Former President Donald Trump has long held that the infamous Steele dossier
was a Clinton-funded smear campaign full of dubious sources and politically motivated slander. Not only were Trump’s assertions correct, but Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are being fined more than $100,000 by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for not properly disclosing the money they spent on the controversial opposition research.
The FEC fined both organizations after complaints from the Campaign Legal Center and the Coolidge-Reagan Foundation alleged that the Clinton campaign and DNC masked payments for the dossier, made to the law firm Perkins Coie, as legal expenses. Some of the money was earmarked for “paying Fusion GPS through Perkins Coie to conduct opposition research on Donald Trump,” as the Campaign Legal Center’s original complaint read.
The complaint added that the Clinton campaign and DNC contended they were correct in describing their payments as “legal advice and services” because it was Perkins Coie that hired Fusion GPS. However, the FEC said the law was clear and was violated. While neither the Clinton campaign nor the Democratic Party’s governing body have admitted to lying, the FEC said that they wouldn’t contest the ruling.
“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,” the FEC noted.
Trump released a statement about the development, as the New York Post reports:
“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. 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?”
BuzzFeed News first leaked the contents of the Steele dossier in January 2017. The political opposition research file from former MI6 counterintelligence and Russia specialist Christopher Steele contained a mess of incorrect, unproven, salacious and occasionally accurate snippets of information about ties between Russia and Donald Trump and others in his orbit. The discredited allegations that Trump conspired with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election and that Russia had compromising information on him were given credence because of Christopher Steele’s reputation. Subsequent legal challenges have discredited many of Steele’s sources, with one being arrested and indicted for allegedly lying to the FBI.
Trump recently filed a $72 million lawsuit against the Hillary Clinton, the DNC and others for allegedly conspiring “to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty.”
At one point, the 108-page suit compares the claimed actions to the most famous political scandal in U.S. history:
“The actions taken in furtherance of their scheme — falsifying evidence, deceiving law enforcement, and exploiting access to highly-sensitive data sources — are so outrageous, subversive and incendiary that even the events of Watergate pale in comparison.”
Read Trump’s lawsuit here.