Since April of 2016, Obama's campaign organization has paid nearly a million dollars to the law firm that funneled money to Fusion GPS to compile a dossier of unverified allegations against Donald Trump.
The Washington Post reported last week that Perkins Coie, an
international law firm, was directed by both the Democratic National Committee
(DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to retain Fusion GPS in April of 2016 to
dig up dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump.
Fusion GPS then hired Christopher
Steele, a former British spy, to compile a dossier of allegations that Trump
and his campaign actively colluded with the Russian government during the 2016
election.
Though many of the claims in the dossier have been directly refuted, none of the dossier’s allegations of collusion
have been independently verified. Lawyers for Steele admitted in court filings last April that his work was not
verified and was never meant to be made public.
OFA, Obama’s official campaign arm in 2016, paid nearly
$800,000 to Perkins Coie in 2016 alone, according to FEC records. The first
2016 payments to Perkins Coie, classified only as “Legal Services,” were made
April 25-26, 2016, and totaled $98,047.
A second batch of payments, also
classified as “Legal Services,” were disbursed to the law firm on September 29,
2016, and totaled exactly $700,000. Payments from OFA to Perkins Coie in 2017 totaled
$174,725 through August 22, 2017.
FEC records
as well as federal court records show that Marc Elias, the Perkins
Coie lawyer whom the Washington Post reported was responsible for the payments
to Fusion GPS on behalf of Clinton’s campaign and the DNC, also previously
served as a counsel for OFA.
In Shamblin v. Obama for America, a 2013 case
in federal court in Florida, federal court records list Elias as simultaneously
serving as lead attorney for both OFA and the DNC.
OFA, which managed Obama’s successful re-election
campaign in 2012, retooled after that campaign to focus on enacting the president’s agenda during his final
term in office.
The group reorganized again after the 2016 election and planned to
use its staff and resources to oppose President Donald Trump. During the entire
2016 campaign cycle, the group spent only $4.5 million, according to FEC records.
Federal records show that Hillary Clinton’s official
campaign organization, Hillary For America, paid just under $5.1 million to
Perkins Coie in 2016. The DNC paid nearly $5.4 million to the law firm in 2016.
The timing and nature of the payments to Perkins Coie by
Obama’s official campaign arm raise significant questions about whether OFA was
funding Fusion GPS, how much Obama and his team knew about the contents and
provenance of the dossier long before its contents were made public, and
whether the president or his government lieutenants knowingly used a partisan
political document to justify official government actions targeting the
president’s political opponents named in the dossier.
According to the Washington Post, Fusion GPS was first retained by Perkins
Coie on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s
presidential campaign in April of 2016.
At the same time that Hillary’s campaign,
Obama’s campaign organization, and the DNC were simultaneously paying Perkins
Coie, the spouse of one of Fusion GPS’s key employees was working directly for
Obama in the West Wing.
Shailagh Murray, a former Washington Post
reporter-turned-political operative, was serving as a top communications
adviser to Obama while the Obama administration was reportedly using information from the dossier to justify secret
surveillance of Trump campaign staff.
Murray is married to Neil King, a former Wall Street Journal reporter
who was hired by Fusion GPS in December of 2016.
While at the
Wall Street Journal, King worked alongside Fusion GPS’s core team, even sharing bylines with Glenn Simpson, the Fusion GPS
executive who personally hired Steele to probe Trump’s alleged Russia
connections.
The importance of the dossier funded by Democrats,
commissioned by Fusion GPS, and compiled by Steele, is difficult to overstate given
that its contents were reportedly briefed to both President Obama and
then-President-Elect Trump.
The dossier was eventually published in full by
BuzzFeed on January 10.
On January 12, according to CNN then-FBI Director James Comey had briefed Trump on the
allegations in Steele’s dossier.
Steele admitted in court filings that he had shopped much of the
information in his dossier to numerous media outlets beginning in September of
2016.
Fusion GPS, which has been accused of illegally
operating as an undisclosed agent of foreign governments, is currently
facing multiple congressional inquiries into its activities and its clients.
Bill Browder, whose attorney was allegedly murdered by Russian authorities
after publicizing explosive allegations of Russian fraud and money laundering, alleged
in congressional testimony last July that Fusion GPS was paid by Russians to undermine U.S. sanctions against the
country.
Late last week, Fusion GPS reportedly struck
a deal with U.S. House investigators regarding a federal subpoena of the
firm’s bank records.
And in September, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who serves
as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, reportedly requested that the
U.S. Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit provide his committee with all suspicious activity reports related to Fusion GPS’s bank
transactions.
Following reports of Perkins Coie’s role in funneling
money to Fusion GPS, the Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan campaign finance
watchdog, filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that the secret funding
schemes violated federal campaign disclosure laws.
Fusion GPS is also facing a separate defamation suit in
federal court related to claims in the dossier.
That case, which was brought by
three Russian businessmen who claim to have been libeled in the Steele dossier,
was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., in early October. Fusion GPS is
yet to respond to those allegations in court.
Sean
Davis is the co-founder of The Federalist.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/10/29/obamas-campaign-gave-972000-law-firm-funneled-money-fusion-gps/
