It's nothing new to find new revelations that Hillary Clinton has a tenuous relationship to the truth, but it is newsworthy when the official government panel tasked with enforcing election laws in the United States slaps fines on her former failed presidential campaign — along with the Democratic National Committee — for their lack of truthfulness during the 2016 campaign.
As Washington Secrets' Paul Bedard scooped on Wednesday, the Federal Election Commission fined Hillary's campaign and the DNC "for lying about the funding of the infamous, and discredited, Russian “dossier” used in a smear attempt against Donald Trump weeks before he shocked the world with his 2016 presidential victory." Specifically, the FEC concluded that "Clinton and the DNC violated strict rules on describing expenditures of payments funneled to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through their law firm."
We already knew Hillary and her cronies within the DNC were duplicitous hacks willing to do anything in their attempts to destroy Donald Trump and limp the former Secretary of State across the finish line, but now it's a matter of official government record for which fines must be paid — but the Clinton campaign and DNC still won't admit they cooked the books in the process of drumming up the Russia hoax.
Secrets learned of the FEC's decision via a memo sent to the Coolidge Reagan foundation that filed a complaint about the dossier some three years ago. The lawyer who filed the complaint, Dan Backer, noted to Bedard that "[t]his may well be the first time that Hillary Clinton — one of the most evidently corrupt politicians in American history — has actually been held legally accountable, and I'm proud to have forced the FEC to do their job for once."
As Bedard writes about the memo that's set to be made public within 30 days:
A combined $1,024,407.97 was paid by the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign to law firm Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s information, and the party and campaign hid the reason, claiming it was for legal services, not opposition research.
Instead, the DNC’s $849,407.97 and the Clinton campaign’s $175,000 covered Fusion GPS’s opposition research on the dossier, a basis for the so-called “Russia hoax” that dogged Trump’s first term.
The memo said that the Clinton campaign and DNC argued that they were correct in describing their payment as for “legal advice and services” because it was Perkins Coie that hired Fusion GPS. But the agency said the law is clear and was violated.
It added that neither the campaign nor the party conceded to lying but won’t contest the finding. “Solely for the purpose of settling this matter expeditiously and to avoid further legal costs, respondent[s] does not concede, but will not further contest the commission's finding of probable cause to proceed” with the probe, said the FEC.
The penalties set to be paid? Peanuts — $8,000 from the treasurer of Clinton's campaign and $105,000 from the DNC's treasurer — compared to the more than one million dollars Perkins Coie was paid for its "work" on the phony dossier. Ultimately, the damage from the phony dossier cooked up at the behest of the Clinton campaign and DNC is already done. The mainstream media will almost certainly ignore this latest revelation in the great unraveling of Hillary Clinton's crooked ways, but conservatives can take some satisfaction in knowing that they were right all along.
Former President Trump responded to the news on Wednesday evening with a statement saying "Wow! Just out that the 2016 Clinton Campaign and the DNC paid the FEC today for violating the law by failing to disclose that their payments for 'legal advice and services' to law firm Perkins Coie was, in fact, a guise to hire numerous companies, all of whom are now named Defendants in my lawsuit, to try and take down and illegally destroy your favorite President, me. This was done to create, as I have stated many times, and is now confirmed, a Hoax funded by the DNC and the Clinton Campaign," Trump added. "This corruption is only beginning to be revealed, is un-American, and must never be allowed to happen again. Where do I go to get my reputation back?"