Washington Free Beacon, a Conservative Website, First Funded Trump Dossier Research

The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded in large part by New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, initially retained the firm Fusion GPS that conducted opposition research on Donald Trump and a number of other Republican candidates. The website reportedly told the firm to stop doing research on Trump in May of 2016 as he was close to clinching the Republican nomination. In April of 2016, according to the New York Times, Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee retained Fusion GPS and the company enlisted the services of a former British spy named Christopher Steele who produced the infamous Steele dossier. After the Washington Examiner first reported the discovery on Friday evening, the Free Beacon confirmed its accuracy in a post on its own site.