The commission documents said that Perkins Coie — where a then-partner, Marc Elias, represented the Clinton campaign — paid Fusion GPS just over $1 million in 2016, and the law firm received $175,000 from the campaign in return and approximately $850,000 from the party during six weeks in July and August 2016. Campaign spend disclosure reports described that most of these payments to Perkins Coie were for “legal services” and “legal and compliance advice.”
The Washington Examiner previously reported on the Commission’s letter to Mr. Backer.
The Steele dossier was a series of reports written by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent whose research firm was a subcontractor that Fusion GPS hired to investigate Mr Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. The reports cited unnamed sources who claimed that there was a “mature conspiracy of coordination” between the Trump campaign and Russia, and that Russia had a Mr. Trump blackmail tape containing prostitutes.
Mr. Steele not only gave his reports to Perkins Coie, but also shared some with the FBI and reporters. The FBI — which had launched its investigation into Russia’s interference in the elections and ties to the Trump campaign for other reasons — used part of the dossier in requests to wiretap a Trump associate. BuzzFeed published the dossier in January 2017, increasing suspicions about Mr. Trump and Russia.
It turned out that the procurement of the dossier was thin. In years past, corroborative evidence has not emerged to support many of his claims, such as the alleged sex tape, and investigators found that one key allegation was – that Mr. Trump’s attorney, Michael D. Cohen, was involved with Russian officials had met in Prague during the campaign – was wrong.
The main source of information in the dossier was Igor Danchenko, a researcher hired by Mr. Steele to gather information about Mr. Trump and Russia from people he knew, including in Europe and Russia.
Mr. Danchenko told the FBI in 2017 that he thought the tenor of the dossier was more coherent than warranted. He presented the blackmail tape story as speculation which he could not confirm; A key source called him without identifying himself, he said, adding that he had guessed the source’s identity.
Last year, Trump-era special counsel investigating the Russia probe, John H. Durham, indicted Mr. Danchenko on charges of lying to the FBI about some of his sources.