EXCLUSIVE: Internal Fusion GPS Report Undercut Steele Dossier Allegation Against Russian Executive (1 of 2)
Fusion GPS tapped one of its contractors to investigate allegations made in the Steele dossier against Russian tech executive Aleksej Gubarev.
The dossier alleged Gubarev was recruited as a Russian agent and took part in the hacking of Democrats’ computer systems.
But the internal Fusion GPS report, published here for the first time, painted Gubarev in a positive light. Fusion’s sources doubted Gubarev took part in the alleged hacking.
In an effort to bolster the Steele dossier, Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned the infamous report, tapped one of its contractors to investigate a Russian businessman accused of hacking Democrats’ computer systems. But that contractor, a Russia expert named Edward Baumgartner, came back with something that was perhaps disappointing to Fusion GPS. According to an internal Fusion GPS report obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation, Baumgartner’s Russian sources painted the Russian, Aleksej Gubarev, in largely positive terms. Unlikely, the sources claimed, had Gubarev taken part in the hacking operation, as former British spy Christopher Steele claimed in his dossier.
“Our interviews of people familiar with Gubarev paint a picture of a relatively well-known person in the IT sector with an entirely positive reputation as a successful self-made entrepreneur,” reads the five-page report, which was provided as evidence in a lawsuit that Gubarev filed against BuzzFeed News. “Our sources were uncertain about Gubarev’s alleged ties to the hacking and collection of compromising material on Trump. Their lack of certainty is entirely understandable given the highly secretive nature of intelligence work, on the one hand, and the technical difficulty of establishing someone’s potential ties to hacking.” A lawyer for Gubarev pressed Fusion GPS co-founder Peter Fritsch about the Baumgartner report during an Aug. 30, 2018, deposition. Fritsch confirmed Baumgartner, a Fusion GPS contractor who speaks Russian, filed the report, which is labeled “PRIVILEGED & CONFIDENTIAL.”
Gubarev sued BuzzFeed and Steele in February 2017 over the dossier, claiming the allegations were defamatory. In one memo, Steele alleged Gubarev was “recruited under duress” by Russia’s intelligence service, the FSB, and was a “significant” player in an operation to use botnets and viruses to steal information from Democrats.
While working for the DNC and Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS hired Steele in June 2016 to investigate Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia. Steele, a former MI6 officer, produced 17 separate memos laying out an alleged conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russians. Steele’s allegations about Gubarev are laid out in the dossier’s final memo, dated Dec. 13, 2016. Gubarev, who owns the webhosting companies XBT and Webzilla, asserted that neither BuzzFeed nor Steele attempted to vet the claims made in the dossier. The Baumgartner memo suggests Fusion GPS also did not conduct due diligence before BuzzFeed published the dossier. BuzzFeed initially apologized to Gubarev and redacted his name from a version of the dossier it published online Jan. 10, 2017.
A federal judge in Florida ruled in BuzzFeed’s favor Dec. 19, 2018, though Gubarev is appealing the decision. A slew of confidential documents were unsealed in the case Thursday.
https://www.dailycaller.com/2019/03/15/fusion-gps-gubarev-dossier-steele/