When given the opportunity to distance Hillary Clinton from the bombshell revelation that her campaign paid for the salacious dossier smearing Donald Trump, former campaign spokesman Brian Fallon punted.
“I don’t know,” he told CNN.
“Just to be clear, Brian, you have said previously in the last 24 hours you don’t believe Hillary Clinton knew about this?” Poppy Harlow asked, referring to the Washington Post report than the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded research intended to harm Trump.
“Oh, I don’t know, I haven’t asked, I haven’t spoken to her,” Fallon said.
“You don’t know .. okay, thank you for clarifying,” Harlow responded.
“Shouldn’t she know, shouldn’t you, someone so high up in the campaign be informed of this?” she asked.
“Well, I mean, she may have known, but the degree of exactly what she knew is, is, is beyond my knowledge,” Fallon said, seemingly fumbling for words.
He went onto to say Hillary “may or may not have known” about the people and companies involved.
On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported:
The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about Donald Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.
Marc Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington, D.C., firm, to conduct the research. Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community.
Elias and his law firm, Seattle-based Perkins Coie, retained the firm in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPS’ research into Trump was funded by a still unknown Republican client during the GOP primary.
The Clinton campaign and the DNC, through the law firm, continued to fund Fusion GPS’ research through the end of October 2016, days before Election Day.
Buzzfeed published the dossier in January.
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