Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is demanding more information about the political opposition firm Fusion GPS, which compiled the controversial and partly unsubstantiated dossier on President Trump when he was a candidate last year.
Trump’s Republican and Democratic opponents reportedly paid the firm to do the opposition research against Trump during the campaign, and it contracted with British spy Christopher Steele to create the file, according to Grassley. Fusion GPS then shared the dossier with the FBI, which offered to pay Steele to continue the research on Trump, he said.
“When political opposition research becomes the basis for law enforcement or intelligence efforts, it raises substantial questions about the independence of law enforcement and intelligence from politics,” Grassley wrote in a March 24 letter to Fusion GPS’ Glenn Simpson, a former investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
Grassley argued that the dossier was a product of “blatant political and financial motives” and he pointed out that then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said that “the [intelligence community] has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions.”
In his letter to Simpson, Grassley asked him to provide details about the history of the arrangements that funded the opposition research behind the dossier, including the FBI’s involvement. The Iowa Republican wants to know the firm’s clients and who sought the research, as well as the terms of their engagement.
In addition, Grassley wants to know when the firm hired Steele to do the work on the project, how the FBI came to be involved, and whether Fusion GPS was aware of any arrangements by the FBI to pay Steele. He also is seeking documents related to the dossier’s history and arrangements between Fusion GPS and its clients.
