Trump responds to dossier matter
WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped pay for political research into Donald Trump that ultimately produced a dossier of allegations about his ties to Russia, The Associated Press has learned.
Trump has called the material “phony stuff,” and on Wednesday he portrayed himself as the aggrieved party.
The president posted a quote on Twitter that he attributed to Fox News: “Clinton campaign & DNC paid for research that led to the anti-Trump Fake News Dossier. The victim here is the President.” @FoxNews
The FBI has worked to corroborate the document, and special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which is investigating potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, questioned Christopher Steele, a former British spy who helped compile the claims in the dossier, weeks ago.
The dossier circulated in Washington last year and was turned over to the FBI for its review. It contends that Russia was engaged in a long-standing effort to aid Trump and had amassed compromising information about the Republican. Trump has repeatedly dismissed the document as false and in recent days has questioned whether Democrats or the FBI had helped fund it.
Trump also has challenged the findings of the FBI, NSA and CIA that Russia waged a largescale influence campaign to interfere in the election. The FBI and the CIA have said with high confidence that the effort was aimed at hurting Clinton’s candidacy and helping Trump. The NSA found the same with “moderate” confidence.
A person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential client matters, said the funding arrangement was brokered by Marc Elias, a lawyer for the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and his law firm of Perkins Coie.