Straight to the point, but the devil is in the details.
The Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign paid just over $1 million for the Trump dossier. The dossier, as you should be pretty well informed on by now, was created by Fusion GPS with the hope of gaining “dirt” to use against now-President Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign trail.
The disclosure of the cost was made to the House Intelligence Committee just last week. Fusion GPS, which was founded by three Wall Street Journal reporters, disclosed that of the $1.02 million they received from the Democrats, $168,000 went to Christopher Steele for his work on the document.
Interestingly, it was a conservative, billionaire mega-donor Paul Singer, who first hired Fusion to create the infamous document. Once he backed out, the Democrats picked up the tab.
As reported by Chuck Ross for The Daily Caller:
Steele, a former British intelligence officer, was hired by Fusion GPS last June. His 35-page dossier, chock full of allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government, has been used by the FBI as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election.
The payments to Fusion GPS for the dossier were made by Perkins Coie, the law firm that represents the Clinton campaign and DNC. Perkins Coie partner Marc Elias, who served as general counsel for both entities, was the bagman for the project, The Washington Post reported last week.
Perkins Coie acknowledged its role in the dossier last week, as the House Intelligence Committee ramped up pressure on Fusion GPS’s bank to release the firm’s bank records.
Fusion was first hired to investigate Trump in Oct. 2015 by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by billionaire megadonor Paul Singer. Singer was a vigorous critic of Trump. He backed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign.