By now, most Americans are aware, or should be aware, that the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. That led to the creation of the so-called Steele Dossier, written by former British spy Christopher Steele, used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign and come up with the thus-far completely unsubstantiated claims that the Trump campaign colluded with agents of the Russian government to damage the campaign of Hillary Clinton.
Now, a new book, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and Donald Trump’s Election, written by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, is claiming that the Obama campaign did much the same thing in 2012, hiring Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
As did the Clinton campaign and the DNC, the Obama campaign hid its payments to Fusion GPS by going through the same law firm, Perkins Coie.
The book asserts, “As had become standard practice in the shadowy world of ‘oppo’ research, the Obama campaign’s payments to Fusion GPS were never publicly disclosed; the money paid to the investigative firm was reported on campaign disclosure reports as legal bills to the campaign’s law firm, Perkins Coie.”
Its work for Obama’s campaign was a lucrative business arrangement for the law firm, which was paid $3 million during the 2012 campaign. During the 2016 campaign, Fusion GPS was paid more than $1 million for its “research” on Trump. Steele, the author of the infamous dossier, which former FBI Director James Comey said was “unverified and salacious,” received $178,000.
This demonstrates that had Romney won in 2012, there might have been some attacks upon him as president, as well. And we could have expected similar attacks upon just about any other Republican nominee for president, although the vitriol against Trump has reached an entirely new level.
Many conservatives certainly had problems with Romney on substantive issues, such as his creation of a healthcare plan in Massachusetts upon which President Obama patterned his own Affordable Care Act. But looking back on the 2012 campaign, one wonders whether the attacks that the Democrats lodged against Romney had their origins in the “dirt”-digging efforts of Fusion GPS.
One Super PAC ran an ad casting blame upon Romney for a woman’s death from cancer after his company, Bain Capital, shut down the steel mill where the woman’s husband worked.
Ilyona Soptic’s widower, Joe, was featured in the ad paid for by Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC working for Obama’s election, in which he stated, “When Mitt Romney closed the plant I lost my healthcare, and my family lost their healthcare. A short time after that, my wife became ill. I don’t know how long she was sick and I think maybe she didn’t say anything because she knew we couldn’t afford the insurance.”
The truth is that his wife’s primary insurance was through her employer, a local thrift store. She did not lose her healthcare coverage when her husband lost his job, as his policy was only her secondary coverage. In addition to that, Romney left Bain in 2002, and it was not until 2006 that Mrs. Soptic went to the hospital with symptoms of pneumonia. As it turned out, she had stage-four cancer, and lived only a few more days.
This illustrates that no Republican nominee, even a candidate as “moderate” as Romney, will be free from such attacks. The point is for the Left to use the Republican candidate as an example of opposition to progressive goals — even “moderates” such as Romney, McCain, Bush, or Dole. Every Republican candidate is cast as, at least, a closet racist, someone who is insensitive to the “poor,” and somewhat a sexist. The game plan being used against Trump is not new, but it is particularly intense.
As Gary Allen noted in his best-selling None Dare Call it Conspiracy, “Because the Establishment controls the media,” anyone exposing their plans “will be the recipient of a continuous fusillade of invective from newspapers, magazines, TV and radio.” Allen’s book was published in 1971. Today, of course, he would have had to add the Internet, but otherwise, it could aptly describe the attacks upon President Trump.
The use of Fusion GPS against someone such as Romney, a moderate in both policies and personality, should add to the doubts about the veracity of the present unrelenting campaign against Trump. Even if Trump were to be a “kinder and gentler” Trump, his enemies would still find something on which to attack him. They would still imply that he was a racist and a sexist who hated this or that group.
After all, they even made a big deal about the way Romney transported his dog on a family vacation.
Photo: AP Images
