Fusion GPS accused of smear tactics by journalist who crossed one of its clients

PJ Media:

The shady, liberal opposition research firm behind the discredited anti-Trump dossier uses smear tactics and intimidation to discredit people who go against its clients, a London-based Venezuelan journalist told Fox News Thursday.

In congressional testimony as well, Alek Boyd said Fusion GPS labeled him a “pedophile,” “extortionist” and “drug trafficker” after he criticized Derwick Associates, one of its clients.

“I believe that Fusion GPS’s business is to do basically whatever the paymasters tell them to do,” Boyd said in his first American TV interview. “They are particularly good at spreading misinformation, disinformation and smears.”

The journalist's testimony comes as a federal judge denied the firm's request to quash a congressional subpoena for their bank records.

Boyd said Fusion, which describes itself as a “strategic intelligence” outfit, targeted him after he reported on Derwick Associates, a crooked power company with close ties to the Venezuelan government. Derwick Associates allegedly sold faulty electric plants in Venezuela, and skimmed nearly a billion dollars from corrupt contracts with the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

“It is my understanding that [Fusion GPS] were hired basically to smear Derwick opponents and to dispel any possible doubts that regular media may have had at the time,” he told Fox News.

Human rights activist Thor Halvorssen told a similar story last July, when he submitted statements to the Judiciary Committee describing for the record how the firm went after him for whistle-blowing against Derwick.

"Imagine waking up one day and seeing a headline in a fringe website that says that I'm a neocon scam artist and then you read the actual article and it says that I -- there in some Facebook posts and Twitter posts that they put out -- it says falsely says that I sleep with children, it says that I'm a heroin addict, it says that I've been to rehab, it says that I'm an embezzler," Halvorssen told Fox news' Tucker Carlson last summer.

He said that it's a "company that sells itself to the highest bidder to bring together smear campaigns and to try and destroy honest, good people who are going against their clients."
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This goes beyond hardball tactics if true.  They may have overreached with the dirty dossier which has become a huge embarrassment for the Democrats who paid them.  It would be interesting to ask them what inhibitions they have in attacking those deemed adversaries of their clients.