https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/us/politics/trump-dossier-paul-singer.html?_r=0
WASHINGTON — The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by a major Republican donor, was the first to hire the firm that conducted opposition research on Donald J. Trump — including a salacious dossier describing ties between Mr. Trump and the Russian government — website representatives told the House Intelligence Committee on Friday.
According to people briefed on the conversation, the website hired the firm, Fusion GPS, in October 2015 to unearth damaging information about several Republican presidential candidates, including Mr. Trump. But The Free Beacon told the firm to stop doing research on Mr. Trump in May 2016, as Mr. Trump was clinching the Republican nomination.
In April 2016, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee also retained Fusion GPS to research any possible connections between Mr. Trump, his businesses, his campaign team and Russia. Working for them, Fusion GPS retained a respected former British spy named Christopher Steele.
It will be interesting to see Steele's contract with Fusion and the contacts between WFB/Fusion and Clinton/DNC/Fusion.
Overlap between April when the Clinton campaign started with Fusion GPS, and May when WFB reportedly dropped their research. So, to say that the Clinton campaign “picked up” the WFB research is misleading in more ways than one. When did WFB agree to provide the research they’d contracted to the Clinton campaign, and did money change hands? I can’t imagine they just gave it away, not with the Clinton campaign already paying Fusion GPS for research.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/us/politics/trump-dossier-paul-singer.html?_r=0
According to people briefed on the conversation, the website hired the firm, Fusion GPS, in October 2015 to unearth damaging information about several Republican presidential candidates, including Mr. Trump. But The Free Beacon told the firm to stop doing research on Mr. Trump in May 2016, as Mr. Trump was clinching the Republican nomination.
The company that created a discredited dossier for President Trump’s campaign rivals and was later used by the FBI in its probe of possible links between Trump and Russia has its own Kremlin connection, according to a powerful U.S. Senator.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to launch an investigation into Washington-based Fusion GPS, which produced the 35-page Trump dossier with help from ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Grassley wants to know why the FBI might seek evidence tying Trump to Russia from a firm whose own hands may not be clean.
“The issue is of particular concern to the Senate Judiciary Committee given that when Fusion GPS reportedly was acting as an unregistered agent of Russian interests, it appears to have been simultaneously overseeing the creation of the unsubstantiated dossier of allegations of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians,” Grassley said in a letter to the Department of Justice.
The dossier, containing salacious allegations pointing to collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow, was leaked to the media in January, prompting Trump to deny its contents. It later emerged that the FBI had hired Steele to dig into Trump’s purported Russia links even as Russian operatives hired Fusion GPS for a separate high profile political battle.
According to a complaint filed with the Justice Department, Fusion GPS headed the pro-Russia campaign to kill the Global Magnitsky Act, which imposes sanctions on Russians designated as human rights abusers. This was the same time, Grassley said, that the FBI was relying on the anti-Trump dossier and the man who produced it for Fusion to further its investigation into Trump and his Russian ties.
It is “unclear whether the FBI was aware of the company’s pro-Russia activities” when the FBI reportedly hired its researcher to further the research on Trump and “…when evaluating the credibility of the dossier the company helped create,” Grassley said.
The Global Magnitsky Act, which is named for an attorney who died while in the custody of the Russian government after he accused the Russian government and organized crime of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from Hermitage Capital Management.
The U.S. Justice Department in 2013 opened a case against the Russian-owned Prevezon Holdings, which had purchased real estate in New York with the stolen funds, according to the Justice Department’s complaint.
Prevezon Holdings, backed by the Kremlin, launched a campaign to undermine the Magnitsky Act, Grassley said, citing a 2016 complaint by Hermitage CEO William Browder.
Fusion GPS was hired to generate negative press coverage on the Russians’ behalf, Grassley said. And Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian immigrant who has reportedly acknowledged being a Russian counterintelligence officer, lobbied congressional staffers to repeal the Magnitsky Act itself, Grassley said.
“It is particularly disturbing that Mr. Akhmetshin and Fusion GPS were working together on this pro-Russia lobbying effort in 2016 in light of Mr. Akhmetshin’s history and reputation,” Grassley said, citing reports Akhmetshin worked for the GRU, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency and allegedly specializes in “subversive political influence operations often involving disinformation and propaganda.”
The relationship between Fusion GPS and Akhmetshin casts further doubt on the dossier used against Trump, Grassley said.