{"id":1457867,"date":"2022-04-29T09:44:34","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T13:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1457867"},"modified":"2022-04-29T09:44:41","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T13:44:41","slug":"emails-surface-more-evidence-hillary-clinton-paid-for-anti-trump-disinformation-operation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/emails-surface-more-evidence-hillary-clinton-paid-for-anti-trump-disinformation-operation\/","title":{"rendered":"Emails Surface More Evidence Hillary Clinton Paid For Anti-Trump Disinformation Operation"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/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%2Femails-surface-more-evidence-hillary-clinton-paid-for-anti-trump-disinformation-operation%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=1457867&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><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/14637822417_2ea5a19fba_k.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Evidence continues to mount that the Hillary Clinton campaign paid former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to launder fraudulent opposition research through U.S. intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n<p>Newly published internal emails reveal that before Fusion GPS hired Steele on behalf of the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Donald Trump, the opposition-research firm began peddling several of the same Russia collusion lies that the former MI6 agent would later detail in the Steele dossier. This fact highlights a significant aspect of the Spygate scandal that deserves further focus and condemnation: Democrats\u2019 outrageous exploitation of intelligence credentials and connections to launder scurrilous accusations against a political enemy.<\/p>\n<p>Since early 2018, when the then-Chair of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes exposed in a four-page memorandum evidence that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during the 2016 presidential election cycle, Americans open to reality have been slowly learning of the breadth of the Spygate scandal.<\/p>\n<p>Attention during this time rightly focused first on FISA abuse and the FBI\u2019s use of unverified \u201cintel\u201d to obtain a court order to surveil former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. As the scandal continued to unravel, the categories of impropriety multiplied, from deep-staters illegally leaking to the media to build the collusion narrative and later to force the appointment of a special counsel, to the selection of the \u201cright people\u201d in the form of rabid partisans to staff the Crossfire Hurricane team.<\/p>\n<p>Another underlying aspect of the scandal only became clear recently with the prosecution of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. Proceedings in Special Counsel John Durham\u2019s false statement criminal case against Sussmann reveal Democrats paid credentialed individuals connected to U.S. intelligence agencies to pass, to both the press and the government, invented evidence of Trump colluding with Russia.<\/p>\n<p>Sussmann, who previously worked for the DOJ, represents one such connected individual whose credentials served to hide the Clinton campaign\u2019s responsibility for creating the Russia-collusion disinformation. Over the last several months, filings in the special counsel\u2019s criminal case against Sussmann have exposed how he played his relationships with FBI and CIA agents to score meetings to pass on data and \u201cwhite papers\u201d related to the Alfa Bank and Yota phone Russia hoaxes, while hiding their origins.<\/p>\n<p>Now, a <a href=\"https:\/\/sleuthscorner.docdroid.com\/GYBo5Xm\/2022-04-25-durham-huge-reporter-email-list-pdf\">batch<\/a> of emails between Fusion GPS and journalists made <a href=\"https:\/\/sleuthscorner.docdroid.com\/GYBo5Xm\/2022-04-25-durham-huge-reporter-email-list-pdf\">public<\/a> earlier this week in the Sussmann case after the special counsel\u2019s office inadvertently filed them on the public docket suggest Steele was paid for the same reason: his credentials and connections would hide the political nature of the hit.<\/p>\n<p>Those emails reveal that the month before Fusion GPS hired Steele, it had begun spinning the tale that the Trump campaign-connected Carter Page served Russian interests. In mid-May 2016, Fusion GPS\u2019s Jake Berkowitz emailed Slate reporter Franklin Foer about Page. The note, which includes several links with prefatory sentences about Page, reads as a collaborative effort to investigate the Trump advisor.<\/p>\n<p>Peter Fritsch, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, also joined in the email thread. It continued a few days later, with Berkowitz sharing with Fritsch and Foer his latest \u201cresearch\u201d on Page. That email included a couple of names of \u201cformer partners\u201d of Page and a link to a Medium.com <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/insurge-intelligence\/who-will-own-the-white-house-57c1e95c101c\">article<\/a> critical of Page. The Medium article also attacked Trump\u2019s then-volunteer campaign advisor George Papadopoulos,\u00a0whom the FBI would later claim prompted the launching of Crossfire Hurricane when Papadopoulos supposedly bragged that the Russians had dirt on Hillary.<\/p>\n<p>The Fusion GPS researchers continued to share the results of their probe into Page with Foer. Berkowitz on May 19, 2016 told his Fusion GPS boss and the reporter that \u201csome Merrill bond issuances during Page\u2019s tenure\u201d at the investment banking firm of Merrill Lynch involved some \u201cinteresting characters,\u201d including Alfa Bank and its founders. To that email, Foer responded that he is \u201cgoing to do some work on Rick Burt,\u201d whom he bets \u201cdoes some work for the Russians.\u201d Foer would then claim in a follow-up email that Burt was on the Alfa Bank board.<\/p>\n<p>Foer incorporated the early research he exchanged with Fusion GPS in his Slate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/cover_story\/2016\/07\/vladimir_putin_has_a_plan_for_destroying_the_west_and_it_looks_a_lot_like.html\">piece<\/a>, \u201cVladimir Putin has a Plan for Destroying the West\u2014and It Looks a Lot Like Donald Trump,\u201d which cast Page, Papadopoulos, and the Alfa-Bank-connected Burt as Russian-compromised associates of Trump. Foer was also the \u201cjournalist\u201d who ran the Alfa Bank tale at Slate just two weeks before the presidential election. Emails exchanged in late June between Fritsch and Foer also show Fusion GPS focusing on Sergei Millian, with Fritsch declaring that Millian is \u201cclearly kgb.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fusion GPS continued to exchange emails over the next three months with Foer and other Democrat scribes, such as the Washington Post\u2019s Tom Hamburger and Mark Hosenball from Reuters. Millian was a subject of a July 24, 2016 email sent by Fusion GPS\u2019s other founder, Glenn Simpson, to Hamburger. In that late-July email, Simpson provided the Post\u2019s \u201cjournalist\u201d three email addresses for Millian, suggesting a push by Fusion GPS to have reporters focus on Millian as part of the Russia-collusion hoax.<\/p>\n<p>These emails prove significant much beyond exposing the symbiotic relationship that existed between the Clinton-funded Fusion GPS and the unpaid propagandists in the press. That\u2019s because the timing and targets of the communications indicate Democrats paid for Steele to stamp their opposition research with an MI6 imprimatur.<\/p>\n<p>The law firm of Perkins Coie first hired Fusion GPS in April 2016 to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fec.gov\/files\/legal\/murs\/7291\/7291_31.pdf\">conduct<\/a> opposition research on Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. But Fusion GPS did not retain Steele until June 2016, with Steele\u2019s initial memorandum being first dated June 20, 2016. By then, however, Fusion GPS had already targeted Page and highlighted Alfa Bank as suspect. Fusion GPS\u2019s communications with the press pre-Steele also focused on Page\u2019s role as an advisor for the Trump campaign and various connections to Alfa Bank.<\/p>\n<p>Steele\u2019s dossier would later seemingly confirm Fusion GPS\u2019s framing of Page as a Russian agent based on the numerous <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/21\/4-special-counsel-revelations-tying-spygate-to-hillary-clintons-campaign\/\">lies<\/a> Steele\u2019s \u201cprimary sub-source,\u201d Igor Danchenko, fed the former MI6 agent. Among his other lies, Danchenko, who is currently under indictment for making false statements to the FBI, falsely claimed that Millian had provided detailed intel related to the Trump campaign and Page.<\/p>\n<p>While Steele did not name Danchenko or Millian in his memoranda, his dossier not only identified Page but framed Page as a Russian agent. The Steele dossier then served as the basis for the FBI to obtain a FISA court order to surveil Page, and <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2020\/01\/28\/ig-report-proves-obama-administration-spied-on-trump-campaign-big-time\/\">in turn<\/a>, the Trump campaign.<\/p>\n<p>The DOJ\u2019s Office of Inspector General has already excoriated the DOJ and FBI agents involved in obtaining FISA surveillance orders for Page for misconduct, but the blame extends further to the FISA court. It issued the unconstitutional surveillance orders <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2020\/01\/10\/the-fisa-court-is-complicit-in-the-fbi-abuses-its-raising-cain-over\/\">based on<\/a> Steele\u2019s work as a former MI6 agent.<\/p>\n<p>No wonder Fusion GPS paid Steele. They needed his credential as an MI6 agent to provide gravitas to their opposition research and to hide the Clinton-campaign roots of the attacks on Trump. The Clinton campaign also needed Steele to exploit his government contacts, which the former spy did by passing the dossier off to his handler, his pal Bruce Ohr, and later the U.S. State Department. Steele thus served as a facade for Democrats\u2019 attempt to frame Trump as a Russian patsy.<\/p>\n<p>The email dump earlier this week, which represents but a fraction of \u201cthe hundreds\u201d of emails between Fusion GPS and reporters, further reveals this reality by showing that Fusion GPS already had the storyline it paid Steele to compile well in hand before they retained the former MI6 agent. The same could be said for the journalists.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Margot Cleveland is The Federalist&#8217;s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. <\/p>\n<p>Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize\u2014the law school\u2019s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. <\/p>\n<p>As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Evidence continues to mount that the Hillary Clinton campaign paid former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to launder fraudulent opposition research through U.S. intelligence agencies. Newly published internal emails reveal that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1457867","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\/1457867","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\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1457867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457867\/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=1457867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1457867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1457867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}