Republican campaigns deny any knowledge of Fusion GPS dirty dossier

Byron York:

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As far as the origin of the dossier is concerned, the idea that it all started with Republicans has become conventional wisdom.

But there are a lot of well-connected Republicans who are quite skeptical of the story. Specifically, the GOP strategists most involved in the competing campaigns that were trying to stop Trump — Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, the campaigns that were closely linked to big Republican donors and were hungry for any negative information they could use against Trump — say they knew nothing about the effort at the time and do not believe it was in fact begun by a Republican donor.

"I don't believe the mad Republican donor theory," said Mike Murphy, the veteran strategist who ran Jeb Bush's $118 million super PAC, noting he never used Fusion GPS and had no inkling that it was conducting oppo for a big GOP donor. "We had the biggest share of Republican major donors," Murphy continued. "They all gossip. One guy is for Christie, his partner is for Bush. They all talk to each other, and I think I would have heard about it. And I didn't."

Terry Sullivan, who ran Marco Rubio's campaign, told me he had never heard of Fusion GPS before the dossier became public in January of this year. And he doesn't buy the it-started-with-Republicans idea. "The reason it is not at all believable that a Republican was behind it is, nobody used [any information] from it," Sullivan said. "Everybody was pretty damn desperate at the end. If someone had a kitchen sink, they would have thrown it."

Jeff Roe, who ran the Ted Cruz campaign, also noted that Trump's opponents were increasingly desperate to stop him as the primary season wore on. If Fusion GPS were peddling sensational information about Trump, why wouldn't one of those campaigns have used it? Beyond that, the non-Trump Republican campaigns talked to each other; there was no wall of silence between them. "Nobody ever brought this up," Roe told me, saying he finds the idea that a Republican found dirt on Trump and never used it or offered it to the campaigns is "total BS."

John Weaver, the veteran Republican operative who ran the John Kasich campaign, told me he was not aware of Fusion GPS at the time. "No one ever approached us, no one offered to help us. No one associated with the Kasich campaign had anything to do with it," Weaver said. He learned about the dossier when it was reported in the press, Weaver added.
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Apart from the campaigns, there were Republican operatives who took part in an ad hoc anti-Trump effort that ramped up after the departures of Bush and Rubio left the race to Trump, Cruz and Kasich. One person deeply involved in the effort told me, "I don't believe the dossier had anything to do with the Republican world because I would have known about it. There's no way I would not have known. I just never heard boo about it."
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There is more.

I get the feeling this line about the GOP opposition research paying for it is a bit of misdirection on the part of Fusion which has desperately tried to avoid saying who paid for its dirty dossier.  I suspect either the Democrats are the Russians were behind the effort all along or they could have been working together.