by WorldTribune Staff, June 25, 2017
Fusion GPS, the firm which financed the discredited “dossier” by a former British spy that fueled the investigations into alleged Trump-Russia collusion, is packed with Democrats who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, a report said.
Fusion GPS describes itself as a “research and strategic intelligence firm” founded by “three former Wall Street Journal investigative reporters,” author Paul Sperry wrote for the New York Post on June 24.
A congressional source familiar with a Senate investigation into the Christopher Steele dossier, said that “these weren’t mercenaries or hired guns. These guys (at Fusion GPS) had a vested personal and ideological interest in smearing Trump and boosting Hillary’s chances of winning the White House.”
Fusion GPS “was on the payroll of an unidentified Democratic ally of Clinton” when it hired Steele “to dig up dirt on Trump,” wrote Sperry, author of “Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington”.
Sperry noted that, in 2012, “Democrats hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. And in 2015, Democrat ally Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to investigate pro-life activists protesting the abortion group.”
Federal records show “a key co-founder and partner in the firm was a Hillary Clinton donor and supporter of her presidential campaign,” Sperry wrote.
In September 2016, while Fusion GPS “was quietly shopping the dirty dossier on Trump around Washington, its co-founder and partner Peter R. Fritsch contributed at least $1,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and the Hillary For America campaign, Federal Election Commission data show. His wife also donated money to Hillary’s campaign.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month threatened to subpoena Fusion GPS after it refused to answer questions and provide records to the panel identifying who financed the dossier.
The committee is also investigating whether the FBI wrongly relied on the anti-Trump dossier and its author, Christopher Steele to aid its ongoing espionage investigation into the Trump campaign and its alleged ties to Moscow.
The FBI received a copy of the Democrat-funded dossier in August and is said to have contracted in October to pay Steele $50,000 to help corroborate the dirt on Trump – a relationship that “raises substantial questions about the independence” of the bureau in investigating Trump, warned Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican.
Sperry noted that Senate investigators “are demanding to see records of communications” between Fusion GPS and the FBI and the Justice Department, including any contacts with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, “now under congressional investigation for possibly obstructing the Hillary Clinton email probe, and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who is under investigation by the Senate and the Justice inspector general for failing to recuse himself despite financial and political connections to the Clinton campaign through his Democrat activist wife.”
Senate investigators have singled out McCabe as the FBI official who negotiated with Steele.
“Never mind that none of the rumors were backed by evidence or even credible sourcing (don’t bother trying to confirm his bed-wetting yarn, Steele advised, as ‘all direct witnesses have been silenced’). Steele reinforced his paying customers’ worst fears about Trump, and they rewarded him for it with a whopping $250,000 in payments,” Sperry wrote.
But it’s now clear Steele’s “intelligence reports,” which together run more than 35-pages long, “were for the most part worthless,” Sperry wrote. “And the clients who paid Fusion GPS (which claims to go ‘beyond standard due diligence’) for them got taken to the cleaners.”
Sperry questioned why “anyone would take anything in the sketchy report seriously,” but noted that “even the CIA gave it credence.”
The dossier ended up attached to a Top Secret intelligence briefing on Russia for President Obama, even though his intelligence czar last month testified “we couldn’t corroborate the sourcing.”
The FBI, moreover, has been using it for investigative leads on Trump associates like Carter Page, even though former FBI Director James Comey this month described the dossier as “salacious and unverified.”
Democratic leaders in Congress continue to refer to the dossier “to cook up more charges against Trump, while liberal media continue to use it as a road map to find ‘scoops’ on Trump in the ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy they’re peddling,” Sperry wrote.
Democrats are “still hoping against hope that the central thrust of the report – that Trump entered into an unholy alliance with the Russian government during the election – will one day prove true and bring about the downfall of his presidency.”
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