President Trump said he believes he knows the identity of the Republican client who had already been funding Fusion GPS, the Washington opposition research firm behind the so-called “Trump dossier,” before Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund the research effort.
“I think I know,” Trump said during an interview with Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs that aired Wednesday evening. He didn’t reveal the identity of the individual.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Clinton campaign and DNC lawyer Mark Elias hired Fusion GPS in April 2016 to do research for the Clinton campaign and the DNC. The firm had already been conducting research on Trump during the Republican primary, funded by an unknown Republican client.
The Clinton campaign and the DNC financed Fusion GPS’s research up until just before the Nov. 8 election.
Days before the blockbuster Post report came out, Trump urged the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to “immediately” release any information they might have on who paid for the dossier.
“Officials behind the now discredited ‘Dossier’ plead the Fifth. Justice Department and/or FBI should immediately release who paid for it,” Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon.
The majority of the dossier, which came to light publicly after it was published in full by Buzzfeed in January and ties Trump to Russia with a number of salacious claims, has not been verified.
