
1.please explain if this is truly illegal.
2.do not start any article about Hilary-unless one that says she is indicted – as being explosive.She had gotten away with so much worse and so many probes against her simply stop.It’s clear that small change like this added to her Capone-like file will go nowhere in a hurry.
Trump Jr. Did the same when he was trying to dig up dit on Hillary. This is politics 101. Nothe sure why this is shocking.
What else is new? but she gets away with everything!!!
certainly NO surprise to me….
I don’t see what was illegal about the arrangement per se (unless Fusion GPS used legally qeustionable methods in obtaining information) but the point seems to be about openess and transparency. The implication is that the entire campaign against Trump is not based on real evidence (which would be why the original Republican sponsor of the investigation discontinued the waste of money) but engineered on shadowy innuendo and partisan spin on publicized information.
It seems that the reason this is making the news again (it was already reported previously) is because a Federal judge has ordered the bank to release, no later than Friday, the financial records of those involved in this matter. And the question presents itself as to why are all these entities fighting so hard to block the release (behind-the-scenes machinations have been reliably reported) of the records if they have nothing to hide. So the very act of hiding something makes it suspicious.
Much ado about nothing here. The trump gang may be involved in treason with the Russians.
When FBI, CIA and NSA worked together with DNC and Hillary campaign on “Opposition Research” against a political opponent and then Presedent Elect, it is called a political coup and Government tyranny.
rt, you are out of date: the latest buzz is that Trump is a Nazi not a Russian spy, you are probably recycling an old fake news.