{"id":87581,"date":"2017-10-25T20:12:53","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T00:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=87581"},"modified":"2017-10-25T20:12:53","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T00:12:53","slug":"fec-complaint-alleges-hillary-dnc-broke-election-law-by-not-disclosing-trump-russia-dossier-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=87581","title":{"rendered":"FEC Complaint Alleges Hillary, DNC Broke Election Law By Not Disclosing Trump-Russia Dossier Funding"},"content":{"rendered":"

ZeroHedge.com<\/p>\n

Today the\u00a0Campaign Legal Center<\/a>\u00a0(CLC) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton\u2019s 2016 campaign committee violated campaign finance law by failing to accurately disclose the purpose and recipient of payments for the dossier of research alleging connections between then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia.\u00a0 The CLC’s complaint asserts that by effectively hiding these payments from public scrutiny the DNC and Clinton\u00a0“undermined the vital public information role of campaign disclosures.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\u00a0On October 24, The Washington Post revealed that the DNC and Hillary for America paid opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig into Trump\u2019s Russia ties, but routed the money through the law firm Perkins Coie and described the purpose as \u201clegal services\u201d on their FEC reports rather than research. By law, campaign and party committees must disclose the reason money is spent and its recipient.<\/div>\n

\u201cBy filing misleading reports, the DNC and Clinton campaign undermined the vital public information role of campaign disclosures,\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0said Adav Noti, senior director, trial litigation and strategy at CLC, who previously served as the FEC\u2019s Associate General Counsel for Policy.\u00a0\u201cVoters need campaign disclosure laws to be enforced so they can hold candidates accountable for how they raise and spend money. The FEC must investigate this apparent violation and take appropriate action.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cQuestions about who paid for this dossier are the subject of intense public interest, and this is precisely the information that FEC reports are supposed to provide,\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0said Brendan Fischer, director, federal and FEC reform at CLC.\u00a0\u201cPayments by a campaign or party committee to an opposition research firm are legal, as long as those payments are accurately disclosed. But describing payments for opposition research as \u2018legal services\u2019 is entirely misleading and subverts the reporting requirements.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Hillary\"<\/p>\n

While details of the payment arrangements remain scarce,\u00a0FEC records indicate that the Hillary campaign and the DNC paid a total of $12 million to Perkins Coie for “legal services.”<\/strong>\u00a0 Marc Elias, a Perkins partner and general counsel for Hillary’s campaign, then used some portion of those funds to turn around and hire Fusion GPS who then contracted with a former British spy, Christopher Steele, to compile the now-infamous dossier.\u00a0 Per the\u00a0Daily Caller<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\u00a0It was revealed on Tuesday that the Clinton campaign and DNC began paying Fusion GPS, the research firm that commissioned the dossier, last April to continue research it was conducting on Trump. The Washington Post reported that Fusion approached lawyers at Perkins Coie, the firm that represented the campaign and DNC, offering to sell its investigative services.<\/div>\n

Marc Elias, a Perkins Coie partner, and the general counsel for the campaign and DNC, oversaw the operation, according to The Post.<\/p>\n

It is not clear how much Democrats, through Perkins Coie, paid Fusion for the project, which lasted until early November.\u00a0Federal Election Commission records show that the campaign and DNC paid the law firm $12 million during the election cycle.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ironically,\u00a0most of the sources listed in the dossier were based in Russia and include a “senior Kremlin official” as well as other “close associates of Vladimir Putin.”\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Moreover, as CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell notes, it’s highly likely that some portion of the $12 million paid to Perkins Coie by the DNC and Hillary campaign made it’s way into the pockets of those “senior Kremlin officials” as compensation for the services.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\u00a0In the dossier, Steele cites numerous anonymous sources, many of which work in the upper echelons of the Russian government.<\/div>\n

The first two sources cited in the dossier\u2019s first memo, dated June 20, 2016, are \u201ca senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0\u201ca former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

A third source is referred to as\u00a0\u201ca senior Russian financial official.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>Other sources in the dossier are described as\u00a0\u201ca senior Kremlin official\u201d and sources close to Igor Sechin, the head of Russian oil giant Rosneft and a close associate of Vladimir Putin\u2019s.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To summarize, after a full year of mainstream media hysteria over alleged Trump-Russia collusion, it now appears as though the Hillary campaign may have been the only one to funnel cash to “Kremlin operatives” in return for political dirt…<\/p>\n

Of course, we have no doubt that Hillary was in the dark about all of these arrangements.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here is the full complaint filed by CLC<\/a>:<\/p>\n