'Dark Money' Group Gave Millions to Nonprofit Working on Steele Dossier - Report

Fund for a Better Future (FBF), a California-based group, donated $2,065,000 to The Democracy Integrity Project (TDIP), the non-profit that contracted with private investigative firm Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, author of the Trump-Russia dossier, to probe POTUS, according to IRS filings reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

TDIP was founded in 2017 by Daniel Jones, a consultant who worked for Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and the first female chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Jones told the FBI that he had hired Fusion GPS and Steele to continue the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump team and Russia in 2016.

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Jones reportedly told an associate that TDIP operated as a “shadow media organisation helping the government”, and suggested that his team had planted several articles against President Trump.

Still, little is known about the donors of the two organisations – TDIP and FBF, but according to The Daily Caller, this type of public advocacy group is most closely associated with “dark money” donations.

Scott Walter, the president of the Capital Research Centre, a conservative watchdog, said this was an example of “dark money”:

“You’ve found one ‘dark money’ outfit providing dark millions to another ‘dark money’ outfit and refusing to reveal anything to you. That’s ‘dark’ two or three times over. Ironically, ‘dark money’ is most often applied only to conservative funding”, Walter said, adding that “the Left has a vast empire of ‘dark money’ groups, including the Fund for a Better Future and The Democracy Integrity Project”.

According to FBF’s recent audit, the group has four key donors, who have not been identified. In the meantime, one renowned TDIP donor has successfully been identified and is none other than Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.

A spokesman for Soros told The New York Times last October that the billionaire had contributed $1 million to TDIP. The revelation came only after TheDCNF reported that Jones had disclosed to his associate that Soros was one of TDIP’s donors.

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A report release by the House Intelligence Committee in April 2018 suggests that Jones told the FBI a year before that his group would receive $50 million in funding from seven to ten wealthy funders from New York and California.

Jones went on to say that TDIP “planned to share the information he obtained with policymakers… and with the press”, and that his organisation “had secured the services of Steele, his associate [redacted], and Fusion GPS to continue exposing Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election”.

Fusion GPS, founded by ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson, hired Christopher Steele, a former MI6 officer, in June 2016. At the time, Fusion was working for the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to look into Trump’s alleged links to Russia.

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Simpson’s firm hired Steele to compile a disparaging dossier that contained unverified allegations that Trump took part in activities that could make him vulnerable to Russian blackmail attempts. The White House has flatly rejected the allegations, with POTUS slamming the dossier as “fake” and “discredited”.

Russia has also denied any interference in the election process, stressing that the allegations were made up to excuse the defeat of Trump’s rival.

The ongoing investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller has also failed to find any evidence that would implicate Trump directly with Russia.