The firm tied to a salacious opposition research dossier about President Trump accused the White House of trying to “smear” it for investigating the president’s alleged ties to Russia.
“What is clear is that the president and his allies are desperately trying to smear Fusion GPS because it investigated Donald Trump’s ties to Russia,” the firm said in a Thursday statement to Business Insider.
Fusion GPS released the statement after lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee interviewed banker and human rights activist Bill Browder, who claims that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson and others evaded registering as foreign agents as part of an influence campaign to overturn the Magnitsky Act.
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That law, passed in 2012, put sanctions on Russian officials. The Kremlin was so outraged by it that it suspended the adoption of Russian orphans by people in United States in retaliation.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pointed to Browder’s Thursday testimony as vindication of Trump’s claims that ongoing investigations into potential ties between his campaign and Moscow are political ploys to undermine his presidency.
“Today there was public testimony that further discredited the phony dossier that’s been the source of so much of the fake news and conspiracy theories, and we learned that the firm that produced it was also being paid by the Russians.”
But Fusion GPS countered that it worked only with a law firm in New York “to provide support for civil litigation” unrelated to Russian efforts to do away with the Magnitsky Act, saying it had no reason to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).