The world already knows how deeply involved the Washington consulting firm Fusion GPS was in the creation of the so-called “dossier” that made “salacious,” and incidentally unverified, claims about then-candidate Donald Trump.
After all, it hired Michael Steele, the British ex-spy who consulted with his Russian sources and likely wrote up most of the claims.
It was being paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign to find the political “dirt” on Trump.
And the world knows the same company was all-in for the defense of Planned Parenthood, which was caught on undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress of officials talking about their lucrative trade in selling unborn baby body parts.
Now, the Daily Caller is reporting a new book is claiming Barack Obama also hired the company to dig up dirt on Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential candidate.
“The Obama campaign hid its payments to Fusion GPS through its law firm, Perkins Coie. The arrangement is similar to the one that the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee used to pay Fusion for its investigation of then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016,” the report said.
The Clinton contract “led to the creation of the infamous Steele dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele,” the DC reported.
It is “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on American and Donald Trump’s Election” by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, that makes the allegation.
“In 2012, Fusion GPS was hired to do opposition research on Mitt Romney for Barack Obama’s reelection campaign,” the book explains.
The authors are veteran reporters who met during the 2016 campaign with Steele and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson.
Rush Limbaugh noted on his broadcast Tuesday, “If you keep looking … you’re gonna end up at the Obama White House as the origin point for all of this.”
The DC report explained, “‘As had become standard practice in the shadowy world of ‘oppo’ research, the Obama campaign’s payments to Fusion GPS were never publicly disclosed; the money paid to the investigative firm was reported on campaign disclosure reports as legal bills to the campaign’s law firm, Perkins Coie,’ the book reads.”
The report said the Obama for America team paid Perkins Coie some $3 million during that election cycle, federal reports reveal, mostly for “legal services.”
So the Caller said it was not clear how much was paid for research on Romney.
During the 2016 election cycle, the report said, Perkins Coie got some $12 million from the Clinton campaign and DNC, and Fusion GPS was paid just over $1 million for its “research” on Trump.
That company paid Steele not even $178,000 for his work.
It was WND columnist Jack Cashill who described how GPS became “something of an open book” with the release of the congressional Nunes memo describing the weakness of evidenced used in Washington to obtain permission to spy on the Trump campaign.
Among the documents used was the unverified “dossier.”
“Those who care to see know how this oppositional research firm worked with the Clinton campaign, the DNC and former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele to sabotage first the Trump campaign and then the Trump presidency,” he said.
“What few know, however, is the role Fusion GPS played in saving Planned Parenthood from the damning undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) in the summer of 2015.”
He said Planned Parenthood was in a “public relations nightmare” with the evidence of body parts dealings, with one executive proclaiming higher pay was necessary because “I want a Lamborghini.”
It was so bad, Cashill wrote, Clinton campaign chair John Podesta emailed Planned Parenthood chief Cecile Richards claiming to have convinced Hillary Clinton not to disown Planned Parenthood: “Yup. Took a little convincing,” he boasted before adding, “The tapes do hurt.”
A week later, however, Hillary, while campaigning in New Hampshire, was compelled to say of the CMP videos, “I have seen pictures from them and I obviously find them disturbing.”
Then, Cashill explained, “Desperate to convince potential voters not to believe their own lying eyes, Richards hired the dirty tricksters at Fusion GPS to do a ‘forensic analysis’ of the videos.”
The company revealed there was “no evidence” CMP inserted dialogue, but said there was content edited “out of the ‘full footage.'”
That, they said, misrepresented Planned Parenthood statements.
But Cashill said GPS’ expert “did little more than observe that there were breaks in the time code of the raw footage.”
He pointed out that it would be natural for an undercover interviewer to stop recording for “meals” or “restroom breaks.”
“(FYI, it is always a good practice to turn off your recording equipment in the potty,)” he wrote.
Another WND columnist, Lt. Col. James Zumwalt, recently questioned whether the FBI missed important indicators about GPS.
“After being hired by a Democratic campaign lawyer, Fusion became the conduit for a fake anti-Trump dossier. Fusion subcontracted with retired British MI-6 officer Christopher Steele to conduct the investigation – one ultimately triggering surveillance of Trump’s presidential campaign due to an unwarranted FISA warrant based on Fusion’s report.”
He explained, “It should be clear both from the work Fusion did for Planned Parenthood and for Hillary in producing an anti-Trump dossier, its role has been that of a hired gun. Apparently, a client need only tell Fusion what findings it desires and the agency will then create a report substantiating them. What appears not to stand in Fusion’s way – or, for that matter, in the way of its paying clients – is truth. With the wave of a magic wand, Fusion became an expert in the field a client desired – the magic wand being money. It seems a perfect match – a client seeks to buy damaging untruths and Fusion seeks to create them, package them up and sell them.”
ZeroHedge recently reported Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska claimed that Daniel Jones – a former FBI investigator, Feinstein staffer and now a Fusion GPS operative – told the Russian Oligarch’s lawyer last year that Fusion GPS was funded by “a group of Silicon Valley billionaires and George Soros.”
The report said, “Of note, Deripaska’s lawyer, D.C. lobbyist Adam Waldman, recommended Jones to investigate and verify the claims from the Fusion GPS anti-Trump dossier assembled by former UK spy Christopher Steele. Waldman was also an intermediary between Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Steele in trying to arrange a meeting – which suggests that Waldman, Jones, Steele and Fusion GPS are all connected.”
The report continued, “Deripaska describes the ongoing ‘Russia narrative’ as nothing more than a scandal manufactured by the deep state. ‘Wagging the dog costs money,’ writes Deripaska. ‘So, who is the ‘funding mechanism’ of this ‘shadowy government?’ Why, none other than billionaire financier George Soros, according to Daniel Jones – as relayed to Congressional investigators by Deripaska’s attorney Adam Waldman.'”
