By Robert Romano

So, let’s get this straight.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign hired, via law firm Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS to fund the Christopher Steele dossier that alleged Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election to put the DNC emails on Wikileaks.

That same law firm also hired the Crowdstrike company that alleged that Russia intelligence services had hacked the DNC in 2015 and 2016.

Then, we learned that both before and after meeting Donald Trump, Jr. where he was offered “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was meeting with Fusion GPS CEO Glenn Simpson.

And finally we learned that it was Fusion GPS that had prepared the Clinton “dirt” to offer in the Trump, Jr. meeting, which Trump, Jr. said was garbage. There was nothing there.

The same Fusion GPS-Steele dossier alleged that one-time Trump campaign advisor Carter Page had similarly been offered “a dossier of ‘kompromat’ the Kremlin possessed on Trump’s Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton.”

And Special Counsel Robert Mueller recently revealed the guilty plea by former Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos for lying to federal investigators about his recollection of being in contact with Russians to receive Hillary Clinton “dirt.”

It sure makes the Trump, Jr. meeting look like a setup to create the appearance of Russian collusion by none other than Fusion GPS which was being paid to publish the dossier asserting Trump-Russia collusion.

And it raises the question: Was Fusion GPS reporting on its own concocted Trump-Russia conspiracy? It was reporting on the Trump campaign being offered Hillary Clinton “dirt” at the same time was offering the Trump campaign Hillary Clinton “dirt.”

This becomes even more significant because Steele used sources said to be Russian agents and cited those passing the supposed Clinton dossier to the Trump campaign as Russian agents. Did Fusion GPS out itself out as a Russian agent?

William Browder certainly thought Fusion GPS was working for Russia in his Senate testimony when he accused both Fusion and Veselnitskaya of concocting a smear dossier against him. He thought they should have registered as foreign agents with the federal government.

This makes it sound like Fusion GPS was also using Russian agents as sources and were using Russian agents to pass Hillary Clinton “dirt” to Trump campaign officials, including Trump, Jr.

For simply taking the meeting, Trump, Jr. is accused of acting as a Russian agent. It’s a scurrilous charge, but even if it had any basis, one would also have to conclude that Veselnitskaya was also a Russian agent.

Then, surely, Fusion GPS would also have to have been acting as a Russian agent because they apparently put her in that meeting and provided her with the Clinton “dirt” that was used to entice the meeting.

So too then must the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, via law firm Perkins Coue, be Russian agents because they retained Fusion GPS in the whole enterprise. Fusion hired Steele, who then paid supposed Russian agents for the material for the Trump dossier.

The FBI, which reportedly offered to pay Steele to continue his work, must also have been acting as Russian agents, since apparently it was okay with continuing to use Steele’s Russian agent sources to dig up dirt on Donald Trump.

But wait a second. Are we then to believe that Russia had agreed to work with the DNC-and-Clinton-hired Fusion GPS in a bid to make Trump appear to be a Russian agent? But then was simultaneously working against Clinton and the DNC to put the emails on Wikileaks? What a conspiracy!

There’s a disconnect here. On one hand, Fusion GPS appears to be one of the only primary sources used to generate Trump-Russia-Wikileaks collusion allegation in the first place. Even the Hillary Clinton “dirt” that was offered to the Trump campaign appears to have been a setup by Fusion GPS, although it was supposedly tied back to Russian agents. Yet, Fusion GPS and Steele also cited Russian agents as their sources for the claim that the Trump campaign and Russia colluded to put the emails on Wikileaks.

According to Crowdstrike, whoever took the DNC emails had gone through efforts to conceal their tracks. Crowdstrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch’s original statement to the Washington Post published June 14, 2016 cited a lack of evidence as to how it was that somebody got onto the DNC servers to get the emails that were ultimately published on Wikileaks in July 2016.

“CrowdStrike is not sure how the hackers got in. The firm suspects they may have targeted DNC employees with ‘spearphishing’ emails… ‘But we don’t have hard evidence,’ Alperovitch said,” the report stated.

Nor was Alperovitch really sure who had hacked the DNC emails: “CrowdStrike is less sure of whom Cozy Bear works for but thinks it might be the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the country’s powerful security agency, which was once headed by Putin.”

Significantly, Crowdstrike was the only entity that was ever given access to the DNC server to conduct an investigation.

So, assuming it was all true, why would the Russian agents in Steele’s dossier have outed Russia as the source of the DNC hack when Russia was supposed to be attempting to cover that up? If they were using Trump, Carter Page, Paul Manafort and others as agents, why would they out them in the Steele dossier? If anything, those claims could cast doubt on Fusion’s claims of being connected with Russian agents. If so, that lack of credibility could even boomerang back on the claim it was Russia who put the DNC emails on Wikileaks, one of Steele’s central claims.

Was Fusion GPS really working for or with Russia as an agent or not? If they were, then so were the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and the FBI which wanted to carry on Steele’s use of Russian agents as sources. If not, then perhaps they made it up.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.