Well, smack my ass and call me Sally. Never in a million years would I have guessed this.

Now that it has been revealed that the Trump dossier was a joint project of the Clinton campaign and the DNC…with the FBI chipping in a bit of your money after the election…the next big mystery has been who was the original client that hired Fusion GPS to find oppo on Donald Trump. As you know, CNN and other Democrats have been portraying the sponsor as a GOP donor or candidate. Now we know it was neither:

Lawyers for the conservative publication Washington Free Beacon informed the House Intelligence Committee Friday that the organization was the original funder for the anti-Trump opposition research project with Fusion GPS.

The Free Beacon funded the project from the fall of 2015 through the spring of 2016, whereupon it withdrew funding and the project was picked up by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The original arrangement between the Free Beacon and Fusion GPS involved opposition research into multiple Republican candidates, not just front-runner Donald Trump.

Sources close to the Free Beacon stress that the project, when the Free Beacon funded it, had nothing to do with Russia and did not involve Christopher Steele, the former British spy who gathered anti-Trump dirt in Russia. Steele was retained by Fusion GPS when the project was funded by Democrats, and not in its initial phase, when the Free Beacon was involved.

The reason why the came clean is obvious. Devin Nunes has issued a subpoena for Fusion GPS’s bank records for the express purpose of finding who funded the oppo efforts. That subpoena is in court, but unless the Obama-appointed judte finds more emanations and penumbras of the Fourth Amendment, they are going to have to give them up. At the same time, Nunes issued a subpoena to the FBI for their documents and yesterday, after a month-and-a-half delay, the FBI agreed to comply. Coming forward was the only real course of action available to them.

What we know, right now, fits into the narrative that has been pieced together. Christopher Steele wasn’t brought into the project until about three months after Free Beacon had ceased funding the project.

This is their statement:

Since its launch in February of 2012, the Washington Free Beacon has retained third party firms to conduct research on many individuals and institutions of interest to us and our readers. In that capacity, during the 2016 election cycle we retained Fusion GPS to provide research on multiple candidates in the Republican presidential primary, just as we retained other firms to assist in our research into Hillary Clinton. All of the work that Fusion GPS provided to the Free Beacon was based on public sources, and none of the work product that the Free Beacon received appears in the Steele dossier. The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele. Nor did we have any knowledge of the relationship between Fusion GPS and the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and the Clinton campaign.

Representatives of the Free Beacon approached the House Intelligence Committee today and offered to answer what questions we can in their ongoing probe of Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier. But to be clear: We stand by our reporting, and we do not apologize for our methods. We consider it our duty to report verifiable information, not falsehoods or slander, and we believe that commitment has been well demonstrated by the quality of the journalism that we produce. The First Amendment guarantees our right to engage in news-gathering as we see fit, and we intend to continue doing just that as we have since the day we launched this project.

Matthew Continetti
Editor in Chief

Michael Goldfarb
Chairman