Robert Mueller's first arrests are expected to happen Monday, but the pro-Trump right is focused on persuading America that Uranium One and the Fusion GPS dossier are the real Russia scandal. You'd think it would be harder for the Trumpers to argue that the dossier was the product of a vast left-wing conspiracy now that we've learned that the conservative Washington Free Beacon first hired Fusion GPS to do anti-Trump research, with funding from a billionaire GOP donor:
The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by a major Republican donor, first hired the research firm that months later produced for Democrats the salacious dossier describing ties between Donald J. Trump and the Russian government, the website said on Friday.
The Free Beacon, funded in large part by the New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, hired the firm, Fusion GPS, in 2015 to unearth damaging information about several Republican presidential candidates, including Mr. Trump. But The Free Beacon told the firm to stop doing research on Mr. Trump in May 2016, as Mr. Trump was clinching the Republican nomination.
But to hardcore Trumpers, Singer is an enemy, too. Here's Breitbart:
Singer’s involvement in the dossier, and opposition research on Trump more generally, comports with a years-long pattern of advocacy for mass immigration, massive funding of establishment GOP candidates, and antagonism towards the populist-nationalist movement.
Along with George Soros and the left-wing Ford Foundation, Singer gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the pro-open borders National Immigration Forum (NIF). The NIF later set up and funded the sham grassroots Christian group “Evangelical Immigration Table” to create the illusion of widespread conservative Christian support for mass third-world immigration. As Breitbart News uncovered, the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT) never was an independent legal entity and existed only as a front for the NIF. Singer directly funded the effort, as Breitbart News and USA Today reported at the time.
This did not stop establishment Republicans, including the editors of the once-definitive conservative publication National Review, from latching onto the EIT as a genuine font of anti-Trump grassroots activism.
The Wall Street hedge-fund billionaire Singer was an early – and significant – backer of “Gang of Eight” amnesty ringleader Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in the 2016 campaign. This support made good on the two men’s years-long relationship based, in large part, on their mutual belief in the most recent major campaign for amnesty for illegal aliens and massive immigration increases in 2013.
As Breitbart News’s Julia Hahn reported in 2015, Singer and Rubio’s other wealthy backers stood to benefit significantly from the massive flow of low-skill, low-wage labor that would result from the Gang of Eight bill or its post-2016 successor.
Trump pal Roger Stone identified Singer as the GOP moneyman in a video he posted to YouTube on Wednesday.
In a Gateway Pundit interview, he claimed this as a scoop -- and took a shot at Singer and one of his allies:
You predicted some of this before anybody else.
Well, I have impeccable sources. In fact, I have a rock solid force who told me the original financier of the dirty dossier was Paul Singer, and it was facilitated by his greasy, neocon henchman, Dan Senor....
So the enemies list includes Singer, Rubio, National Review, Senor ... anyone else?
Yup:
(Donnelly is an anti-immigrant zealot who's seeking the support of Steve Bannon and the Mercers as he mounts a challenge to GOP congressman Paul Cook in California.)
Maybe it won't add up to much, but I'm watching the Republican-on-Republican combat and I'm rooting for injuries.
Crossposted at No More Mr. Nice Blog
