Politics

Hillary Clinton Defends Her Campaign Funding The Trump Dossier [VIDEO]

Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
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Hillary Clinton on Wednesday defended her campaign’s funding of the so-called Trump dossier, even though the allegations in the document remain almost entirely uncorroborated.

In an interview with Trevor Noah of “The Daily Show,” Clinton noted that the dossier, commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, is “still being evaluated.”

“It’s part of what happens in a campaign where you get information that may or may not be useful and you try to make sure that anything you put in the public arena is accurate,” Clinton said of the dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele. (RELATED: This Is How Much The Clinton Campaign And DNC Paid For The Trump Dossier)

It was revealed last week that Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the campaign and the Democratic National Committee last April to investigate Trump. Fusion hired Steele that June, and the ex-MI6 officer would go on to produce a research report now known as the dossier.

Though Clinton asserted that the dossier was not “put in the public arena,” that wasn’t for lack of trying. Fusion GPS and Steele disseminated the dossier to at least 10 news outlets prior to the election. Yahoo! News’ Michael Isikoff published a detailed report last September based on the dossier’s claims that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

It emerged on Wednesday that the Clinton campaign and DNC paid Fusion GPS a total of $1.02 million for its anti-Trump work. Fusion paid Steele the relatively paltry sum of $168,000.

In her interview, Clinton mentioned that Fusion GPS’s first client was a Republican donor who opposed Trump’s candidacy. The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by Republican billionaire Paul Singer, came forward on Friday to identify itself as Fusion’s first anti-Trump client. The site hired Fusion in October 2015 and ended its research of Trump the following May.

Clinton failed to note that The Free Beacon had no involvement with the dossier.

“This was research started by a Republican donor during the Republican primary, and then when Trump got the nomination for the Republican Party, the people doing it came to my campaign lawyer and said, ‘Would you like us to continue it?'” Clinton said.

“He said yes,” Clinton said of Elias. “He’s an experienced lawyer. He knows what the law is. He knows what opposition research is.”

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