Hey Trump, Republicans First Funded Russia Dossier, Not DNC or Clinton

President Donald Trump‘s post-Christmas Tweeting included this morning’s whopper of a statement:

WOW, @foxandfrlends “Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED.” And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2017

Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that the original Tweet was directed at “@foxandfrlends” instead of “@foxandfriends.” (A lowercase “L” does not equal a lowercase “I.) The bigger problem goes beyond typography:  Trump’s tweet is only sort of, kind of half true.

Fusion GPS, the firm which produced the dossier, was originally hired by the Washington Free Beacon, which has been described as “a conservative website funded by a major Republican donor” (billionaire financier Paul Singer) by the New York Times. Though the Free Beacon later distanced itself from producing the actual work product, it remains a matter of record that they paid for someone else to produce it.

Yup, it was Republicans and conservatives who funded the dossier originally. Republicans and conservatives ordered Fusion GPS to drop it after it became clear the Republican party was going to rubber-stamp Trump’s ascension as savior-in-chief and name him the official party candidate. That’s according to information reportedly provided to the House Intelligence Committee by the Free Beacon itself. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee hopped in after Republicans and conservatives lost interest in the dossier. Clinton and the DNC paid Fusion GPS to complete it.

BuzzFeed published the dossier after getting its hands on it.

Not surprisingly, Twitter blew back up at the President:

State TV as your source. Buddy, you have access to the the primary sources of info, and you use FOX news as your source.

— Jen Fitzgerald (@Jenfitzlaw) December 26, 2017

How can you say a Dossier is bogus when much of the information in it has been corroborated? You of all people should know that it is pretty darned close to the truth!

— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) December 26, 2017

The Trump campaigned denied meeting any Russians for more than a year. Now we know that the campaign interacted with Russians at least 31 times.

— Pablo Cela (@PabloCela) December 26, 2017

[Image via White House]