Well, the secret is out: The Hillary Clinton campaign, along with the Democratic National Committee, funded the unverified Trump dossier. Clinton and DNC lawyer Marc Elias hired research firm Fusion GPS, who then retained the services of former MI6 operative Christopher Steele to gather information on Trump from sources within the Kremlin. Former Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon took to social media when the news was revealed last week, noting that he would have helped Steele gather information and held a James Comey-style press conference, like the one the ex-FBI director held during the Hillary email probe, to unveil its contents.
Many have noted that paying money to hire a firm that uses an ex-spy to gather information on one’s political opponent from foreign sources is textbook collusion. Also, last week, Fallon, putting on his campaign spokesperson hat tried to say that the hiring of Fusion GPS by the Clinton campaign was different from Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting in June of 2016 with members supposedly speaking on behalf of the Russian government.
CNN’s Poppy Harlow, who has been know to push back against unsubstantiated claims spewed by liberals on her show, threw Fallon’s words back at him (via NTK Network) [emphasis mine]:
“In July, to our colleague Anderson Cooper, you said, ‘There’s a difference between going out and hiring opposition firms that work in the United States of America and going on and soliciting information from a foreign national,'” she said. Harlow pointed out that Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, “was a foreign national.”
Fallon called Steele’s job “akin to counterintelligence work,” and argued that the FBI had asked Steele for the same research.
Yeah—that’s what happened here. And the Democrats and the Clinton campaign bankrolled it. Now, Fallon admits that someone within the campaign must have known about the payments, which so far a lot of fellow party members have taken the Sgt. Schultz ‘I know nothing’ approach; a position that doesn’t seem to believable at all since millions were earmarked for the project.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Fallon about this, who deflected by saying that the millions of dollars that were doled out to Perkin Coie, the law firm where Elias is a partner, were spent on other things (i.e. FEC compliance), not just the dossier operations. Yet, he added that while he wasn’t part of the conversations that led to Fusion GPS being hired by Democrats in April of 2016, surely someone had to have know and green lit the operation, which Fallon conceded.
So, we have another admission that Democrats funded this effort, there is a paper trail, and there is a money trail to point to the possibility that the Democrats may have colluded with Russia to try and sink Trump with this dossier, which by the way no other outlet, save for Buzzfeed, published because there was no way to verify the contents. This whole affair involved a former British spy using foreign sources to collect information to try and sink the candidacy of Donald Trump subsidized by the Democrats. This isn’t stateside, nor was it from public sources. The point is if the GOP actually did this, the Red Scare would erupt in the media. It’s par for the course concerning double standards, but there is more to suggest Hillary colluded with the Russians than Trump, which is ironic in the extreme. With Trump, it’s been months and there is still no solid evidence of collusion. With Clinton, there are records.Oh, and speaking on FEC compliance:
It is against the law for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to funnel millions of dollars to a British spy and to Russian sources in order to obtain the infamous and discredited Trump “dossier.” The Federal Election Campaign Act (52 USC 30101) prohibits foreign nationals and governments from giving or receiving money in U.S. campaigns. It also prohibits the filing of false or misleading campaign reports to hide the true purpose of the money (52 USC 30121). This is what Clinton and the DNC appear to have done.
Most often the penalty for violating this law is a fine, but in egregious cases, like this one, criminal prosecutions have been sought and convictions obtained. In this sense, it could be said that Hillary Clinton is the one who was conspiring with the Russians by breaking campaign finance laws with impunity.
Oh my.
Kendra Arnold, the executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, was blunt when describing the Clinton campaign’s behavior, saying the Hillary crew knew what they were doing the whole time.
“Despite denying their knowledge or involvement, the Clinton campaign and the DNC knew exactly what they were doing--blatantly violating campaign finance laws so their fingerprints wouldn’t be on a fictitious report to smear then candidate Trump. Our disclosure laws exist to maintain transparency and the integrity of our electoral process,” said Arnold. “This violation also raises even more troubling questions in terms of how this now discredited report is impacting the broader probe into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election.”