The involvement of Clinton and the D.N.C. primary, according to a friend of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson.) (As Howard Blum recently reported for Vanity Fair, the funding for the research originally came from a “Never Trump” Republican but not specifically from the war chest of one of Trump’s rivals in the G.O.P. “The memos originated as opposition research, first commissioned by anti-Trump Republicans, and later by Democrats,” Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein wrote. The same day that BuzzFeed published the dossier in its entirety, CNN confirmed much of Corn’s earlier reporting. On many levels, the Post story merely confirms earlier reports about Steele’s backers. Republicans immediately seized on the revelation to cast doubt on the validity of the ongoing Justice Department probe into whether the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election-an investigation that was fueled, at least in part, by Steele’s reporting. On Tuesday night, The Washington Post put at least one of those questions to rest, reporting that it was, in fact, the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee that had bankrolled the research effort. Corn did not name either the Republican or Democratic client. ![]() As he began to look closer at Trump’s businesses and connections to the Russian government, he said, he grew increasingly alarmed, which eventually led him to bring his findings to the F.B.I. Steele (then identified only as a “former Western intelligence officer”) took over the project after its financing switched to a Democrat. ![]() firm (later identified as Fusion GPS) financed by a Republican. Ten days before Trump’s inauguration, BuzzFeed News published the document, compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, raising questions about the veracity of its wilder claims, as well as speculation about who had funded Steele’s opposition research, and why.Īs David Corn, who first reported on the dossier, wrote for Mother Jones in October 2016, the project originally began as opposition research by a U.S. “That’s something that may have influenced some people.For weeks after the election, rumors swirled in Washington about the existence of an intelligence dossier that contained a series of explosive, salacious, and partially unsubstantiated claims about president-elect Donald Trump, including allegations that the Russian government had been “cultivating, supporting, and assisting” him for years. “Voters should have had that information,” she said. “From my perspective, it didn’t come out before the election … and the American people didn’t even know the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign for connections with Russia starting in 2016,” Clinton said. Read: Hillary Clinton: Women Who Support Trump Are ‘Publicly Disrespecting Themselves’ At the same time, she expressed frustration about the nondisclosure of other information about Trump: that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia. While Clinton defended Elias’ decision to support the research, she pointed out that her campaign chose not to publicize it before the election. (The Beacon maintains that none of the work it funded ended up in the dossier.) Clinton explained to Noah that it was at that point that her campaign became involved, after Fusion GPS approached her campaign lawyer, Marc Elias, about the effort. When Trump received the Republican Party’s nomination, however, it ceased funding the research. Indeed, The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet funded in part by GOP donor Paul Singer, disclosed late last week that during the 2016 presidential primary it retained research firm Fusion GPS-which would later produce the dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele-to dig up information about then-candidate Trump. ![]() Read: Billionaire Tom Steyer’s Petition to Impeach Trump Has Collected Over 1 Million Signatures She explained that while her campaign ultimately funded some of the research, it was initially backed by a Republican donor during the Republican primary. In her conversation with Noah, Clinton defended her involement, making a point to distinguish between her campaign’s funding of the research and the alleged efforts of the Trump campaign “to influence the election” with the help of the Russians. ![]() The former presidential candidate spoke to Trevor Noah on The Daily Show on Wednesday, days after news emerged that her campaign and the Democratic National Committee had helped pay for the dossier, a document that describes salacious ties between the Trump camp and the Russian government.
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