Obama-Appointed Judge Will Determine If Bank Has To Reveal Who Paid Fusion GPS

A federal judge appointed by former President Barack Obama will decide this week whether to allow a congressional committee access to banking records from Fusion GPS — the company that produced the salacious and largely unverified anti-Trump intelligence dossier that was used to launch the investigation into possible ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.

Fusion GPS filed a complaint in federal court last week in an attempt to prevent its bank from turning over financial records to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence which issued a subpoena for Fusion GPS’ banking records on October 4, The Washington Times reported.

Congress is hoping that the financial records will shed light on who paid former British spy Christopher Steele to write the discredited dossier starting several months before the election on November 8, 2016.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama administration appointee, will decide by Wednesday whether TD Bank must provide the financial records for Fusion GPS.

Fusion GPS claims that their complaint about the subpoena stems from the involvement of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who stepped back from the committee’s investigation into the alleged and unproven “Trump-Russia collusion”:

Fusion GPS argues that the chairman’s subpoena violates his recusal from the probe and they asked the court to declare the subpoena “unauthorized, invalid, and not a legitimate legislative activity” and to enjoin the unnamed bank from releasing the company’s financial records to Mr. Nunes or the committee.

The House Intelligence Committee has been unable to verify any of the major allegations that Mr. Steele made in the dossier against Mr. Trump and others. The 35-page document, the contents of which was circulated among liberal reporters during the campaign, purportedly found evidence that the Russian government had damaging financial and personal information on Mr. Trump that could be used to blackmail the then-Republican presidential candidate.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-TN) noted the suspicious nature of Fusion GPS’ efforts to conceal who paid them for the dossier.

“Fusion GPS has gone to the greatest lengths possible to try to conceal who paid them,” Cotton said. “Which makes me think it was probably a Democratic political operative or a Russian intelligence service.”