The money behind the dossier on Trump and Russia has been one hotly contested point this year, particularly in the last few weeks after the President tweeted about it. The House and Senate committees have been pursuing the information all year, along with a lot of other info on the dossier.
A lot of various monies have been implicated, including to a small extent the FBI and to a very large and reliable extent the DNC and the Clinton campaign. But some press has reported that a GOP source kicked the whole thing off doing oppo research on Trump. Variously, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio have been subjects of speculation.
But tonight (Friday) we appear to have an answer. It was all started by a conservative publication: The Washington Free Beacon.
Lawyers for the conservative publication Washington Free Beacon informed the House Intelligence Committee Friday that the organization was the original funder for the anti-Trump opposition research project with Fusion GPS.
Lawyers for the conservative publication Washington Free Beacon informed the House Intelligence Committee Friday that the organization was the original funder for the anti-Trump opposition research project with Fusion GPS.
The Free Beacon funded the project from the fall of 2015 through the spring of 2016, whereupon it withdrew funding and the project was picked up by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
The original arrangement between the Free Beacon and Fusion GPS involved opposition research into multiple Republican candidates, not just front-runner Donald Trump.
Sources close to the Free Beacon stress that the project, when the Free Beacon funded it, had nothing to do with Russia and did not involve Christopher Steele, the former British spy who gathered anti-Trump dirt in Russia. Steele was retained by Fusion GPS when the project was funded by Democrats, and not in its initial phase, when the Free Beacon was involved.
Wow. Caveats here, of course, include that their period of engagement with Fusion was prior to the involvement of Steele, and that when they were getting the oppo research (as media tends to do … to Republicans) it was not Russia based or even Trump exclusive. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the source. It was the funding of the oppo that lead inexorably to the publication of the dossier.
Here is the Free Beacon’s statement.
Since its launch in February of 2012, the Washington Free Beacon has retained third party firms to conduct research on many individuals and institutions of interest to us and our readers. In that capacity, during the 2016 election cycle we retained Fusion GPS to provide research on multiple candidates in the Republican presidential primary, just as we retained other firms to assist in our research into Hillary Clinton. All of the work that Fusion GPS provided to the Free Beacon was based on public sources, and none of the work product that the Free Beacon received appears in the Steele dossier. The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele. Nor did we have any knowledge of the relationship between Fusion GPS and the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and the Clinton campaign.
Representatives of the Free Beacon approached the House Intelligence Committee today and offered to answer what questions we can in their ongoing probe of Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier. But to be clear: We stand by our reporting, and we do not apologize for our methods. We consider it our duty to report verifiable information, not falsehoods or slander, and we believe that commitment has been well demonstrated by the quality of the journalism that we produce. The First Amendment guarantees our right to engage in news-gathering as we see fit, and we intend to continue doing just that as we have since the day we launched this project.
Matthew Continetti
Editor in ChiefMichael Goldfarb
Chairman
Stay tuned. The updates to the dossier story are coming a mile a minute this week.