Trump claims Clinton paid $6M for dossier research

President Trump claimed on Wednesday that former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid nearly $6 million to the firm behind a controversial opposition research dossier alleging ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

In an interview set to air Wednesday evening on Fox Business Network’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” Trump ripped the dossier as “a total phony” and “disgraceful,” alleging that the Clinton campaign spent almost $6 million to fund the research.

“Don’t forget Hillary Clinton totally denied this. She didn’t know anything. She knew nothing,” he said. “All of a sudden they found out. What I was amazed at, it’s almost $6 million that they paid and it’s totally discredited, it’s a total phony. I call it fake news. It’s disgraceful. It’s disgraceful.”

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The Washington Post reported Tuesday that both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund the research contained in the dossier, which alleges coordination between members of Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.

Just how much the Clinton campaign paid the private research firm Fusion GPS to commission the dossier is unclear.

According to the Post, the campaign paid $5.6 million to the law firm Perkins Coie from June 2015 to December 2016. Marc Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS’s services in April 2016. 

That funding went through October 2016, just before the presidential election, according to the Post. It’s not clear how much of the $5.6 million went toward funding the research that led to the dossier and how much went toward other expenses.

Trump seized on the news that Clinton’s campaign and the DNC helped fund research in the dossier, saying on Wednesday that it was one of many examples of how critics made up “the whole Russia hoax.”

“This was the Democrats coming up with an excuse for losing an election,” he told reporters at the White House.

A special counsel and multiple congressional committees are still investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, as well as possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Trump has denied the allegations, and has called the probes a “witch hunt.”