Former Democratic National Committee chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta recently told Senate investigators that they did not know who funded research that led to the so-called Trump dossier, CNN reported on Thursday.
CNN reported, citing three unnamed sources familiar with the matter, that Podesta and Wasserman Schultz made their denials before the Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Clinton’s campaign and the DNC partly paid for research firm Fusion GPS’ work that ended up in the dossier.
According to one source CNN cited, Podesta in September told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he was not aware of a contractual relationship between Clinton’s campaign and Fusion GPS.
Wasserman Schultz told CNN that she “didn’t have any awareness of the arrangement at all” and said she was “certainly” not going to confirm the subject of any discussion. According to CNN, Senate investigators interviewed Wasserman Schultz earlier in October.
According to the Washington Post’s report, Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias and his law firm Perkins Coie retained Fusion GPS in April 2016. One source told the Washington Post that Perkins Coie did not inform Clinton’s campaign or the DNC of Fusion GPS’ role in conducting research into Donald Trump.
CNN reported, citing multiple unnamed sources, that Elias sat next to Podesta during his Senate interview, but was present as Podesta’s lawyer rather than as an additional witness.
Perkins Coie authorized Fusion GPS to disclose its role in partly funding that research in a letter CNN obtained dated Tuesday.
Umm, maybe they didn’t.
Has Perkins Coie said who paid? Not as far as I have seen. Maybe it was Tom Steyer or some other deep-pocket Democrat.
My thoughts exactly. Or perhaps they even intentionally walled off senior campaign personnel from the knowledge. Either explanation is plausible and neither indicates any misdeed.
Here we go again. Rolling out the same old cast of iconically and chronically suspect Democrats. Now their statements will be scrutinized for any nuance of inconsistency or opacity, the NYT will weigh in on ‘clouds’ hovering over the matter, and Trump-Russia will soon be Clinton/DNC-Russia. Emails v treason all over again, and a sudden shift in momentum that will embolden Republicans to attempt to wrap up the Mueller investigation less than 6 months into its existence.
That’s the GOP game-plan, in any case. We need on substantive new piece of Trump-Russia information, or leak, to stop this potential juggernaut right now.
The campaigns paid Perkins Coie to hire/coordinate an opposition research operation – a common practice to separate the campaign from the activity (covered by attorney work product) and the actual research that the operation provided.
That this is somehow nefarious because: Democrats is just nonsense.
I’ve never seen anything more retarded than this. There is no low the right won’t stoop to, no limit to their desperation, and no questioning of anything the conservative elite dishes out by their sycophants.
There has not been one Trump-Russia revelation that has shown Trump in a better light. Not a single one. Mueller doesn’t care about this and I think most Americans can see right through this bullshit. NYT’s credibility will suffer if they keep pushing this.