President Barack Obama's 2012 campaign hired Fusion GPS to find negative information on Republican candidate Mitt Romney and hid the payments through its law firm, according to a new book published Tuesday.
"In 2012, Fusion GPS was hired to do opposition research on Mitt Romney for Barack Obama's re-election campaign," according to "Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and Donald Trump’s Election."
The Obama campaign hid the Fusion GPS payments through the Washington law firm Perkins Coie, according to the book, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.
The authors, The Daily Caller reports, met with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who completed the unsubstantiated dossier on Republican Donald Trump, and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson during the 2016 campaign.
"As had become standard practice in the shadowy world of 'oppo' research, the Obama campaign's payments to Fusion GPS were never publicly disclosed," the book reads.
"The money paid to the investigative firm was reported on campaign disclosure reports as legal bills to the campaign's law firm, Perkins Coie."
The arrangement with Fusion GPS was similar to what Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee used for the Trump dossier in 2016, The Daily Caller reports.
According to the book, Obama for America paid Perkins Coie about $3 million during the 2012 cycle, according federal filings.
Most of the payments were labeled as "legal services."
What Perkins Coie actually paid Fusion GPS for its work on Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is not known.
During the 2016 cycle, Perkins Coie received over $12 million from the Clinton campaign and DNC, The Daily Caller reports.
Fusion GPS received slightly more than $1 million for the Trump document — and Steele received nearly $178,000.
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