A few weeks ago we wrote a post entitled "How Hermitage Capital, Ziff Brothers And The Clinton Global Initiative Prompted The Trump Jr. Meeting." To make a long story short, there is a long-standing feud between the founder of Hermitage Capital, William Browder, and the now infamous Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Trump Jr. last summer. Browder, on the one hand, lobbied in favor of the Magnitsky Act after being expelled from Russia under controversial circumstances while Veselnitskaya has made it her life's mission to repeal the Magnitsky Act.
So, when Democrats decided to haul Browder before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, they likely expected the anti-Russian witness to confirm that Russian intelligence was behind the Summer 2016 meeting between Veselnitskaya and Trump Jr. and that the meeting really had nothing to do with the Magnitsky Act but rather was a carefully-plotted, nefarious attempt to collude with the Trump campaign to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton.
Unfortunately, at least for the Dems, he failed to deliver. In fact, Browder delivered the exact opposite message from what the Democrats had hoped for as he confirmed that the Trump Jr. meeting was entirely linked to Veselnitskaya's life mission of repealing the Magnitsky Act.
But, Browder offered up an even more interesting tidbit of information, a tidbit that has been completely ignored by the mainstream media, that served to undermine the left's entire 'Russian collusion' narrative when he confirmed that Fusion GPS, the now infamous firm behind the 'Trump Dossier', was actually being paid by....wait for it....the Russians.
While we're certainly not experts on the intricacies of international espionage, it does seem weird that if your sole mission in life is to 'collude' with the Trump administration to defeat Hillary Clinton that you would simultaneously fund research intended to undermine the Trump campaign and then share that information with the FBI.
Here is the relevant exchange between Lindsey Graham and William Browder:
Graham: You believe that Fusion GPS should of registered under FARA, because they were acting on the behalf of the Russians?
Browder: That’s correct.
Graham: So, I just want to absorb that for a moment. The group that did the dossier on President Trump hired this British spy, wound up getting it to the FBI. You believe they were working for the Russians?
Browder: And in the Spring and Summer of 2016 they were receiving money indirectly from a senior Russian government official.
Graham: Okay. So, these are the people that were trying to undermine Donald Trump by showing the nefarious ties to Russia. Is that what you’re saying?
Browder: Well, what I’m saying with 100% certainty is that they were working to undermine the Magnitsky act and the timing of that.
Graham: But, the Fusion GPS products apparently as they hired a guy to look into Trump?
Browder: Yes.
Graham: Right.
Browder: Correct.
Ironically, as Sarah Sanders pointed out at yesterday's White House press briefing, not a single reporter from the mainstream media, the folks that have reported on 'Russian meddling' 24/7 for the past year, bothered to ask a question about this new evidence that the Russians conspired to undermine the U.S. election....wonder why?
“You guys love to talk about Russia. There’s been nonstop coverage, and the one day that there might have been a question on Russia, there wasn’t.
“Today there was public testimony that further discredited the phony dossier that’s been the source of so much of the fake news and conspiracy theories, and we learned that the firm that produced it was also being paid by the Russians."
“This is yet the latest piece of evidence that vindicates what the president has said: that this is a witch hunt and a hoax. And it’s a shame that the president and the country have had to go through this charade continually. And hopefully this will help us move forward in that process."