Morris & McGann: Hillary Campaign Paid Russian Dossier Sources

We know that Hillary Clinton’s campaign bankrolled the discredited anti-Trump dossier. But now it appears that her presidential campaign also paid Steele’s dubious Kremlin “sources” for the information they provided — much of it already proven to be phony.

How much more discredited can that dossier get?

Hillary’s campaign admitted that it secretly paid Fusion GPS $1,020,000 to amass the dossier framing Trump for allegedly colluding with the Russians. The payments were funneled through D.C. law firm Perkins, Cole. Fusion then paid former MI-6 spook Christopher Steele $168,000 to do the leg work and cover his expenses.

But Steele could not travel to Russia, since he no longer had diplomatic protection. So, his modus operandi, allegedly, was to instead pay Russian sources and use third parties to talk to them. That has been widely reported. And his contract reportedly called for expenses as well as his fee. Paying the informants would definitely be an expense.

Michael Morell, a Hillary supporter and the former acting CIA director, confirmed that “Mr. Steele paid the Russian intelligence sources who provided the information and never met them directly.”

So, connect the dots. If Hillary’s campaign paid Fusion, Fusion paid Steele, and Steele paid his sources, ergo: Hillary’s campaign paid Steele’s sources.

So, not only did Hillary benefit from the disinformation Steele concocted, she undoubtedly underwrote the payouts to his Russian sources.

She made the entire Trump/Russian collusion/illusion happen. She now falsely states that her campaign simply picked up where the Republicans left off on the anti-Trump research.

That’s a lie. There were no foreign intelligence operatives involved until her campaign took over. That’s a matter of record. It was Hillary who took it to the next level.

Don’t forget that’s Hillary’s M.O., to hire private eyes through law firms and pay them to dig up dirt on her enemies. It’s an old story.

Her campaign paid to collect many of the fabricated stories that animated the dossier.

Steele’s unorthodox sources included:

• Source A, a “senior Russian foreign ministry figure.”
• Source B, a “former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin.”
• Source C, a “senior Russian financial officer still active in the Kremlin.”
• Source G, simply identified in the dossier as “a Kremlin official.”

So, we have a U.S. presidential candidate, a former Secretary of State, paying an ex- British spy to, in turn, pay top officials in the Kremlin — with campaign money secretly funneled through that former spy — to provide information she can use in her negative campaign —- info that is largely false.

Steele says that much of his information came from “unsolicited sources”? Who were these sources and how did they know to pass information to Steele? Were other foreign spooks hired to provide more intel to Steele?

We need to know.

There’s over $800,000 of the money paid to Fusion by the campaign that hasn’t been unaccounted for. It’s not just other spooks who might have benefitted. There are some questions about the press.

Did Hillary pay journalists to hype the dossier story?

We need to know. The House Intelligence Committee has just reached an agreement for Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson to testify next week.

It’s time for some answers.

To date, Fusion has refused to comply with a subpoena from the House Intelligence Committee for its bank records, a request specifically geared to determine if it had paid any journalists. Fusion does not deny that it made such payments, but claims a First Amendment privilege.

So, Hillary’s campaign likely paid Russian sources, instruments of Vladimir Putin, to provide fabricated evidence to sell the idea that Trump was colluding with Putin (when, in fact, she was doing the colluding). And then she may have paid journalists to report, spin, and hype the story that resulted.

Her efforts have been fabulously successful. While she lost the election, she has cast a shadow over Trump’s transition and his first year in office. The dossier she paid for has led the special prosecutor on a wild goose chase after the Holy Grail — evidence of collusion that never happened.