Fusion GPS Fiction and Dirty Tricks: More Than Just the Fake 'Russia Dossier'

P. Gardner Goldsmith | November 2, 2017
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Halloween 2017 has come and gone, but not only has the day shown people engaging in the time-tested practice of voluntary charity that CBS anger-machine Stephen Colbert mistakes for “socialism,” it’s offered another “treat” to carry with us into November.

Just days ago, Americans had the chance to discover that the “Russia Dossier” created by political hack-o-rama Fusion GPS, handed by Arizona Senator John McCain to James Comey’s FBI, and subsequently given to the ever-trustworthy Buzzfeed, was funded by the Clinton campaign and the DNC. This, despite the fact that Debbie Wasserman Shultz (the head of the DNC at the time) and John “Skippy” Podesta (then Chairman of the squeaky-clean Clinton campaign) testified to Senate investigators in September that they had no idea how Fusion GPS got paid.

Time to lawyer-up, Debbie and John. Or, to be clear: lawyer-up even more. You might be called to testify again. Of course, one fully expects you to resist testifying, just like the head of Fusion did a few months ago.

And it gets better. Thanks to Dr. Susan Berry, writing for Breitbart, we’ve been reminded that the great gods of Fusion GPS were hired by Planned Parenthood (PP) to discredit the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) in 2015.

When CMP began releasing hidden camera video of PP execs who appeared to be sickeningly familiar with the practice of selling aborted baby parts, PP responded by engaging in a defensive smear campaign that stank of desperation. They hired Fusion GPS to claim that the vids were “heavily edited” by CMP in order to paint the PP execs in a negative light.

Results of the Fusion GPS analysis were reported at Politico in August of that year with the headline, ‘Report for Planned Parenthood Finds Sting Videos Manipulated.’ The ambiguous Politico report observed, ‘A report commissioned by Planned Parenthood has found that the sting videos targeting its tissue donation practices contain intentionally deceptive edits and inaccurately transcribed conversations and are missing footage.’

But the conversations were there for anyone to see, and only the most rabidly leftist partisan could watch them and claim that the vids had been “manipulated”. In fact, just to rub it in the proverbial faces of the PP and Fusion hacks, CMP released the raw footage, showing that claims of “manipulation” were unwarranted.

And Dr. Berry recalled another important high point in the storied Fusion GPS history: their attempt to get dirt through divorce papers of a prominent Mitt Romney supporter.

After an Idaho-based man named Frank VanderSloot donated $1 million to a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney’s dazzlingly exciting Presidential campaign in 2012, a former Democrat Senate staffer, and employee for Fusion began trying to dig up dirt on VanderSloot, going so far as to call the courthouse handling his divorce records.

Classy.

But what else would we expect from this sparkling, untarnished paragon of political work that gave the world the unsubstantiated, uncorroborated, fiction of Donald Trump hiring Russian “ladies of the evening” to test how well hotel sheets could soak up uric acid?

Nothing but class in American politics, and it’s a great thing that Fusion has been working so closely with the Dems and leftist groups like Planned Parenthood for so long. It establishes a track record we can all see and remember.

It also shows us how down-and-deceptive some people are willing to be when they seek political power.

Perhaps, just perhaps, if politicians were restricted from having so much power over peoples’ lives, these kinds of venal and corrupt characters wouldn’t be so busy.

Of course, such thinking is wishful. Heck, it’s downright dreamy. As long as the state exists, the tendency will be to skirt even written constitutional rules that are supposed to constrain the power of politicians... and the state will grow. As it does, the rewards for gaining more political power will grow, and will be recognized by the venal and corrupt as viable ways to make cash and spread their aggressive ideology of political collectivism. (Are you listening, Mr. Colbert?)

So even though Fusion is being exposed, there is likely a long line of rats waiting to take its place, and a long line of politicians ready to feed the rats money for any dirt they can dig – even if it’s made up.

(Cover Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore)

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