A nonprofit group run by a former top aide for Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein who has pushed debunked claims about a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank spent the post-2016 era funneling millions to Christopher Steele’s company and the opposition research firm Fusion GPS.
Daniel Jones, lead author of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s interrogation program, founded the Democracy Integrity Project in January 2017. Tax records show he funded Steele, Fusion, and others, keeping a web of groups working and donor money flowing to the tune of millions of dollars for years, helping the groups continue their Russia-related research into 2020.
The filings contend the mission of the nonprofit is to provide research “to educate the public on matters such as foreign election interference, global extremism, corruption, and coordinated disinformation.”
Tax records from the Democracy Integrity Project filed in November 2021 show the organization sent $521,000 for “research consulting” in 2020 to Walsingham Partners, which is co-owned by Steele.
The records, first posted by Ken Vogel of the New York Times, also show the Democracy Integrity Project sent $405,000 to Advance Democracy Inc. — also run by Jones — and sent $140,000 for “research consulting” to Bean LLC, the parent company for Fusion, co-founded by former Wall Street Journal reporters Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch.
Older IRS 990 forms show Jones sent Steele’s company $700,000 in 2019, $197,608 in 2018, and $251,689 in 2017 for a total of $1,670,297, and $1,222,714 to Fusion GPS in 2019, $959,613 in 2018, and $3,323,924 in 2017 for a total of $6,051,251.
Steele put his research together at the behest of Fusion, funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm. According to Simpson, Fusion was paid $50,000 per month from Perkins, and Marc Elias, head of the Perkins political law group and Clinton’s campaign counsel, hired Fusion, which paid Steele $168,000.
DURHAM THEORY APPEARS TO BE THAT TRUMP-RUSSIA COLLUSION WAS CLINTON FABRICATION
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report in 2019 concluding Steele’s discredited dossier played a “central and essential” role in the FBI’s effort to wiretap Carter Page. Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko, who undermined the dossier’s collusion claims, was recently indicted for allegedly lying to the bureau.
Court records show Jones says he was asked by the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2017 to look into Alfa Bank allegations, and the 2018 report Jones produced concluded: “The highly unusual and consistent DNS look-ups of the Trump Organization server suggest that there was a special relationship between the Trump Organization server and servers associated with Alfa Bank.”
Cybersecurity expert Robert Graham wrote in October: “The Alfa-Trump conspiracy-theory has gotten a new life. Among the new things is a report done by Democrat operative Daniel Jones. … If the data and analysis held up, then partisan ties wouldn’t matter. But they don’t hold up. Jones is clearly trying to be deceptive.”
Graham added: “The allegation that this proves a secret connect between Alfa Bank and a Trump server is clearly false.”
Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan played a key role in promoting the Alfa Bank claims as a Clinton campaign adviser in 2016. Sullivan testified he first met with Simpson in February 2017, along with Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. The other two apparently at the meeting were Fritsch and Jones, who had formed his group a few days before.
A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report from 2020 did not find “covert communications between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization personnel.” Horowitz said in his 2019 report that the FBI “concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links.”
Democratic cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann was indicted by special counsel John Durham, accused of lying to the FBI about the client he was working for when pushing the Alfa Bank claims.
The Democracy Integrity Project’s tax filings said the group spent $537,860 on “research” in 2020 and one dollar less on “analysis and reporting.” It received $862,905 in contributions in 2020, $3,423,600 in 2019, $2,563,085 in 2018, and $7,005,649 in 2017 — totaling just under $14 million.
Jones also runs the Penn Quarter Group as well as Advance Democracy, which received $4,780,000 in 2020 and $4,293,100 in 2019, and actually sent $700,000 to the Democracy Integrity Project last year. The group’s “Accountability Dashboard” says it “allows users to identify direct and indirect political donations to candidate committees affiliated with the 147 members of Congress who objected to the certification of the 2020 election.”
Jones received compensation of $133,879 from the Democracy Integrity Project and $343,137 from Advance Democracy in 2020. He received a salary of $373,937 in 2019, $309,921 in 2018, and $381,263 in 2017.
Advance Democracy sent $540,000 in 2020 to a company formerly known as Popily, also known as New Knowledge, and now called Yonder. The Democracy Integrity Project sent $180,000 in 2019 and $230,000 in 2018 to the group.
New Knowledge released a report in December 2018 on “The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency” — a St. Petersburg-based troll farm — at the request of the Senate Intelligence Committee. New Knowledge and the Democracy Integrity Project collaborated on a November 2018 report titled “Tracking Information Warfare in the 2018 U.S. Midterm Elections.”
In December 2018, the New York Times revealed New Knowledge “decided to try out similarly deceptive tactics in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate race” between Roy Moore and Doug Jones. An internal New Knowledge report said they “orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.”
The Democracy Integrity Project also provided $264,826 in 2019, $202,031 in 2018, and $149,544 in 2017 to Istok Associates. Neil Barnett is listed as director of the London-based group, and he penned a November 2017 article for the American Interest on “Russia’s Brexit Subversion.” The Free Russia Foundation report titled “Misrule of Law: How the Kremlin Uses Western Institutions to Undermine the West” was partly authored by Barnett. The report noted how Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya worked with Fusion GPS to go after Putin foe Bill Browder in 2016.
The DOJ alleged Russia-owned real estate company Prevezon Holdings laundered fraudulent money, and the company later settled with the DOJ for $5.9 million. Veselnitskaya hired BakerHostetler to help Prevezon in court, and the firm hired Fusion. The DOJ later unsealed an indictment against Veselnitskaya, alleging she obstructed justice through secret collaboration with Russia.
Advance Democracy also sent $320,000 last year to Quest Research and Investigations, a private investigative firm.
Jones also sent $283,000 in 2019, $166,633 in 2018, and $127,915 in 2017 to Edward Austin, co-founded by Edward Baumgartner. Simpson’s Senate Judiciary Committee testimony said Baumgartner is a Russian speaker and subcontractor for Fusion, including with Veselnitskaya in the Prevezon case.
The Zuckerman Spaeder law firm, which represented Fusion in Steele dossier-related litigation, received $148,231 from the Democracy Integrity Project in 2017.
Billionaire George Soros gave at least $1 million to the Democracy Integrity Project in 2018, the New York Times reported. The Daily Caller reported that the left-wing Fund for a Better Future provided $2,065,000 to the Jones group in 2017, and further filings show it gave the Democracy Integrity Project $980,000 in 2018 and $171,500 in 2019.
Advance Democracy received contributions of $4,780,000 in 2020, $4,293,100 in 2019, and $2,923,000 in 2018, for a total of nearly $12 million. The individual contributions in 2020 were sizable, including for $1.25 million and $1.9 million.
Separately, the Daily Caller obtained texts in 2018 between Jones and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska’s lawyer, Adam Waldman, including one in which Jones told Waldman in March 2017 that “our team helped with this” in reference to a Reuters article that “found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2020 report found that “the Russian government coordinates with and directs” Deripaska “on many of his influence operations.” Steele was working for Deripaska in early 2016, helping recover millions of dollars the oligarch claimed Trump 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort had stolen from him.
Steele sought help in the effort from Fusion in February 2016, which hired Steele soon after.
Deripaska sued the Treasury Department in 2019 in an effort to fight U.S. sanctions against him. A D.C. mansion tied to Deripaska was raided by the FBI last month.
