Fusion GPS tried to tie Trump to Clinton's pedophile pal Epstein as part of smear campaign Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm whose Democrat-financed Russia dossier fueled an FBI investigation into Donald Trump, pitched other stories about the Republican presidential candidate to Washington reporters, including an attempt to tie him to a convicted pedophile who was once buddies with former President Bill Clinton. Journalist sources told The Washington Times that Fusion founder Glenn Simpson pushed the idea of a close relationship between Mr. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting sex from an underage girl. The Trump-Epstein link appears purely social, far short of Mr. Clinton’s 20-plus plane rides on Epstein’s “Lolita Express” private jet around the globe in the early 2000s. For years, Fusion GPS has been an influential hidden hand in Washington, with entree into the city’s most powerful news bureaus. Behind the scenes, the private intelligence firm run by former Wall Street Journal reporters was particularly active last year working to defeat Mr. Trump. Fusion leader Mr. Simpson, who railed against sleazy opposition research as a reporter, harbored a strong desire to bring down the builder of hotels with, well, opposition research. Fusion representatives met with New York Times reporters during the Democratic National Convention in July 2016. Ironically, it appears The Times was the first to out Fusion on Jan. 11 as the source of the scandalous dossier that BuzzFeed posted the previous day. BuzzFeed did the posting without identifying Fusion or dossier writer Christopher Steele, a former British spy. During summer 2016, Fusion’s juicy tidbits enticed a number of elite journalists to heed Mr. Simpson’s call to meet Mr. Steele in person. By then, Fusion had amassed a deep database on Mr. Trump, his contacts, his holdings and his deals. “Fusion has filed a ton of [Freedom of Information Act] requests on Trump, especially in New York,” said the journalist source who asked not to be named and has had contact with the firm. A Washington Times inquiry found that Mr. Simpson and crew were dishing out other supposed dirt on Mr. Trump and friends not contained in the 35-page dossier. Some of those tips have proved to be as shaky as Mr. Steele’s election collusion charges. Besides the Jeffrey Epstein dump, Fusion pushed the story that a special email server existed between Trump Tower and Moscow’s Alfa bank, the journalist source said. The report has failed to catch on. Internet sleuths traced the IP address to a marketing spam server located outside Philadelphia. Devin Nunes, California Republican and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, signed subpoenas forcing Fusion to disclose who pays it and whom it pays. His probe unmasked the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party as dossier financiers. In a court filing in London, he named names: In Washington in September, Mr. Steele met with The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo News, The New Yorker and CNN — a who’s who of America’s liberal media establishment. Mr. Trump’s ties to the fellow Florida billionaire appear to be more social — some dinner parties, two plane trips, and hanging out at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Mr. Silverstein, who wrote the Vice.Com story, was asked by The Washington Times if Fusion pushed the Epstein-Trump story. “Since you asked, yes, they helped me with that,” Mr. Silverstein said. “But as you can see, I could not make a strong case for Trump being super close to Epstein, so they could hardly have been thrilled with that story. [In my humble opinion], that was the best story written about Trump’s ties to Epstein, but I failed to nail him. Trump’s ties were mild compared to Bill Clinton‘s. “I said Fusion could not have been happy with the Epstein story,” he added. “What I mean is that I never proved a really sleazy connection, so frankly I was disappointed too, I thought there was more (and still wonder). But Fusion never pressured me to write anything untrue, and they never told me anything about ties between DT and JE that was false. That’s important. Their work has been solid if not 100 percent accurate in their reports, just as I periodically make mistakes. I have never seen malice or anything less than the best effort to be accurate.” https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/dec/10/glenn-simpsons-fusion-gps-ran-donald-trump-smear-c/ Don't shoot the messenger :)