Posted on 11/05/2017 9:42:35 AM PST by markomalley
As if on cue, the work has begun to rehabilitate Fusion GPS’s image and normalize its dossier and its behavior. Axios wrote that this is all really normal, and that Glenn Simpson and others at Fusion GPS, many of whom are former senior Wall Street Journal reporters and editors, are just good old regular gumshoe ink-stained, unhappy people trying to make a living.
Last week, Hillary Clinton went on the Daily Show to “explain” that it really was just opposition research. To be clear, there is neither anything normal about Fusion GPS dossier nor the way the firm goes about its business.
The left’s talking points that the dossier was just opposition research and everyone does this in politics state the obvious: yes, opposition research is part of campaigns. It’s just that Fusion GPS’ dossier was not opposition research. Opposition research is based on fact, from voting records, court records, and public statements, to tax returns and business relationships.
Fusion GPS’s dossier on the other hand was misinformation, because it was not opposition, research business-as-usual because it was not based in fact. According to multiple media reports: beyond an alphabet soup of unnamed Russian intelligence sources and spreading hearsay, the material is largely drawn from news clips and Google internet search materials and left-wing conspiracy sites. Given Fusion GPS’s dependence on Russian gossip spread by Vladimir Putin’s spies, there is a good case to be made that Fusion GPS more deeply colluded with the Russians than anyone else.
This isn't the first time Fusion GPS or its partners have been accused of using fictional misinformation. A decade ago, Simpson and company compiled a dossier for a sheik in the U.A.E. who toppled his uncle for the throne.
Also, Fusion GPS reportedly spread propaganda in support of the Maduro regime in Venezuela for clients like the Derwick and Associates, a group of Venezuelan businessmen who have deeply questionable business practices, and let’s not forget Fusion’s work for Planned Parenthood to discredit David Daleiden and his Center for Medical Progress (CMP). In every case, little of what Fusion GPS proffered was accurate or based on fact, but all of it was used by pliant media, more often than not friends from Simpson & Co.’s days in legitimate journalism.
What else is not normal? Marc Elias, the lawyer for the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee lying about any involvement with the dossier for more than a year, with great sanctimony as the New York Times points it out.
If it were normal opposition research, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, no need to lie about it, unless you know the work product is highly questionable and might actually raise questions as to why the Clinton campaign and the DNC were funding the spread of Kremlin-sourced misinformation.
Also not normal: the hiring of a foreign national, Christopher Steele, a former MI6 agent, who readily admits he sought former contacts from his days working the Russia beat for Great Britain.
Curiously, however, Steele file documents this spring in British court stating that the Trump dossier was never to have been made public. Again, not “normal” for opposition research; the point is to make such information public, bringing facts from the past to remind people what someone said or did.
There are Federal Election Commission (FEC) regulations on such matters, requiring financial disclosure for campaign research, accuracy of public statements in political ads and materials. Neither the Clinton campaign nor the DNC disclosed any of the work Fusion GPS undertook on their behalf, and there are now FEC complaints filed on the matter.
But in the end, the Fusion GPS dossier was not about playing fair or exposing the truth. It was the exact the opposite. If this was “normal,” why did two Fusion GPS partners plead the 5th to every question asked of them by the House Intelligence Committee?
Perhaps that’s why the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which had the dossier long before it was known to exist publicly and used the dossier to launch its “Russian collusion” investigation, continues to block the testimony of two agents who used the document for such ends.
Maybe that’s why Hillary Clinton, her campaign chief, John Podesta, and her one-time head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, have all become regular old Sergeant Schultzes when asked about their knowledge of the dossier’s creation and dissemination.
In the past, the media and reporters would never have accepted such statements as truthful: Watergate, Abscam, Whitewater, the Bill Clinton campaign’s acceptance of foreign campaign cash.
Yet, the media appears more than willing to accept that senior people people on a presidential campaign, including the candidate herself who made much of her “hands on” campaign management, and the man who wrote the checks, were unaware that upwards of $12 million was going out the door for unspecified reasons? They're either incompetent or their lying, given the results of the election and what we now know about Fusion GPS, perhaps just incompetent liars.
And is where the other part of this sordid tale stalls out. Because the media simply doesn’t want to dwell on its own role in this debacle. It’s now clear that for more than a year, the media was played. Played by the Clinton campaign. Played by Fusion GPS. Played by Putin’s minions. Sure, there were the likes of David Corn, a leftist shill who was ready, willing, and able of spreading Fusion GPS’s agitprop.
But he’s an inconsequential puppet by comparison. No, the Washington Post, the New York Times, all of the TV networks and cable news channels bit hard on this scam. They treated Fusion GPS’s work as legitimate, never doubling checking or even simply checking whether anything in it were true.
The press who were facilitators of a great hoax that the duly elected president of the United States was a Putin puppet and traitor to his country. They took a Kremlin-sourced dossier, funded by the Democrat Party, legitimized by the Obama Administration, spoon fed to them by Fusion, and put it on steroids because it fit their worldview, not because it was based on facts.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has been spending months peeling back the rotten onion that is Fusion GPS, and still has more work to be done. It appears that Robert Mueller, likewise, is no digging into the Fusion GPS mess.
The FEC will take up the complaints against the Clinton campaign’s spending. Here’s hoping the Department of Justice begins to take up the cause, as well. But more troubling than the facts as we know them today would indicate is that not a single journalistic enterprise has admitted its error in judgement. There is no hand wringing over a year of rumor mongering and playing party to perhaps the greatest Russian misinformation campaign ever undertaken.
The media is hoping their efforts serving as nothing more than Democrat Party operatives will go the way of other embarrassing stories they played party to. But we cannot allow that to happen. We want a free press in America. But we also need an honest press that is accountable and that can be trusted and we need one now more than ever based on what we’ve seen over the last year. Until we get to the truth about Fusion GPS and its dossier, the jury is still out on that one.
Mr. Mueller as head of the FBI at the time, did you inform the Congress about U1 in a timely matter?
Could it be that there’s enough pressure now that they need to allow a scandal, but it has to be a scandal that doesn’t touch the magic knee-grow so it’s going to be Hillary’s turn in the barrel, again.
She knuckled under in 2008 and uncharacteristically bit her tongue, gained control of the mechanism by which she was beaten then and she’s not going to shut up about anything now. She was denied her turn and dammit she’s getting too old now, somebody’s going to pay. That witch ain’t going down without taking them down with her.
I’d like to taste her tears.
>>Last week, Hillary Clinton went on the Daily Show to “explain”
Will she next be appearing on Saturday Night Live and Hollywood Squares?
TDS is fake news serving the Democrat Party.
The press who were facilitators of a great hoax that the duly elected president of the United States was a Putin puppet and traitor to his country. They took a Kremlin-sourced dossier, funded by the Democrat Party, legitimized by the Obama Administration, spoon fed to them by Fusion, and put it on steroids because it fit their worldview, not because it was based on facts. <<
Pretty well sums it up.....Just watch the MSM now....It’s still ongoing!!!
#FakeNews
The Fusion GPS dossier is an almost classic instance of disinformation, gathered not from an actual chain of events, but a sort of alternative-universe interpretation of some events that may have actually happened, but given a wholly pernicious explanation with only a specious plausibility.
Sophistry on a grand scale.
They taste like urine, farts and cabbage.
Or so I hear.
OK, I felt a little nauseated when I wrote that post in the first place but your reply prompted a full fledged vurp.
:)
Most of the Russia dosser was disinformation supplied by the Russian FSB to fusion GPS. It was literally paying for foreign propaganda against a domestic candidate.
Magic Knee-Grow?
Are you incapable of attacking evil without throwing in your own racism?
Or are you here just to make the rest of us look racist?
“I’d like to taste her tears.”
Eww, no thanks. Hear they wreak of cabbage and farts.
The Hill does have some conservative writers, but it is far outnumbered by the liberal writers for sure.
The author of this piece, Ned Ryun, is a former presidential writer for George W. Bush. He & his fathers have really screwed the pooch as of late.
Russia is a real country.
Donald J. Trump is the president.
Voila. Verified mostly true.
This was a classic disinformation campaign right out of the KGB handbook. This was done with Hillary’s collusion. This was done with DNC money, Obama money and Hillary campaign money. It should also be noted that Hillary’s campaign had total control of all DNC finances and personnel. Hillary owns this.
Putin wanted Hillary to win as she was compromised via the Uranium One payoff to the Clinton Foundation and Bills speaking fees. Putin owned Hillary!
The managers of Fusion GPS took the fifth. It is their right to take the fifth. If I was a criminal I sure as hell would take the fifth.
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