The House Intelligence Committee has obtained Fusion GPS's financial records, ending the monthslong fight by the opposition research firm behind the infamous "Trump dossier" to stymie its bank from sharing the documents with Congress.
A report from CNN cited a new court filing and quoted a lawyer for the committee saying that TD Bank "has produced all remaining responsive documents" according to the terms of a confidential settlement.
The transfer of the 70 documents that the House intelligence panel had sought in a subpoena came one day after a federal judge ruled against the firm's request for an injunction.
Fusion GPS's legal team, which had argued such a disclosure to Congress would violate the firm's First Amendment rights and damage its business, said they planned to appeal the decision.
Gaining access to Fusion GPS's bank records marks yet another victory for the Republicans in the House Intelligence Committee, which earlier in the week secured documents and text messages related to the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.
Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., had pursued the information for months and threatened a contempt of Congress charge against both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray after they refused to turn over the information.
Two Republican senators earlier in the day Friday recommended that the Justice Department criminally investigate the author of the Trump dossier, which contains salacious and unverified claims about President Trump's ties to Russia. Republicans are concerned the dossier may have been the impetus behind the federal inquiry looking into possible Russian collusion between that country and the Trump campaign.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a senior committee member, told the DOJ they believe Christopher Steele, the former British spy who helped put together the dossier, knowingly lied to federal authorities about his communications with U.S. journalists.
A lawyer for Fusion GPS lashed out at the senators, accusing them of making "another attempt to discredit government sources."
“After a year of investigations into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, the only person Republicans seek to accuse of wrongdoing is one who reported on these matters to law enforcement in the first place,” the statement said. “Publicizing a criminal referral based on classified information raises serious questions about whether this letter is nothing more than another attempt to discredit government sources, in the midst of an ongoing criminal investigation. We should all be skeptical in the extreme."
Fusion GPS's co-founders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, and Democrats have called for the release of the full transcripts of the firm's testimony and sought to "correct the record." Grassley shot back, saying that if the firm's founders want the world to know what they told him in a closed session about their role in creating the Trump dossier, they should testify in public.
The effort behind Steele's dossier was financed in part by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Republicans have alleged the dossier was used by the FBI to open its investigation into Trump and obtain a wiretap of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page obtained through a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, warrant.
