During the Republican presidential primary, an unknown Republican “client” funded Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research on Trump, The Washington Post reports.Trump at that time was still seeking the Republican nomination for the 2016 presidential election.
WASHINGTON – Bill Browder, a witness before a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, reaffirmed his testimony regarding Russian funding of a public influence campaign by Fusion GPS following a Washington Post “Fact Checker” article that contradicted his earlier testimony by claiming, “…there is no evidence Fusion took money from the Russian government."
On Nov. 1, 2016, according to the documents, the FBI told Steele it was unlikely to continue working with him, and he should not "obtain any intelligence whatsoever on behalf of the FBI."
Hillary Clinton paid for the Steele dossier and then "filled it with rubbish contents," according to Northeastern University Associate Professor Max Abrahms. In 2016, former MI6 agent Christopher ...
A conservative nonprofit has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Hillary Clinton campaign of violating election laws when it paid British citizen Christopher Steele to gather Kremlin-provided ...
The Democrats paid for research, including by Fusion GPS, because of concerns that little was known about Trump and his business interests, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Fusion GPS’s work researching Trump began during the Republican presidential primaries, when the GOP donor paid for the firm to investigate the real estate magnate’s background. Fusion GPS did not start off looking at Trump’s Russia ties but quickly realized that those relationships were extensive, according to the people familiar with the matter. ...
Steele previously worked in Russia for British intelligence. The dossier is a compilation of reports he prepared for Fusion GPS. The dossier alleged that the Russian government collected compromising information about Trump and that the Kremlin was engaged in an effort to assist his campaign for president.
After the election, the FBI agreed to pay Steele to continue gathering intelligence about Trump and Russia, but the bureau pulled out of the arrangement after Steele was publicly identified in news reports. The dossier was published by BuzzFeed News in January.
The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.
Those people said that it is standard practice for political campaigns to use law firms to hire outside researchers to ensure their work is protected by attorney-client and work-product privileges.
Former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele compiled the dossier on President Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. (Victoria Jones/AP) Fusion GPS gave Steele’s reports and other research documents to Elias, the people familiar with the matter said. It is unclear how or how much of that information was shared with the campaign and ...
Continetti and Goldfarb denied that the Free Beacon "had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele, " the former British spy who compiled the now-infamous Trump-Russia dossier. The file, which was published by BuzzFeed in January, contained unverified and lurid allegations about dirt the Russians had on then-candidate Donald Trump and his campaign’s possible connections to Moscow.
The Washington Free Beacon was initially founded as a project of the conservative nonprofit group Center for American Freedom, as an alternative to liberal news sites run by progressive nonprofits.
Filed by Fridman, Aven, and Khan. In October 2017, Fridman, Aven, and Khan filed a libel suit against Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson for circulating the dossier among journalists and allowing it to be published. The lawsuit was continuing as of October 2020.
On October 18, 2017, the House Intelligence Committee held a private meeting with two executives of Fusion GPS, Peter Fritsch, and Thomas Catan. The purpose was to seek information about their creation of "the opposition-research dossier that makes salacious claims about President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.".
On October 18, 2016, the appellate court disqualified BakerHostetler from the case because they had represented Bill Browder ’s hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management for nine months from 2008 to 2009 when the U.S. Justice Department was investigating a tax fraud scheme in Russia involving "co-opted Hermitage portfolio companies". The U.S. Justice Department had argued that Hermitage Capital was a victim of the tax fraud and that BakerHofstetler's prior work on behalf of Hermitage Capital created a conflict of interest. As part of their litigation support for BakerHostetler and their client Prevezon, Fusion GPS investigated Browder, a witness central to the U.S. Justice Department's case.
law]". The US Global Magnitsky Act (not to be confused with the Magnitsky Act) is a human rights law passed on December 23, 2016. It is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer and auditor working for Browder who died in a Russian prison after uncovering a corruption scheme that he was then charged with having helped concoct.
In August 2015, Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to defensively investigate the veracity of a series of undercover videos released by anti-abortion activists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt from The Center for Medical Progress that they claim showed Planned Parenthood officials agreeing to sell fetal tissues obtained through abortions to medical researchers. Fusion GPS hired video and transcription experts to analyze the videos and summarized the findings in a forensic report. The report claimed that the "unedited" videos posted by activists had been "heavily edited". The anti-abortion activists attributed the gaps to "bathroom breaks and waiting periods." The report was provided to U.S. congressional leadership as evidence as they were considering funding and other issues related to Planned Parenthood operations.
On January 9, 2018, Michael Cohen sued BuzzFeed and Fusion GPS for defamation over allegations about him in the dossier. On April 19, 2018, ten days after his home, office and hotel room were raided by the FBI as part of a criminal investigation, Cohen filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss the suit.
On October 23, 2017, Fusion GPS filed for a court injunction against Nunes' subpoena seeking the firm's bank records for a period of more than two years, arguing it would damage and possibly destroy the business as well as violate their First Amendment rights.
The Washington Post reported this week — and Fox News confirmed — that the political consulting firm Fusion GPS was retained last year by Marc E. Elias, an attorney representing the DNC and the Clinton campaign. The firm then hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to write the now-infamous dossier.
The Clinton campaign reportedly paid the law firm nearly $6 million from June 2015 to December 2016, while the DNC paid $3.6 million , though it’s unclear how much money went to Fusion GPS. Responding to the revelations, Clinton’s former campaign spokesman Brian Fallon compared the project to the kind of “oppo research” that “happens on every ...
The controversial dossier contained unverified and lurid allegations about dirt the Russians had on Trump and his campaign’s possible connections to Moscow.
It’s unclear what Hillary Clinton may have known about the research, though Fallon said he didn’t know at the time. “I personally wasn’t aware of this during the campaign,” Fallon said in a statement, adding: “The first I learned of Christopher Steele or saw any dossier was after the election.
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Wednesday slammed Democrats for not being more concerned about Russia’s role in the dossier.
Responding to the controversy, a DNC official stressed that current Chairman “Tom Perez and the new leadership of the DNC were not involved in any decision-making regarding Fusion GPS, nor were they aware that Perkins Coie was working with the organization.”
The revelation that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund a salacious anti-Trump dossier last year is raising new legal questions for the Clinton team — with a watchdog group filing a formal complaint alleging they hid the payments from public view.