Conservative Website First Funded Anti-Trump Research by Firm That Later Produced Dossier

The following article by Kenneth P. Vogel and Maggie Haberman was posted on the New York Times website October 27, 2017:

Paul Singer in June at an event for investors in New York. Credit Misha Friedman/Bloomberg

WASHINGTON — The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by a major Republican donor, first hired the research firm that months later produced for Democrats the salacious dossier describing ties between Donald J. Trump and the Russian government, the website said on Friday.

The Free Beacon, funded in large part by the New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, hired the firm, Fusion GPS, in 2015 to unearth damaging information about several Republican presidential candidates, including Mr. Trump. But The Free Beacon told the firm to stop doing research on Mr. Trump in May 2016, as Mr. Trump was clinching the Republican nomination.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee had begun paying Fusion GPS in April for research that eventually became the basis for the dossier. Continue reading “Conservative Website First Funded Anti-Trump Research by Firm That Later Produced Dossier”