OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee have been fined by the Federal Election Commission for lying about the funding of the discredited “dossier.”
The unverified and salacious anti-Trump dossier was used in a smear attempt against Donald Trump weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
The FEC fined Clinton’s treasurer $8,000 and the DNC’s treasurer $105,000.
“The election agency said that Clinton and the DNC violated strict rules on describing expenditures of payments funneled to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through their law firm,” the Washington Examiner reported.
The report added:
The election agency said that Clinton and the DNC violated strict rules on describing expenditures of payments funneled to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through their law firm.
A combined $1,024,407.97 was paid by the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign to law firm Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s information, and the party and campaign hid the reason, claiming it was for legal services, not opposition research.
Instead, the DNC’s $849,407.97 and the Clinton campaign’s $175,000 covered Fusion GPS’s opposition research on the dossier, a basis for the so-called “Russia hoax” that dogged Trump’s first term.
The memo said that the Clinton campaign and DNC argued that they were correct in describing their payment as for “legal advice and services” because it was Perkins Coie that hired Fusion GPS. But the agency said the law is clear and was violated.
The FEC said in its filing: “Solely for the purpose of settling this matter expeditiously and to avoid further legal costs, respondent[s] does not concede, but will not further contest the commission’s finding of probable cause to proceed.”
The memo, shared with the Washington Examiner, will be made public in a month.
Dan Backer, who brought the complaint, told the Examiner: “This may well be the first time that Hillary Clinton — one of the most evidently corrupt politicians in American history — has actually been held legally accountable, and I’m proud to have forced the FEC to do their job for once. The Coolidge Reagan Foundation proved that with pluck and grit, Americans who stand with integrity can stand up to the Clinton machine and other corrupt political elites.”
Clinton is also being sued by Donald Trump.
He is suing them, claiming that they attempted to rig the 2016 presidential election by tying his campaign to Russia.
“Acting in concert, the Defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty,” the 45th President of the United States alleged in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Florida.
It just adds to the tough news that Clinton has had recently related to the 2016 presidential election.
The Department of Justice is set to produce a “large volume” of classified materials and documents this week pertaining to the ‘Russiagate’ case involving the main source for former British spy Christopher Steele’s dossier that attempted to sabotage then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s candidacy and subsequent presidency.
That’s according to special counsel John Durham, who made the revelation in a Tuesday filing in which he also asked a federal judge to extend a deadline for the production of classified discovery, in compliance with the Classified Information Procedures Act, a statute outlining the manner in which classified documents must be protected in criminal cases.
Durham said he needs more time due to agency personnel currently being involved in issues that relate to Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
“To date, the government has produced over 60,000 documents in unclassified discovery. A portion of these documents were originally marked ‘classified’ and the government has worked with the appropriate declassification authorities to produce the documents in an unclassified format,” Durham said in the filing submitted to the federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia.
“However, recent world events in Ukraine have contributed to delays in the production of classified discovery. The officials preparing and reviewing the documents at the FBI and intelligence agencies are heavily engaged in matters related to Ukraine,” Durham added.
“Nevertheless, the government will produce a large volume of classified discovery this week and will continue its efforts to produce documents in classified discovery on a rolling basis, and no later than the proposed deadlines set forth below,” Durham wrote.
In a report released in December 2019, Justice Dept. Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that the Steele dossier played a “central and essential” role in the FBI’s decision to launch a counterintelligence operation against the 2016 Trump campaign.