Federal Election Commission Fines DNC and Hillary Clinton For Lying About Funding of Debunked Russia Dossier
Blogging Hounds
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for lying about funding the fake Russia dossier.
Recall, Hillary Clinton’s camp and the DNC were hit with two lawsuits back in 2017 and 2018.
An FEC complaint was filed in October 2017 against the Clinton campaign and the DNC for violating campaign finance law because they failed to disclose payments for the Russian Dossier.
In 2018, Hillary Clinton and the DNC were accused of using state chapters as strawmen to launder $84 million in an effort to evade campaign donation limits and the Federal Election Commission ignored complaints exposing this corruption.
The FEC fined Clinton and said her campaign violated the rules because they failed to disclose payments funneled to Fusion GPS through DNC law firm Perkins Coie.
The Washington Examiner reported:
The Federal Election Commission has fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for lying about the funding of the infamous, and discredited, Russian “dossier” used in a smear attempt against Donald Trump weeks before he shocked the world with his 2016 presidential victory.
The election agency said that Clinton and the DNC violated strict rules on describing expenditures of payments funneled to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through their law firm.
A combined $1,024,407.97 was paid by the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign to law firm Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s information, and the party and campaign hid the reason, claiming it was for legal services, not opposition research.
Instead, the DNC’s $849,407.97 and the Clinton campaign’s $175,000 covered Fusion GPS’s opposition research on the dossier, a basis for the so-called “Russia hoax” that dogged Trump’s first term.
The memo said that the Clinton campaign and DNC argued that they were correct in describing their payment as for “legal advice and services” because it was Perkins Coie that hired Fusion GPS. But the agency said the law is clear and was violated.
It added that neither the campaign nor the party conceded to lying but won’t contest the finding. “Solely for the purpose of settling this matter expeditiously and to avoid further legal costs, respondent[s] does not concede, but will not further contest the commission’s finding of probable cause to proceed” with the probe, said the FEC.
The FEC, in a memo to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, which filed its complaint over three years ago, said it fined Clinton’s treasurer $8,000 and the DNC’s treasurer $105,000.
The memo, shared with Secrets, is to be made public in a month.
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