Trump tweets that he is the victim of 'fake news' dossier linked to Clinton campaign
"Clinton campaign & DNC paid for research that led to the anti-Trump Fake News Dossier. The victim here is the President," tweeted Trump.
The dossier, which alleges some salacious things about Trump's dealings with Russia, was reportedly funded as opposition research by the DNC after Trump won the Republican primary. The firm that produced the dossier, Fusion GPS, was retained for several months in 2016 by a lawyer representing Clinton's campaign and the DNC.
Prior to that, Trump's Republican rivals had reportedly funded the project.
Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to his Russia ties and the allegations made in the dossier.
The Clinton campaign denies any direct knowledge of the document's funding, and instead said that Marc Elias of Perkins Coie, a law firm that consulted for Clinton, funded the dossier, according to the Washington Post.
But Kenneth Vogel, a journalist at the New York Times, tweeted Tuesday night that the Elias flat out denied funding the dossier when he tried to report on the story earlier.
The dossier, while it may contain incorrect or scandalous information, represents opposition research carried out by Trump's opposition in 2016. The FBI reportedly later used allegations in the dossier to obtain warrants to monitor Trump associates under suspicion that they had violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Members of Trump's own campaign have defended taking meetings with Kremlin-linked lawyers as part of opposition research.
Opposition research is considered to be the norm, not the exception, in US political campaigns.