Lawyers for the conservative publication Washington Free Beacon informed the House Intelligence Committee Friday that the organization was the original funder for the anti-Trump opposition research project with Fusion GPS.
The Free Beacon funded the project from the fall of 2015 through the spring of 2016, whereupon it withdrew funding and the project was picked up by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
The original arrangement between the Free Beacon and Fusion GPS involved opposition research into multiple Republican candidates, not just front-runner Donald Trump.
Sources close to the Free Beacon stress that the project, when the Free Beacon funded it, had nothing to do with Russia and did not involve Christopher Steele, the former British spy who gathered anti-Trump dirt in Russia. Steele was retained by Fusion GPS when the project was funded by Democrats, and not in its initial phase, when the Free Beacon was involved.
The Washington Free Beacon published a statement Friday evening in response to the Washington Examiner’s report that it was original funder for the anti-Trump opposition research project with Fusion GPS.
Read the statement below from Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Matthew Continetti and chairman Michael Goldfarb:
Since its launch in February of 2012, the Washington Free Beacon has retained third party firms to conduct research on many individuals and institutions of interest to us and our readers. In that capacity, during the 2016 election cycle we retained Fusion GPS to provide research on multiple candidates in the Republican presidential primary, just as we retained other firms to assist in our research into Hillary Clinton. All of the work that Fusion GPS provided to the Free Beacon was based on public sources, and none of the work product that the Free Beacon received appears in the Steele dossier. The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele. Nor did we have any knowledge of the relationship between Fusion GPS and the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and the Clinton campaign.
Representatives of the Free Beacon approached the House Intelligence Committee today and offered to answer what questions we can in their ongoing probe of Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier. But to be clear: We stand by our reporting, and we do not apologize for our methods. We consider it our duty to report verifiable information, not falsehoods or slander, and we believe that commitment has been well demonstrated by the quality of the journalism that we produce. The First Amendment guarantees our right to engage in news-gathering as we see fit, and we intend to continue doing just that as we have since the day we launched this project.
Timex
5211
Someone described Carter Page as the “Kato Kaelin” of this whole thing.
Hannity about to blow…DJT is so immensely crooked and incompetent that he’s going to have to bring out the heavy artillery for Hillary…
Stone is dogshit, and I’d love to see him in jail.
Yeah, but that seems to be a chronic problem with many in the Fox-RWM orbit (and they’re running the country, whee.)
Edit: Someone talked about first against the wall in another post. I think I might put Hannity second (it’s a tough call though)
Can anyone tell any meaningful difference between Gorka and a Soviet apparatchik?
Daagar
5220
Is ‘apparatchik’ Russian for asshole? Then no.
Part of me secretly hopes the initial indictments aren’t for the marquee names (Flynn, Manafort, Page) but for less-famous, previously unknown parties for previously undisclosed offenses. Because that would indicate there’s a huge pyramid of indictments to get through. It would also have the added bonus of making the Trumppets overconfident (“He’s got nothing!”) while Mueller & co. work their way up the pyramid.
But we’ll see. As somebody elsewhere said, what does this say about how far the rot has spread when we know an indictment is coming but we still can’t immediately figure out who the target is?
Can we indict Hannity for impersonating a human being?
ShivaX
5223
Honestly can we arrest Hannity for incitement or something? The guy is fucking dangerous.
ShivaX
5225
Only if you could get him to a rally where someone had a gun and get him to tell him to shoot someone or something similar.
Miramon
5228
Nice. Though of course Stone’s not worth nearly as much as Trump is to Twitter. Trump could tweet death threats and not be suspended.
