Report: Wealthy donors funded $50 million for anti-Trump investigation, and they're still at it

Anti-Donald Trump researchers are still investigating the president and were paid $50 million by less than a dozen wealthy donors to do so, according to a new House Intelligence Committee report released Friday.

Who paid for it?

The heavily-redacted final report of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence states the investigation was led by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and research firm FusionGPS. The research firm hired Steele on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign during the election, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

The revelation is found in a footnote on page 113 of the 243-page report, which identified former Senate intelligence committee staff investigator Daniel J. Jones, of the Penn Quarter Group, as the new lead for the anti-Trump investigator, the Free Beacon reported.

The group was working, "to continue exposing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections," according to the report.

The FBI was told that PQG was receiving funding from “seven to 10 wealthy donors located primarily in New York and California who provided about $50 million for the research,” the report states. Names of the donors were not included.

In late March 2017, Jones met with the FBI regarding PQG and efforts to expose “foreign influence in Western elections," the report states. His name was apparently blacked out in the footnote in several places but appears in one sentence.

The heavily redacted report suggests Russia colluded with the Democrats in supplying disinformation about Trump through the Steele dossier.

"Using a series of intermediaries, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary for America (Clinton campaign) paid a research firm to conduct opposition research on candidate Trump and his ties with Russia," the report states. "As part of this effort, research from numerous purported Russian sources was obtained and provided to the Clinton campaign, thereby constituting indirect, but substantial, links ‘between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns' relevant to the 2016 U.S. election."

Following the release of the report, Trump called the investigation a witch hunt.

The dossier contained salacious but unproven allegations ties the Trump and Russia, as well as claims that Trump entertained prostitutes in Moscow.

The GOP-led committee investigation involved "interviews with 73 witnesses with 230 hours of testimony and the review of more than 307,900 documents," the report states.

Intelligence agencies investigating Russian meddling determined that Moscow was opposing Clinton and sought to help Trump, the Free Beacon stated.