Browder stands by claims that Russia paid firm behind the anti-Trump dossier

The Washington Times ^ | 08/17/2017 | Dan Boylan

[Fedora]

A key witness’ to a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing exploring Russian meddling in the 2016 election has reaffirmed his testimony that the secretive Washington firm, Fusion GPS, which commissioned the sensational anti-Trump campaign research dossier, received payment from the Kremlin.

Last week a Washington Post “Fact Checker” article assessed a statement by White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders in which she said, “The Democrat-linked firm Fusion GPS actually took money from the Russian government while it created the phony dossier that’s been the basis for all of the Russia scandal fake news.”

The article—which awarded Mrs. Sanders “Three Pinocchios” for what it deemed were misrepresentations—concluded that: “Moreover, there is no evidence Fusion took money from the Russian government. It worked on behalf of an American law firm, which was hired by a company owned by a Russian whose father is a government official. Even [Bill] Browder, a fierce critic of Fusion, said in an interview the White House is “conflating two issues.”

Responding to the article, Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Charles Grassley wrote...Browder — who testified late last month...

At the time, Mr. Browder asserted that “Fusion GPS took money from the Russian government; and second that it did so while it was working on the Trump dossier,” according to Mr. Grassley’s letter, which he released Thursday.

On Tuesday, Mr. Browder responded with a letter to Mr. Grassley stating that he stood by his “testimony that Fusion GPS received money from the Russian government” in addition to reiterating and expanding on several points he made to the committee he felt the Washington Post fact checkers overlooked or excluded. Mr. Grassley made the contents of the Browder response public Thursday evening.

Those points included additional information about methods the Russian government uses to arrange overseas propaganda work and how it pays for that work through proxies...

[Fedora]

Grassley's response mentioned in the article: Checking the Facts: There Is Evidence Fusion GPS Was Paid by Russia While Compiling Trump Dossier

[pepsionice]

If you start with the fact that Fusion doesn’t work for free...then there is some $$$ tied to this whole element of the dossier.

I would suggest though...that Fusion GPS is usually a vehicle that only Democratic-friendly lobbyists/donors hooked up with. This would mean that the Russians had their lobbyists walk in and tie up with Fusion? I just don’t see that as some point of reality. Maybe if Fusion would just publish their donor listing for 2016...we’d come to a successful conclusion and realize that no Russian donors exist.

Then things get interesting.

[Fedora]

They've avoided testifying so far, but at some point their donor list might become subject to discovery, which would certainly be interesting. They are definitely Democrat-oriented, but they originally started investigating Trump for a Republican client, and they've also done work for other foreign clients such as the Israeli government and a Venezuelan energy company, so they seem to be fairly mercenary within certain political boundaries. Likewise Steele, whom they sub-contracted their Trump research to--the FBI offered him $50,000 to continue his Trump research, but he didn't produce anything worthwhile so they didn't actually pay him, reportedly.

[fella]

So the Russian money was laundered through a law firm?

And that makes it OK?

[trebb]

It involves transfer of money - ought to be easy enough to prove if they didn’t purposely tangle things up to make it hard to trace....

[Bookshelf]

One would think the FBI would have resolved this issue a long time ago. Oh, sorry. I do have a tendency to forget that America’s KGB has been bought and used as a political tool.