Rightwing site Washington Free Beacon says it hired firm to dig up dirt on several GOP candidates including Trump during 2016 election

A conservative US website has admitted that it initially hired the political research firm behind the controversial dossier on Donald Trump that outlined the president’s alleged ties to Russia.

During the 2016 election race, the Washington Free Beacon, a rightwing site funded by a prominent Republican donor, hired a firm called Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on several GOP presidential candidates, including Trump, the site said on Friday. But Matthew Continetti, editor-in-chief, said the Free Beacon had “no knowledge of or connection to” the dossier or Christopher Steele, the former British spy behind the document.

The revelation came days after reports that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic national committee (DNC) helped fund the Fusion GPS opposition research that led to the high-profile Trump-Russia dossier. Trump seized on the reports about Clinton and the DNC, recently tweeting a quote about the document that said the “victim here is the president”.

Report: Clinton campaign and DNC helped fund Trump-Russia Steele dossier Read more

The news that the Free Beacon had a financial relationship with Fusion GPS adds intrigue to the dossier, which included lurid details from Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow and alleged that there was a “conspiracy” between the Republican campaign and the Kremlin. The dossier has continued to ignite political tensions in Washington DC and has become increasingly important in recent months as federal officials investigate possible collusion between the president and Moscow.

The Free Beacon hired Fusion GPS in October 2015 but told the company to stop doing opposition research on Trump in May 2016 as it was becoming clear he would be the Republican nominee, according to the New York Times, which cited conversations between the news website and the House intelligence committee on Friday afternoon. The New York Times reported that the Free Beacon is funded in large part by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, who was not aware of the dossier until it was leaked earlier this year.

Trump has brushed aside the dossier as “phony” and politically motivated. But the FBI has investigated the claims in the document, and Robert Mueller, the special counsel looking into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, recently questioned Steele, the former British intelligence officer, according to the Associated Press.

The Free Beacon has retained third-party firms to conduct research on a number of institutions and individuals since the site’s launch in 2012, Continetti said, noting that he also hired companies to assist in Clinton research last year.

“All of the work that Fusion GPS provided to the Free Beacon was based on public sources, and none of the work product that the Free Beacon received appears in the Steele dossier,” he wrote in a post on the site published Friday night.

The editor also said representatives of the Free Beacon approached the House intelligence committee “to answer what questions we can in their investigation of Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier”.

Continetti said: “We stand by our reporting, and we do not apologize for our methods. We consider it our duty to report verifiable information, not falsehoods or slander, and we believe that commitment has been well demonstrated by the quality of the journalism that we produce.”

The dossier circulated around Washington last year, and Senator John McCain ultimately passed the records to the FBI director.