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Breaking: The Clinton Campaign Paid for the Steele Dossier, Which, Like, Duh?
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Breaking: The Clinton Campaign Paid for the Steele Dossier, Which, Like, Duh?

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | October 24, 2017

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The Washington Post has a big-deal, blockbuster story tonight that’s probably going to suck all the oxygen out of the news cycle for the next couple of days, though it should not.

The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.

Uh, duh.

Why is this a big deal, beyond the fact that Donald Trump wants it to be a big deal?

Who else would have paid for it? I mean, we knew Christopher Steele was a former spy for hire, an independent contractor. In fact, we knew nearly a year ago that the Democrats continued to pay for his services after the Republicans began the investigation during the primaries:

So, now we know that it wasn’t Democratic donors, but the people Democratic donors gave money to. And this story is a big deal because … ? It doesn’t change the findings of the Steele Dossier, much of which have since been confirmed by the FBI (who, we also learned, continue to pay Christopher Steele after the election until he was outed in January). It doesn’t change any of the facts. Basically, all it does is confirm what we already knew.

But it will give Trump and his base a lot of political ammunition, which Trump will no doubt fire for the next several days/weeks/months. It will inspire another round of “lock her ups” (though I do not believe any laws were broken). What that means is that one side of the political spectrum will no doubt go back to re-litigating the 2016 election, which is where they are most comfortable. It also means that political coverage is going to be that much more insufferable for a few days, or until Trump does something dumb and erases the story from the headlines, which will probably be sometime tomorrow morning.

Until then, we’ll just have to get by on Ryan Reynolds’ birthday tweets: