Anti-Trump dossier firm did work for corrupt regimes, rights group claims

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Washington Times

Corrupt Russian and Venezuelan officials benefited from the work of the Washington-based firm that also commissioned the largely unsubstantiated anti-Trump campaign research dossier, according to testimony from a leading South American human rights campaigner submitted to a congressional panel probing the 2016 Russian election-meddling scandal.

Thor Halvorssen, head of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, said in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Fusion GPS operated a smear campaign against journalists who threatened to expose a multibillion dollar fraud involving faulty South American electric power plants, the laundering of its proceeds in U.S. banks, and a kickback scheme to pay off Venezuelan officials.

“Corrupt government officials in dictatorships would be powerless if they didn’t have cronies in the business world, and these cronies, in turn, would be useless allies without enablers like Fusion GPS, who are eager to whitewash and profit from their crimes,” Mr. Halvorssen wrote in testimony that he also published on Facebook.

Fusion GPS’s co-founder, former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson, has been a key figure in the Russian election meddling saga ever since the Anti-Trump dossier, which alleged a years-long Kremlin conspiracy to elect Donald Trump and included colorful sex stories, was leaked to the press after the Republican’s November victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Simpson hired former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele in 20015 to compile opposition research on then-candidate Trump.

________

A little corruption goes a long way...