Did Hillary and/or the DNC pay for the dossier against trump
Executive summary
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded opposition research that ultimately produced the Steele dossier by hiring Perkins Coie, which retained Fusion GPS and led to hiring ex‑British intelligence officer Christopher Steele; this funding relationship has been reported by multiple outlets and was the subject of an FEC settlement [1][2][3]. Federal regulators concluded the campaign and the DNC misreported those payments and accepted civil penalties totaling about $113,000 in 2022 [4][3].
1. The money trail: how the campaign and DNC routed payments
Reporting shows the Clinton campaign retained the law firm Perkins Coie and that Perkins Coie, working for both the campaign and the DNC, engaged Fusion GPS in April 2016 to continue opposition research on Donald Trump that Fusion had begun for other clients during the GOP primary; Fusion then engaged Christopher Steele to produce the memoranda that became known as the dossier [1][2][5]. The public record and regulatory findings establish that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid Perkins Coie, which flowed funds to Fusion GPS, rather than directly paying the research firm on campaign disclosure forms [3][6].
2. What regulators found: misreporting and a settlement
The Federal Election Commission concluded that Hillary for America and the DNC mischaracterized the purpose of those payments on FEC reports—listing them as legal services or compliance consulting instead of opposition research—and the committees agreed to pay a combined civil penalty of about $113,000 to settle the FEC inquiry (DNC $105,000; Clinton campaign $8,000) without admitting wrongdoing [4][3][6][7].
3. Who actually compiled the dossier and when Fusion was involved
Christopher Steele, a former U.K. intelligence officer, compiled the dossier under contract to Fusion GPS; Steele’s memoranda began appearing in June 2016 after Fusion was engaged by Perkins Coie on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC in April 2016, according to contemporaneous reporting [2][1]. Fusion had been conducting Trump research earlier in the primary paid for by an unnamed Republican client, meaning the work that became the dossier had roots in multiple clients and a chain of contracting rather than a single direct paycheck from Clinton or the DNC to Steele [2][5].
4. What the dossier was used for and how its claims fared
The dossier contained unverified and in many cases salacious allegations; parts of it were shared with U.S. intelligence and the FBI and were used in aspects of the early investigative process—reports say the FBI referenced Steele’s reporting in seeking judicial process during its probe [4][6]. Over time numerous central allegations in Steele’s memos were discredited or uncorroborated, and subsequent investigations and legal actions identified issues with some of Steele’s sources and related testimony [6][3].
5. Limits, politics and alternative narratives
While the financial link from the Clinton campaign and the DNC to Perkins Coie to Fusion GPS is well documented in mainstream reporting and accepted by the FEC settlement, important uncertainties remain in the public record: the precise dollar amounts Fusion GPS received specifically for Steele’s work, which campaign officials knew what and when, and the full content and provenance of every sub‑vendor contract are not exhaustively detailed in the cited reporting [2][1]. Political actors have used these facts for competing narratives—critics frame the dossier as a politically funded “hoax,” while supporters note that hiring opposition research firms is common and legal so long as disclosures are accurate, an issue the FEC action directly addressed [8][9][5].
6. Bottom line
Yes: the best‑documented facts show Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC financed opposition research that led to the Steele dossier by routing payments through Perkins Coie to Fusion GPS, a chain later acknowledged by reporting and addressed in an FEC settlement; the details of what was known by whom and the dossier’s factual reliability, however, remain subject to further nuance and dispute in the public record [1][2][4][3].