{"id":1410609,"date":"2022-03-30T14:46:26","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T18:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1410609"},"modified":"2022-03-30T14:46:28","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T18:46:28","slug":"fec-fines-clinton-dems-for-debunked-dossier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/fec-fines-clinton-dems-for-debunked-dossier\/","title":{"rendered":"FEC Fines Clinton, Dems for Debunked Dossier"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ffec-fines-clinton-dems-for-debunked-dossier%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1410609&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>The Federal Election Commission fined the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign more than $100,000 for secretly funding opposition research that falsely accused Donald Trump of colluding with Russia.<\/p>\n<p>The commission fined the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign for &#8220;misreporting the purpose of certain disbursements&#8221; related to the infamous Steele dossier, according to a ruling released on Wednesday. The DNC and Clinton campaign paid more than $1 million in 2016 to fund the dossier project, but labeled the payments as legal expenses. The commission fined the DNC and Clinton campaign $105,000 and $8,000, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>The ruling, first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/fec-fines-dnc-clinton-for-trump-dossier-hoax\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reported<\/a> by the <em>Washington Examiner<\/em>, vindicates claims that Democrats improperly hid their links to the dossier. Former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, accused the Trump campaign of leading a &#8220;well-developed conspiracy of cooperation&#8221; with the Russian government. He also alleged that the Kremlin blackmailed Trump to do its bidding. Numerous federal and congressional investigations have debunked Steele&#8217;s allegations. Special Counsel John Durham last year <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/democrats\/main-source-for-steele-dossier-lied-to-fbi\/\">indicted<\/a> Steele&#8217;s primary source, Igor Danchenko, on charges that he lied to the FBI about his sources.<\/p>\n<p>Dan Backer, who in 2018 filed the FEC complaint on behalf of the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, praised the ruling.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This may well be the first time that Hillary Clinton\u2014one of the most evidently corrupt politicians in American history\u2014has actually been held legally accountable,&#8221; he told the <em>Examiner<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The Clinton campaign and DNC commissioned the dossier through their law firm, Perkins Coie. The firm paid more than $1 million to opposition research firm Fusion GPS to collect damaging information about Trump and Russia. Fusion GPS in turn paid $168,000 to Steele, who operates a private intelligence firm in London. Steele eventually fed the dossier to the FBI, while Fusion GPS peddled it to numerous journalists in Washington, D.C. <em>BuzzFeed News<\/em> published the dossier on Jan. 10, 2017. Democrats&#8217; ties to the dossier were not discovered until October 2017, amid an investigation led by House Republicans into the origins of the salacious document.<\/p>\n<p>The dossier played a key role in the FBI&#8217;s investigation of the Trump campaign, as well as the media&#8217;s narrative of collusion between Trump and the Russian government. The FBI relied heavily on the dossier to obtain warrants to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The Justice Department&#8217;s inspector general blasted the FBI in a report in December 2019 for failing to verify the dossier&#8217;s allegations about Page before using them to obtain surveillance warrants.<\/p>\n<p>The FEC declined to issue a fine against Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS, or Marc Elias, a former partner at Perkins Coie. Durham indicted Elias&#8217;s former partner, Michael Sussmann, in September on charges that he lied to the FBI about his work on the investigation into Trump&#8217;s ties to Russia.<\/p>\n<p>The DNC did not respond to a request for comment. Clinton campaign treasurer Elizabeth Jones also did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Federal Election Commission fined the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign more than $100,000 for secretly funding opposition research that falsely accused Donald Trump of colluding with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1410609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1410609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1410609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1410609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1410609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}