Democrat payment for dirty dossier scrambles the narrative in Congressional investigations

Washington Examiner:

...
“Democrats are scrambling, forming a circular firing squad. The DNC knows nothing and blames the Clinton camp. The Clinton camp blames the DNC,” Blakeman said.

A source familiar with the congressional investigation into the dossier said the revelation that Clinton and the DNC funded the research behind it could dramatically shift the direction of the Russia story.

“This absolutely changes the narrative,” the source told the Washington Examiner.

That source said the next step in the investigation is a crucial one: determining whether the FBI or the Justice Department ever used parts of the dossier to justify investigations into the Trump campaign, or ever used claims in the dossier to obtain wiretaps on Trump’s associates.

The House Intelligence Committee had issued subpoenas for documents from both the FBI and the Justice Department, but both requests had stalled until this week, the source said, describing the agencies’ agreement to hand over records a “breakthrough” in the probe.
...
The Democrats who paid for the Russia-related research “tried to launder the dossier through their law firm to protect it via attorney-client privilege,” the source familiar with the congressional investigation said.

Indeed, some reporters claimed this week that Elias and others involved had explicitly denied that the campaign entered into any arrangement with Fusion, whose financial backers had remained secret until this week. Partners at the research firm invoked their Fifth Amendment rights to remain silent when questioned about who paid for the Steele dossier before the House Intelligence Committee earlier this month.

Most of the explosive allegations in the dossier have not been substantiated beyond the general claim that Russians sought to sway public opinion during the 2016 election — a claim U.S. intelligence agencies have corroborated.

But because Steele attributed some of the other claims related to Trump and his associates to Russian officials, Clinton’s involvement in the episode has raised questions about the propriety of the Democratic presidential campaign relying on Russians for valuable information about her opponent.
...

The use of the dossier by the FBI and the intel agencies to spy on Clinton's domestic political opponents is a huge scandal.  It is no wonder that the FBI has not been cooperating with the Congressional investigations.

And do not forget the media complicity in the fraud.  John Kass notes:

...
Americans may find that this one has a third parent: Beltway journalists, who may have allowed themselves to be manipulated by a political intelligence operation in exchange for peer praise, the warmth of social media tribalism and clicks.

This hurts the many journalists putting partisanship aside to follow stories wherever they lead.

And it hurts the republic, which depends on credible, rigorous media oversight of the powerful, especially the imperial presidency.

But once you lose your name and credibility, where are you?

I hope all this worries you, no matter what political tribe you belong to, because for more than a year now, that Democratic Media Complex has been shrieking about Russia this and Trump that and collusion this and collusion that.
...

They appear to be trying to cover for Hillary Clinton's loss and their own failure to see that she would lose.  What they did was double down on a strategy that did, even more, damage to their credibility.