A left-wing group backed by billionaire Democratic mega-donor George Soros that falsely claims to fight disinformation paid nearly seven figures to individuals behind the discredited Steele dossier, a Clinton campaign-funded disinformation document, new documents show.
Public IRS tax filings reveal the group paid a total of $926,000 to firms connected to former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, and Fusion GPS, the Democrat-backed consulting firm that sponsored the opposition research.
According to the newly released Democracy Integrity Project’s IRS 990 form for fiscal year 2020, the self-purported crusaders against disinformation paid $521,000 to Steele’s British firm, Walsingham Partners, and $405,000 to D.C.-based Fusion GPS as independent contractors.
The continued funding from the group led by Daniel Jones, a former intelligence staffer for California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein, comes two years after a blockbuster report from the Department of Justice inspector general. That report documented flagrant abuses of surveillance rules by the FBI relying on the dossier that agents understood to be fabricated. Jones contracted the work of Steele and Fusion GPS to promote the Russian collusion hoax that dramatically undermined Trump’s presidency.
In 2017, the group paid more than $3.8 million to the two firms behind the conspiracy at its height, according to The Daily Caller, which was “more than three times what the DNC and the Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS and Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign.” That same year, the same Democracy Integrity Project meddled in the Alabama special election Senate race using Russian disinformation techniques.
Those culpable in the years-long Russia collusion hoax are just now beginning to suffer legal consequences after avoiding them for years.
In early November, Steele’s primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko, became the third arrested over the course of an independent probe in the Justice Department conducted by U.S. Attorney John Durham. In October, Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was indicted on false statements to the FBI made in September 2016.
At the beginning of the year, former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith was virtually let off the hook with one year probation and 400 hours of community service for falsifying documents to obtain spy warrants on the Trump campaign.