http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2018/01/10/fusion-gps-admits-used-john-mccain-pass-anti-trump-dossier-obama-era-intel-agencies/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
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Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
EILAT, Israel — The founders of the controversial opposition research firm Fusion GPS admitted that they helped the researcher hired to compile the infamous, largely discredited 35-page dossier on President Donald Trump to share the document with Sen. John McCain.
The goal of providing the dossier to McCain, the Fusion GPS founders explained, was to pass the information contained in the questionable document to the U.S. intelligence community under the Obama administration.
The disclosure raises questions about whether McCain knew that the information he delivered to the intelligence community was actually an opposition document reportedly funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
McCain’s office did not reply yesterday to a Breitbart News request for comment on the matter.
Last December, it was revealed that it was McCain who notoriously passed the controversial dossier documents produced by the Washington opposition research firm Fusion GPS to then FBI Director James Comey, whose agency reportedly utilized the dossier as a basis for its probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Writing in a New York Times oped last Tuesday, Fusion GPS founders Glenn R. Simpson and Peter Fritch relate that they helped McCain share their anti-Trump dossier with the intelligence community via an “emissary.”
“After the election, Mr. Steele decided to share his intelligence with Senator John McCain via an emissary,” the Fusion GPS founders related. “We helped him do that. The goal was to alert the United States national security community to an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power.”
It was not clear from their statement whether McCain knew Fusion GPS was behind the dossier. Fusion GPS paid former intelligence agent Christopher Steele to do the purported research for the document. Steele later conceded in court documents that part of his work still needed to be verified.
Breitbart News sent the following questions to McCain’s office but did not receive a reply before press time: “Given that Fusion GPS is openly an opposition research firm, did Sen. McCain know that he was sharing political opposition research on Trump with the intel community? Did he know the dossier was partially funded by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign?”
In October, the Washington Post reported that in April 2016, attorney Marc E. Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie retained Fusion GPS to conduct the questionable anti-Trump work on behalf of both the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Through Perkins Coie, Clinton’s campaign and the DNC continued to fund Fusion GPS until October 2016, days before Election Day, the Post reported.
On January 10, CNN was first to report, based on leaked information, that the contents of the dossier were presented during classified briefings one week earlier to then-president Obama and president-elect Trump.
