How Fusion GPS is behind much of the "Fake News"

Rowan Scarborough in the Washington Times

Fusion GPS tried to tie Trump to Clinton’s pedophile pal Epstein as part of smear campaign

The unmasking agent was Fusion’s own product: Mr. Steele’s dossier. It has proved to be so unfounded on its core collusion charges yet so influential in prompting investigations of the president that Republicans demanded to know its roots.

Those roots are: After Democrats paid Fusion through a middleman law firm, Mr. Simpson in June 2016 hired Mr. Steele with Clinton campaign cash. Mr. Steele in turn handed out money to unidentified Kremlin operatives who sullied Mr. Trump and associates.

As Mr. Steele churned out dossier chapters during the summer campaign, Mr. Simpson peddled them to Washington’s mightiest journalists.

Mr. Steele wrote in July, the month he briefed the FBI and it began its probe, of an “extensive conspiracy between Trump’s campaign team and the Kremlin.”

After the BuzzFeed posting, The New York Times outed the dossier duo of Fusion and Mr. Steele.

Democrats began to cite the dossier’s unconfirmed Trump charges at hearings and on TV.

As the charges remained unconfirmed into the spring, Republicans started focusing attention on a firm whose livelihood relies on a cloak of confidentiality.

Republicans, including Mr. Nunes and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa have been conducting investigations into how the dossier influenced the FBI to start one of the most important criminal investigations in U.S. history....

Then there is Fusion’s own Russia connection. While Fusion is exposing supposed collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, its operatives have been working for Russians to dishonor Bill Browder, a prominent opponent of President Vladimir Putin.

The web of connections is complex: Russian money is funding Fusion to destroy the reputation of Mr. Browder, a U.S.-British banker, for his work to persuade Congress to enact the 2012 Magnitsky Act. The act is a sanctions law against Moscow, and the Putin regime wants it repealed. Mr. Browder told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Fusion received Russian money via the law firm BakerHostetler to launch “a smear campaign against me.”

In another case, Fusion allowed Planned Parenthood to identify it as the firm that analyzed hours of secret video taken by the pro-life group Center for Medical Progress. The group said it captured Planned Parenthood leaders talking about selling fetal body parts.

Fusion issued a report saying the videos were not accurate. The pro-life group’s own analysis showed no manipulation.

The irony in all this is that Mr. Simpson once condemned smutty opposition research as a scourge on the body politic.

Read the whole thing.

Botched Russia assessment raises questions of intel chiefs’ motives

Fourteen days before President Trump took the oath of office, the Obama administration’s intelligence chiefs made public a unanimous assessment claiming Russian operatives, under orders from President Vladimir Putin, had orchestrated an influence campaign to help Mr. Trump win the presidential contest.

It was a watershed moment: the CIA, National Security Agency and FBI challenging the legitimacy of a U.S. presidential victory.

The conclusions in the Jan. 6 document were sharp, but the findings unraveled 10 months later, raising questions about the basis for the evidence and the motives of the Obama appointees leading the nation’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

“It left me scratching my head,” said one intelligence source with personal access to former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper and former CIA Director John O. Brennan, two of the men who had signed off on the assessment.

The former British spy behind 'dirty Kremlin dossier' that claimed Trump was in bed both with Putin - AND pervert prostitutes. Hunt on for former UK ambassador who handed report to US politician

The former British spy who allegedly compiled a 'dirty' dossier smearing Donald Trump has been revealed.

Ex-MI6 man Christopher Steele is reported to be the source of a salacious file alleging the Kremlin had compromising evidence about Mr Trump's sex life, that it planned to use to blackmail him.

Yesterday, Mr Trump called the dossier, alleged to have been handed to US Senator John McCain by a former British ambassador, 'fake' and 'phony' and Moscow has dismissed the claims as 'utter nonsense.'

Mr Steele, 52, is said to be an expert in intelligence analysis and counter-terrorism and sources say he once worked with murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.

He is now the director of a private security and investigations firm called Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, run out of plush offices in Belgravia, central London.

The involvement of a former British intelligence officer and ambassador is embarrassing for the Government with Theresa May under pressure to reassure the President-elect that the UK had nothing to do with the 35-page briefing.

The British security services had originally tried to block UK news organisations from naming Mr Steele by issuing a D-notice, which prevents the revelation of certain information for security reasons.

Mr Steele has now fled his home in Surrey, in fear of a backlash from the Kremlin and sources say he is 'terrified for his safety'.

In recent weeks, the former spy declined requests for interviews through an intermediary, who said the subject was 'too hot', reports the Wall Street Journal.

...

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said the timing of the allegations pointed towards an effort to smear Mr Trump just nine days before he takes over in the Oval Office.

He told MailOnline: 'The question is why has this story come out now? Everything happens for a reason. Most things happen for a reason.

'It already appears to be unravelling. Someone's released the story… I'm sure the source will be revealed in time.'

Conservative backbencher Nigel Evans told MailOnline: 'It looks like this originated at a time when somebody was trying to undermine his bid for the presidency.

'There was enough stuff that did come out, enough revelations about things that he said – some of which probably did damage his candidacy – that I would thought if there was anything there (in this dossier) it would have emerged.

'Trump is denying it. Putin is denying it. It seems to be one of these fake news things.'

Fellow MP Michael Fabricant said: 'I can well understand the President-Elect's concerns over these stories as they seek to delegitimise his election to President. There are some in the United States who would like to see a re-run of their General Election as part of an anti-Trump campaign.

Former Staffer For California Republican Admits to Lies That Ruined Campaign

This is one of the ways Democrats cheat to win elections.

Dear Republicans: choose your staffers well.

Carl DeMaio is a California Republican who had a chance to win a house seat in 2014. Even though the race was happening in blue California, it was one of the state’s more conservative districts.

All hopes were dashed when one of DeMaio’s former staffers named Todd Bosnich accused him of sexual harassment in the final weeks of the campaign. He even produced threatening emails which he claimed were sent to him by someone in the DeMaio camp.

Democrats welcomed the scandal and although DeMaio strongly denied the charges, he was defeated by Democrat Scott Peters.

On Friday, the ex-staffer admitted in federal court that he lied when he claimed to have gotten an anonymous email threatening that he would never work again in politics if he revealed things about DeMaio.

Todd Bosnich, 29, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice by lying to the FBI about the email. Until Friday, it was not known publicly that the federal government was investigating the email.

During the campaign, Bosnich had told reporters that he was ”positive” that the email, and others, came from DeMaio or someone close to him.

But in his guilty plea, Bosnich admitted that he sent the email to himself through a dummy account and then took the email to the Peters campaign who turned it over to the San Diego Police Department.

Bosnich’s actions “had the potential to affect a national election,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Phil Halpern. “Mr. Bosnich, for whatever reason, had a great deal of hostility and personal animus toward Mr. DeMaio.”

The email, now known to be fraudulent, was meant to support Bosnich’s allegation that DeMaio had touched him inappropriately and masturbated in front of him.

Now the LA Times is reporting that the staffer Todd Bosnich made the whole thing up and has even admitted his lies to the FBI

Of course CNN broadcast the story and Talking Point Memo got it into the Internet.

A suggestion or four for how this can be stopped in the future:

• Republicans, choose your staffers well.
• Push to get this piece of garbage jail time.
• Make this an issue in the next campaign.
• Make sure that any legislation supported by Scott Peters does not pass.