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Conservative media is in an uproar over reports that the Washington Free Beacon initiated the oppo research that led to the Trump Dossier. They did do something very wrong, but not what most outlets are complaining about.
I covered this a bit yesterday but felt it was necessary to elaborate.
What they didn’t do wrong
Many conservative pundits and publications are screaming about the fact that Washington Free Beacon paid for oppo research on multiple Republican candidates during last year’s GOP primary season. This outrage is absolutely ridiculous. Pushing for one’s candidate during primary season means needing to attack the competition. The fact that WFB did it should neither shock anyone nor should it be frowned upon. That’s politics. The generally accepted rules of party politics is that you do what you can to win the primaries (such as oppo research) and then you come together and support the winner in the general election. This is exactly what WFB did.
They hired Fusion GPS and other firms to dig up information on Donald Trump and others… just as Trump’s and others’ campaigns did with their primary competitors. Once it was clear that Trump was going to be the nominee, WFB cancelled their research.
Based upon every account we’ve seen (other than the biased attacks from fringe conservative sites) their actions were perfectly acceptable except for one fatal flaw….
What they did wrong
The uproar is based upon the research being continued by Fusion GPS and leading to the Steele Dossier against Trump. With their customer cancelling, Fusion GPS likely took their research to the DNC and the Clinton campaign and asked if they wanted to continue. With help from the FBI, the trio pushed forward with the research and took it up a few notches to include involvement by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent. This led to the Russians which yielded the “damaging” dossier.
In reality, it didn’t do damage. Most of it wasn’t released until after the election. Why? Because it was so outrageous that the Clinton campaign didn’t think it would help. They thought they had the election in the bag anyway; why stir things up with claims so controversial they may have backfired. Releasing it before the election could have scored sympathy points for Trump. That’s how insane much of the dossier was.
Where did WFB go wrong? They didn’t get an exclusivity agreement on the research. I don’t know how it works on the political side of the aisle, but every research project I’ve been involved with has had an exclusivity agreement. If and when my employers ever decided to stop the research, the information was locked away, never to be revealed to anyone else.
Perhaps that wasn’t possible with Fusion GPS or in political campaigns. If that’s the case, then WFB should have walked away before initiating the research in the first place. Refer back to the generally accepted rule of political campaigns: attack during the primaries but come back together during the general election. By leaving it open for Fusion GPS to continue their research with new funding sources, they put the GOP at risk. Unless that was their goal at WFB (it almost certainly wasn’t), they made a terrible mistake in pushing forward from the start.
WFB is a fine publication. Conservatives shouldn’t hold ill will towards them. Not only did their fumble not cause damage, but it also taught us a valuable lesson. If you’re going to do oppo research during the primaries, make sure it can’t continue into the general election. If the dossier had yielded fruit and Trump had lost, WFB could have been the conservative pariah some are trying to paint them as today.
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