The House Intelligence Committee has long suspected journalists may have been paid by Fusion GPS to report on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
In early November, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) reached a breaking point and began demanding that the shady research firm behind the infamous ‘Trump dossier,’ submit its banking records to Congressional investigators to see if payments had been made to reporters.
Nunes’s hunch was correct. On November 21st, a federal court unsealed Fusion GPS’s bank records, shining new light on Russia-related payments made by the firm behind the infamous ‘Trump dossier.’
The bank records show that Fusion GPS paid journalists for work amid the Trump-Russia ‘collusion,’ hysteria.
The firm claims the journalists were paid to do work that was separate from the now discredited ‘Trump dossier.’
It was then discovered that Fusion GPS paid at least three journalists during and after the election to push the phony dossier. The three reporters were on the record reporting negative stories about Donald Trump.
According to Tablet media columnist Lee Smith “The network of journalists who take dossiers from Fusion GPS is rich and deep.”
In a new report for The Federalist, Lee Smith lists reporters that have ties to Fusion GPS who have pushed ‘Trump-Russia’ hysteria.
The Federalist reports:
Carol Lee of NBC News is another WSJ alum. At her new job she has worked on Russiagate stories with Ken Dilanian, a reporter Browder believes to be a regular and reliable purveyor of Fusion GPS-manufactured talking points. […]
Lee and Dilanian reported, “Two sources tell NBC News that Manafort’s smartphone notes from the meeting included the words ‘donations’ in close proximity to the reference to the Republican National Committee.” NBC News was eventually forced to walk back the story when it turned out the word on Manafort’s phone was “donors,” not “donations,” a difference that nullified the thrust of the story, which was to suggest that Russia was funneling money directly to the Trump campaign.
But who fed Lee and Dilanian their story? It seems likely from the list of people at the meeting that their sources included Veselnitskaya herself and another Russian at the meeting, Rinat Akhmetshin—who both had partnered with Fusion GPS to try to undo the Magnitsky Act on behalf of pro-Putin elements. […]
The network of journalists who take dossiers from Fusion GPS is rich and deep, which is how the company manages to seed so many stories around the media and make its money. Others whose tenure at the Wall Street Journal intersected with those of Fusion GPS principals and who have filed numerous stories on the Trump-Russia narrative that originated with Fusion GPS’s “Steele” dossier include, among others, Devlin Barrett and Tom Hamburger of the WashingtonPost, and Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times.
The names of the reporters who were paid by Fusion GPS to push the discredited ‘Trump dossier,’ are still not known at this time.
The research firm was caught hiding bank transactions from House investigators. “Fusion and the House at first worked out a deal for relevant banks records. But House lawyers say they learned that Fusion withheld 112 transactions pertinent to the Russia probe,” reports the Washington Times.
House lawyers say a portion of the withheld payments are connected to the ‘Trump dossier,’ raising questions if payments to reporters were purposely withheld in an effort to protect their identities.
