The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee paid just over $1 million for the infamous Trump dossier, the opposition research firm behind the salacious document said on Wednesday.
Fusion GPS, the Washington, D.C.-based firm, made the disclosures to the House Intelligence Committee last week, according to Reuters.
Fusion, founded by three former Wall Street Journal reporters, also disclosed that of the $1.02 million it received from Democrats, the firm paid the author of the dossier, Christopher Steele, $168,000 for his work on the document.
Steele, a former British intelligence officer, was hired by Fusion GPS last June. His 35-page dossier, chock full of allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government, has been used by the FBI as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election.
The payments to Fusion GPS for the dossier were made by Perkins Coie, the law firm that represents the Clinton campaign and DNC. Perkins Coie partner Marc Elias, who served as general counsel for both entities, was the bagman for the project, The Washington Post reported last week.
Perkins Coie acknowledged its role in the dossier last week, as the House Intelligence Committee ramped up pressure on Fusion GPS’s bank to release the firm’s bank records.
Fusion was first hired to investigate Trump in Oct. 2015 by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by billionaire megadonor Paul Singer. Singer was a vigorous critic of Trump. He backed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign.
The Free Beacon, which disclosed its involvement with Fusion to the House panel on Friday, says that its research did not make its way into the dossier. The site asked Fusion to end its research of Trump in May 2016, just after the real estate mogul won the Indiana primaries.
The Daily Caller was told by knowledgeable sources that The Free Beacon continued paying Fusion as part of other research until January, when BuzzFeed News published Steele’s dossier.
Singer’s camp denied any involvement with Fusion over the summer, when asked by TheDC whether the billionaire had hired the firm to investigate Trump. An email sent to Singer was forwarded to his spokesman, who vehemently denied any connection to Fusion.