Trump: Clinton team funding for Russian information ‘a disgrace’

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans latched onto revelations tying Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to a dossier of allegations about his ties to Russia. The president said Wednesday it was a “disgrace” that Democrats had helped pay for research that produced the document.

“It’s just really — it’s a very sad commentary on politics in this country,” Trump said in addressing reporters one day after news reports revealed that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, for several months last year, helped fund research that ended up in the dossier.

The document, compiled by a former British spy and alleging a compromised relationship between Trump and the Kremlin, has emerged this year as a political flashpoint. Lawenforcement officials have worked to corroborate its claims.

James Comey, FBI director at the time, advised Trump about the existence of the allegations, and the ex-spy who helped assemble the document, Christopher Steele, has been questioned as part of an ongoing probe into possible co-ordination between Russia and the Trump camp.

Trump has derided the document as “phoney stuff” and “fake news” and portrayed himself Wednesday as an aggrieved party, posting on Twitter a quote he said was from Fox News that referred to him as “the victim.”

The new disclosure about the dossier’s origins is likely to fuel complaints by Trump and his supporters that the document is merely a collection of salacious and uncorroborated claims.

“Well, I think it’s very sad what they’ve done with this fake dossier,” Trump said Wednesday, adding without elaboration that “they paid a tremendous amount of money.” He contended that Democrats had initially denied any connection to the document, but now, “they admitted it, and they’re embarrassed by it.”

Separately Wednesday, the editor of Wikileaks confirmed that his group was approached by Cambridge Analytica, a data firm working for Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election.

Julian Assange told the Associated Press that Wikileaks received a “request for information” from Cambridge Analytica. That request, which Assange would not specify, came prior to last November and was rejected. Assange’s comments came after The Daily Beast website reported that Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix reached out to Assange during the presidential campaign about the possible release of 33,000 of Clinton’s missing emails. Those emails have never been publicly released.

A spokesman for Cambridge Analytica did not respond to a request for comment. Robert Mercer, a billionaire Trump supporter, is a backer of Cambridge Analytica. Former White House strategist Steve Bannon served as a vice-president at the company before joining the administration.

Two people familiar with the newly disclosed dossier matter, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential client matters, told AP the funding arrangement was brokered in the spring of 2016 by a law firm representing the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, and that it lasted until right before Election Day.

The final memo included in the dossier, a version of which was published online by Buzzfeed in January, is dated December 2016, or after the arrangement had ended.