by WorldTribune Staff, December 11, 2017
The firm that contracted out the discredited, Democrat Party-funded Trump dossier also shopped a story that attempted to link then-candidate Donald Trump to a pedophile with close ties to former President Bill Clinton, a report said.
Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson “pushed the idea of a close relationship” between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting sex from an underage girl, Rowan Scarborough reported for The Washington Times on Dec. 10.
The Trump-Epstein link “appears purely social, far short of Mr. Clinton’s 20-plus plane rides on Epstein’s ‘Lolita Express’ private jet around the globe in the early 2000s,” the report said.
Ken Silverstein, the journalist who wrote a report on the alleged Epstein-Trump link, confirmed to the Washington Times that Fusion GPS had sourced the story.
Silverstein, founder and editor of WashingtonBabylon.com who wrote the story for Vice.com, defended Simpson “as a solid source of information that must first be confirmed,” Scarborough’s report said.
Simpson, “who railed against sleazy opposition research as a reporter, harbored a strong desire to bring down” Trump, the report said.
The New York Times on Jan. 11, 2016 was the first to out Fusion as the source of the Trump dossier that BuzzFeed posted the previous day. BuzzFeed posted the dossier without identifying Fusion or former British spy Christopher Steele.
“The New York Times, I know they work with Fusion,” said Silverstein. “Fusion works with a lot of big media organizations. That would give them influence in Washington.”
“I have worked with them,” he said. “I have gotten tips from them and stories from them. And every time I do, I go out and re-report … because I assume it is for a client and it is not 100 percent accurate. And I’ve never gotten anything from them that was 100 percent accurate. Not because they were slanting or lying or twisting. Every time I’ve gotten something from them, ‘This is a report. You’ve got to check it out.’ I have a great relationship with those guys.”
A journalist who asked not to be identified who has contact with Fusion told the Washington Times that “Fusion has filed a ton of [Freedom of Information Act] requests on Trump, especially in New York.”
The journalist added that, along with pushing the Epstein-Trump story, Fusion shopped a story that a special email server existed between Trump Tower and Moscow’s Alfa bank. The report has failed to catch on.
“Fusion’s cover has been blown,” Scarborough wrote. “It feels the sting of unwanted publicity in both the liberal and conservative press and intense scrutiny from Republicans on Capitol Hill. Senate and House committees demanded that Fusion produce representatives for hours of closed-door testimony.”
Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, signed subpoenas forcing Fusion to disclose who pays it and whom it pays. His investigation unmasked the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party as financiers of the dossier.
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