Ever since the Steele dossier on Trump was tied to Hillary Clinton, the media has been emphasizing Fusion GPS' claim that the firm had already been working for a Republican client. The claim was blatantly misleading because Fusion GPS only fastened on the Trump-Russia angle after the transition from a Republican client to Hillary Clinton. And that was when it hired Steele to do the Russia dossier.
But the media has fastened on to the "Republican client" angle. Now the Republican client has been revealed.
The Free Beacon announced that it had hired Fusion GPS to do research on Republican primary candidates. And that none of the work it paid for had anything to do with the Steele dossier.
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.
There's no reason to doubt that given that the preexisting story in Vanity Fair had Fusion GPS jumping on board with the Russia angle after losing the Republican client.
But by mid-June 2016, despite all the revelations Simpson was digging up about the billionaire’s roller-coaster career, two previously unimaginable events suddenly affected both the urgency and the focus of his research. First, Trump had apparently locked up the nomination, and his client, more pragmatic than combative, was done throwing good money after bad. And second, there was a new cycle of disturbing news stories wafting around Trump as the wordy headline splashed across the front page of The Washington Post on June 17 heralded, INSIDE TRUMP’S FINANCIAL TIES TO RUSSIA AND HIS UNUSUAL FLATTERY OF VLADIMIR PUTIN.
Simpson, as fellow journalists remembered, smelled fresh red meat. And anyway, after all he had discovered, he’d grown deeply concerned by the prospect of a Trump presidency. So he found Democratic donors whose checks would keep his oppo research going strong. And he made a call to London, to a partner at Orbis he had worked with in the past, an ex-spy who knew where all the bodies were buried in Russia, and who, as the wags liked to joke, had even buried some of them
So the Russia angle postdates the Beacon's involvement. The Republican client thing was always a non-issue. But the media keeps making it one because it appears to lesson Hillary's guilt.