Fusion GPS

Because the media in America in 2017 has created a fake news environment in which important stories (e.g., the inside workings of Fusion GPS) are deemphasized and vacuous accusations (e.g., Russian "collusion") are turned in major crises, it's interesting to watch how the Democrats and their media partners operate as the truth about "Russia" slowly leaks around the edges of their protective cordon. Kim Strassel writes:

It has been 10 days since Democrats received the glorious news that Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley would require Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort to explain their meeting with Russian operators at Trump Tower last year. The left was salivating at the prospect of watching two Trump insiders being grilled about Russian “collusion” under the klieg lights.

Yet Democrats now have meekly and noiselessly retreated, agreeing to let both men speak to the committee in private. Why would they so suddenly be willing to let go of this moment of political opportunity?

Fusion GPS. That’s the oppo-research outfit behind the infamous and discredited “Trump dossier,” ginned up by a former British spook. Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson also was supposed to testify at the Grassley hearing, where he might have been asked in public to reveal who hired him to put together the hit job on Mr. Trump, which was based largely on anonymous Russian sources. Turns out Democrats are willing to give up just about anything—including their Manafort moment—to protect Mr. Simpson from having to answer that question.

What if, all this time, Washington and the media have had the Russia collusion story backward? What if it wasn’t the Trump campaign playing footsie with the Vladimir Putin regime, but Democrats? The more we learn about Fusion, the more this seems a possibility.

We know Fusion is a for-hire political outfit, paid to dig up dirt on targets. This column first outed Fusion in 2012, detailing its efforts to tar a Mitt Romney donor. At the time Fusion insisted that the donor was “a legitimate subject of public records research.”

Gosh, I wonder why the Dems don't want Fusion GPS to be asked questions in public? I wonder why they lost interest in testimony about Trump Jr. - Kushner - Russian meeting so quickly? I wonder why the Dems trained hamsters in the media let the story drop so suddenly?

Fusion GPS are smear-miesters who have worked for and with the Democrats for years. Of course, the Dems and their progressive allies are pure as the wind-driven snow. They couldn't possibly, ever, do something as unethical as ask that a phony dossier (with all the right key words to drive the media frenzy) be created on Donald Trump, could they? And really, how could anyone honestly believe that the Obama administration used that dossier as an excuse to drive an intelligence agency investigation that conveniently unmasked (under request from key Obama staffers) members of the Trump campaign team? Never!!! And as a consequence, how dare you even think that the dossier was the fulcrum for the entire seedy Russian collusion "investigation" and indirectly for the witch hunt being conducted by the supposedly pure Robert Mueller (who just happened to appoint a legal team composed of Democratic partisans)? NEVER! Not possible.

Strassel continues:

Here’s a thought: What if it was the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton’s campaign [that funded the dossier]? What if that money flowed from a political entity on the left, to a private law firm, to Fusion, to a British spook, and then to Russian sources? Moreover, what if those Kremlin-tied sources already knew about this dirt-digging, tipped off by Mr. Akhmetshin? What if they specifically made up claims to dupe Mr. Steele, to trick him into writing this dossier?

In a fair and open media environment, those questions would drive professional journalists to look hard, very hard, in an effort to generate the investigative story of the year. But there are few real journalists left, only trained hamsters. So this, like the Imran Awan story, the Seth Rich story and everything else that parrots House of Cards will slowly fade away. At least that's what they all hope.