In the 48 hours since the Washington Post outlined the financial backing for the Christopher Steele “Russian Dossier” as the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC, the Democrat apparatus writ large has been trying to obfuscate and distance themselves from it. Yesterday Clinton campaign Spokesman Brian Fallon denied his knowledge of the campaign financing Fusion GPS for the commissioned dossier contract.
Today, in the latest laughable attempt at dodge-ball Hillary Clinton is now stating she didn’t know her campaign was paying for it:
(NYT) […] Officials from the Clinton campaign and the D.N.C. have said they were unaware that Perkins Coie facilitated the research on their behalf, even though the law firm was using their money to pay for it.
Even Mrs. Clinton only found about Mr. Steele’s research after Buzzfeed published the dossier, according to two associates who discussed the matter with her. They said that she was disappointed that the research — as well as the fact that the F.B.I. was looking into connections between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia — was not made public before Election Day. (read more – link)
The reason the financing of the dossier is ultimately so relevant is because it shreds the entire narrative that the Russians were trying to help candidate Donald Trump.
A strong, heck, even a moderate application of common sense would accept that the dossier was created to undermine candidate Trump, to the benefit of Hillary Clinton, and the publication of the generally refuted and debunked material post-election was only intended to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump.
To make the claim that the dossier was created to benefit Donald Trump is silly on its face. Yet, somehow, laughably, that’s the position of the Clinton crew, and with a willing assist from a complicit media, the Clinton camp are ridiculously trying to stick to it.
However, as we initially discussed when the financial backers were revealed, the motive behind the Washington Post outline is becoming increasingly clear. Assigning financial origination to the Clinton and DNC legal team is a way for Fusion GPS and likely the Obama administration intelligence community, to scurry away from their participation therein.
By presenting the Clinton/DNC lawyers “Perkins Coie” as the underwriting for the contracted authorship via Fusion GPS research, the Washington Post is attempting to put distance between Christopher Steele, dossier author, and the FBI and Obama intelligence community. Unfortunately for the Washington Post, their history of publication specifically intended to protect the intelligence community only highlights the motive.
In an effort to further obfuscate the Clinton/DNC arrangement we note the current narrative is to cloud and merge the initial payments to Fusion GPS by a republican entity within the GOP primary. However, the reality of the opposition research ending in April 2016 refutes that attempt at opaque obfuscation. What began as ordinary commissioned opposition research into candidate Donald Trump back in 2015, stopped in April 2016. The contract to Christopher Steele to create the dossier came months later in June 2016.
Christopher Steele didn’t even enter the picture until June 2016, he had nothing to do with the research from the GOP primary; and the only similarity is the sub-contracting company Fusion GPS hired by the Clinton/DNC legal team at Perkins Coie. This is the distinction the current Clinton Crew is attempting to avoid.
What is increasingly obvious from the entire timeline is that the FBI and Clinton’s contracted Christoper Steele were in cahoots in turning the information within the dossier into evidence used to gain FISA warrants to monitor the Trump Campaign.
It should be noted that in June 2016, simultaneous to Steele beginning, the FBI (according to Comey) began it’s counter intelligence gathering operation, the FBI attempted to gain a search warrant with the FISA court and was rebuked. That is very uncommon. However, after Steele provided the initial information to the FBI in October 2016, coincidentally, they were able to get the FISA warrant. These timeline coincidences, inside admitted intelligence gathering operations, are too transparent not to be connected.
Andrew McCarthy […] To summarize, it appears there were no grounds for a criminal investigation of banking violations against Trump. Presumably based on the fact that the bank or banks at issue were Russian, the Justice Department and the FBI decided to continue investigating on national-security grounds. A FISA application in which Trump was “named” was rejected by the FISA court as overbroad, notwithstanding that the FISA court usually looks kindly on government surveillance requests.
A second, more narrow application, apparently not naming Trump, may have been granted five months later; the best the media can say about it, however, is that the server on which the application centers is “possibly” related to the Trump campaign’s “alleged” links to two Russian banks — under circumstances in which the FBI has previously found no “nefarious purpose” in some (undescribed) connection between Trump Tower and at least one Russian bank (whose connection to Putin’s regime is not described). (link with more links)
The entire outline of the Washington Post article -attributing financial origin for the “Russian Conspiracy Dossier” to the DNC and Clinton Campaign- should be cast against this backdrop of timeline transparency. It certainly appears the motive for the WaPo article was to generate distance between Obama and Clinton’s unified efforts, by protecting the Obama half of the collaboration.
When you contemplate this ideological, and election-minded collaboration, you discover the leverage created therein by Hillary Clinton over FBI Director James Comey.
Hillary Clinton knew the FBI intelligence community was gathering information on her political opponent, and the reality of that knowledge provided leverage needed for Director Comey to jaw-droppingly clear Hillary Clinton of any wrongdoing in the email scandal.
Funny how that works…
