Republicans and Democrats rushed this week to reframe the storylines surrounding an investigation into whether President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the election following the discovery on Tuesday that Democrats had commissioned a document at the center of the allegations.
Republicans pointed to the revelation as evidence that Trump’s foes manufactured the Russia controversy in order to undermine his candidacy and, ultimately, his presidency. Democrats described the revelation as an unsurprising disclosure about routine opposition research that should not change the focus of investigators digging into Russian collusion.
The intrigue surrounding the 35-page dossier of largely unproven allegations against Trump and his associates could deepen even further next week, when the FBI is set to give congressional investigators records related to its handling of the dossier.
Although Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee have each denied direct involvement with the creation of the dossier, both entities shared the cost of the research efforts that yielded the original allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“As Joe Biden would say, this is a ‘BFD,’” said Brad Blakeman, a GOP strategist and former aide to President George W. Bush.
“Democrats are scrambling, forming a circular firing squad. The DNC knows nothing and blames the Clinton camp. The Clinton camp blames the DNC,” Blakeman said.
A source familiar with the congressional investigation into the dossier said the revelation that Clinton and the DNC funded the research behind it could dramatically shift the direction of the Russia story.
“This absolutely changes the narrative,” the source told the Washington Examiner.
That source said the next step in the investigation is a crucial one: determining whether the FBI or the Justice Department ever used parts of the dossier to justify investigations into the Trump campaign, or ever used claims in the dossier to obtain wiretaps on Trump’s associates.
The House Intelligence Committee had issued subpoenas for documents from both the FBI and the Justice Department, but both requests had stalled until this week, the source said, describing the agencies’ agreement to hand over records a “breakthrough” in the probe.
Marc Elias, general counsel for Clinton’s campaign, retained research company Fusion GPS to dig into Trump in April 2016, according to the Washington Post report that exposed Clinton’s involvement. Elias hired Fusion through his law firm, Perkins Coie, and Fusion in turn hired Christopher Steele, a former British spy, to conduct the research.
The Democrats who paid for the Russia-related research “tried to launder the dossier through their law firm to protect it via attorney-client privilege,” the source familiar with the congressional investigation said.
Indeed, some reporters claimed this week that Elias and others involved had explicitly denied that the campaign entered into any arrangement with Fusion, whose financial backers had remained secret until this week. Partners at the research firm invoked their Fifth Amendment rights to remain silent when questioned about who paid for the Steele dossier before the House Intelligence Committee earlier this month.
Most of the explosive allegations in the dossier have not been substantiated beyond the general claim that Russians sought to sway public opinion during the 2016 election — a claim U.S. intelligence agencies have corroborated.
But because Steele attributed some of the other claims related to Trump and his associates to Russian officials, Clinton’s involvement in the episode has raised questions about the propriety of the Democratic presidential campaign relying on Russians for valuable information about her opponent.
“Everyone around should know … the game rules. The rules are, you can’t be involved with foreign entities,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., told CNN on Thursday.
Manchin faulted both the Clinton and Trump campaigns for demonstrating a willingness to take opposition research from foreign sources, as Trump’s son had taken a meeting in July 2016 with a Russian lawyer who had falsely claimed to have damaging information about Clinton.
The substantial funding behind the dossier has also raised questions about transparency and ethics.
The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan election watchdog, filed a complaint Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission about the Clinton campaign’s failure to disclose payments it made to Fusion GPS in exchange for research about Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. The complaint also cited the DNC.
The Clinton campaign paid Perkins Coie more than $5.6 million during the 2016 election and listed the expenditures only as “legal services” on financial disclosure forms. The DNC paid Perkins Coie more than $6.7 million during the presidential race for “legal and compliance consulting” and listed only one Aug. 2016 expense of $66,500 as a purchase related to research.
The Campaign Legal Center’s complaint alleged that the two Democratic organizations engaged in “false reporting” that “clearly failed the [FEC]’s requirements for disclosing the purpose” of payments.
“You don’t spend the kind of money that was spent unless it is both paid for and used by high-level officials,” said Blakeman.
Representatives for both the DNC and the Clinton campaign have denied knowing Fusion was paid for research on Trump’s ties to Russia, although it remains unclear whether Clinton herself knew about the arrangement.
Brian Fallon, former Clinton campaign spokesman, said this week that he did not know the Steele dossier existed, but told the Post that “[o]pposition research happens on every campaign.”
Republican commentators quickly highlighted a hint of irony in Fallon’s defense — which many Democrats repeated in some form — due to the intensity of criticism leveled at Donald Trump Jr. when he attended a meeting with a Russian lawyer who had promised him compromising information on Clinton. The president’s son had originally misrepresented the nature of the meeting when confronted with it by reporters.
Democrats, on the other hand, argued this week that the source of funding for the Steele dossier will matter little if investigators end up substantiating the allegations spelled out in the document.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly looking into the authenticity of the Steele dossier as part of his overarching probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the presidential race.
John Feehery, a Republican strategist, suggested Democrats, anti-Trump Republicans and the media have blown the Russia controversy out of proportion in order to “explain away the president’s surprising election.”
“Once it proves to be inconvenient for these three groups,” Feehery added, “it will fade away as an issue.”
