[THECONSERVATIVETREEHOUSE] What a tangled web is weaved…. Hillary Clinton paid her lawyers at Perkins Coie for opposition research on candidate Donald Trump. In turn Perkins Coie paid Fusion GPS to gather information. Fusion GPS paid Christopher Steele to write the “Russian Dossier”.
The FBI also paid Christopher Steele. Additionally, prior evidence surfaced suggesting the FBI used the dossier to get FISA warrants against the Trump campaign. And NOW we discover that Fusion GPS paid journalists and five media companies to participate.
Oh, if this ain’t just sketchy as all hell:
WASHINGTON – Newly filed court documents confirm that Fusion GPS, the company mostly responsible for the controversial “Trump dossier” on presidential candidate Donald Trump, made payments to three journalists between June 2016 until February 2017.
The revelation could be a breakthrough for House Republicans, who are exploring whether Fusion GPS used the dossier, which was later criticized for having inaccurate information on Trump, to feed anti-Trump stories to the press during and after the presidential campaign. The three journalists who were paid by Fusion GPS are known to have reported on “Russia issues relevant to [the committee’s] investigation,” the House Intelligence Committee said in a court filing.
But the recipients’ names, the amounts, and purposes of those payments were either redacted from the documents that Fusion GPS filed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia or were not disclosed.
Fusion has asked the court to issue a restraining order against the House committee, which is demanding documents from the company that, among other things, explain the payments it made to reporters. Most of the documents sought are banking records.
One of the documents filed by the company this week was an affidavit from one of Fusion GPS’s co-founders, Peter Fritsch. That affidavit said, in part, “[The House Intelligence Committee] has also demanded records related to transactions between Fusion GPS and certain journalists — i.e., Request Nos. 66, 68-69, 107-112. Those requested records involve transactions that are not pertinent to work related to Russia or Donald Trump.” (read more)
Things could get a whole lot more interesting if Kimberley Strassel is correct in her research and analysis of how the Clinton Campaign paid for the creation of the “Steele Dossier”, pushed it to the FBI, and then used their influence to generate media coverage of it. There’s a lot more questions to be asked; a lot more. |
The FBI also paid Christopher Steele. Additionally, prior evidence surfaced suggesting the FBI used the dossier to get FISA warrants against the Trump campaign. And NOW we discover that Fusion GPS paid journalists and five media companies to participate.