A Washington, D.C.-based opposition research firm was paying Left-wing journalists to push propaganda contained in a bogus “Trump dossier” that the firm had commissioned which contained allegations pushed by Russian operatives.

As reported by The Gateway Pundit, newly unsealed court documents stemming from a lawsuit reveal that the firm, Fusion GPS, which was founded by a trio of Wall Street Journal reporters, made the payments between June 2016 and February 2017.

As noted further by The National Sentinel, where this correspondent is editor-in-chief, Fusion has been linked to the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who not only paid for the dossier but who has claimed — and is still claiming — that President Donald J. Trump’s campaign is guilty of “colluding” with Russia, though it appears she and the DNC, along with Fusion, may have done so instead.

TNS noted further:

A federal court unsealed the records in a lawsuit involving the firm, thereby revealing new details about payments that were made last year to Fusion GPS when it was commissioning the dossier.

The released documents, The Daily Caller added, “shed new light on requests made by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about payments that Fusion GPS made to journalists.”

This means that the three journalists may also be guilty of wrongly divulging classified information — that is, if the dossier was used as the impetus behind the FBI obtaining FISA court warrants to put the Trump campaign under surveillance as part of a counter-intelligence operation last year. (Related: Trump calls for investigation into Clinton ties to ‘Russia dossier.’)

We know from earlier reporting that there has been a great deal of classified information leaked to the media; what we are now learning is that some of those who did the reporting were on the payroll of an opposition research firm that used Russian-supplied information to create a ‘dossier’ that was treated as a legitimate intelligence document, right up to and including the man who gathered information contained within it — former British spy Christopher Steele.

So, have these reporters — and Fusion, and the Clinton campaign, and the DNC — committed violations of U.S. national security statutes? Are the reporters no longer journalists but instead operatives working with a foreign government to disrupt our electoral process?

18 U.S. Code § 793 – “Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information” — states, in part:

Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation…lawfully having possession of…any document…relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it…Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

As noted by the Washington Examiner, “the three journalists who were paid by Fusion GPS are known to have reported on ‘Russia issues relevant to [the committee’s] investigation,’ the House Intelligence Committee said in a court filing.”

The fact that Fusion was paying these journalists to push what some believe was an intelligence document — bogus or not — that was paid for by Clinton and the DNC, using information that was supplied to a foreign agent (Steele) by operatives of a rival government (Russia) seems to fit the definition above of a violation of national security statutes.

At a minimum, Republicans and the Trump administration can now be certain that this entire operation was aimed at discrediting a newly-elected president and his team, as well as entrap them in a scandal involving a hostile foreign power — when in reality the collusion was coming from Democrats and a Democrat-aligned firm.

If this doesn’t scream for an FBI investigation, nothing does.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

TheGatewayPundit.com

WashingtonExaminer.com

DailyCaller.com

TheNationalSentinel.com