“The Democratic National Committee is cutting ties with lawyer Marc Elias, who heavily pushed the discredited Steele dossier that sought to link the former president to Russia falsely.
Elias, who has represented the DNC since 2009, has had several disagreements with the committee, according to sources who spoke with PunchBowl News. Elias Law Group, his firm founded in 2021, works on behalf of many Democratic lawmakers and entities, such as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, records show.
Elias was general counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and commissioned the Trump-Russia dossier. The lawyer hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which, in turn, brought on British ex-spy Christopher Steele in 2016. Steele was offered “up to $1 million” in the run-up to the 2016 election by the FBI to prove the dossier’s allegations against Trump but did not get the money due to lack of evidence, FBI supervisory analyst Brian Auten testified in October 2022.
The following month, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent several written questions to the FBI in the wake of “bogus information” being received from informants, including Steele, the Washington Examiner first reported. Then-prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis for John Durham, who was appointed as special counsel to investigate the FBI’s 2016 Russia election interference inquiry, grilled Elias in May 2022 over his role in pushing the collusion narrative. (Read more: Washington Examiner, 4/12/2023) (Archive)