Janison: Trump can put costs of dirt-digging on taxpayers – Newsday

For a professed billionaire, President Donald Trump can benotoriously careful about spending his own money. Four years ago he led many people to believe he would self-fund his campaign, but did not come close. By then he'dlong been knownfor stiffingcontractors. And the new book by his niece Mary Trump attests to the president's personal stinginess.

Trump's fondnessfor getting others to bankroll things that hewantsmight also apply to what political professionalscall oppositionresearch. After all, finding the goods to plausibly attack an opponent's character can be expensive.

The so-called Christopher Steele memos, financed by the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign,reportedly cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. During that election, Trump seemed to get major "oppo research" for free whenWikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a Clinton nemesis, published private Democratic emails hacked by Russian operatives.

If the Trump campaign paid for this help, presumably this would have been discovered and addressed in the Mueller investigation. It was not.

For more than a year, Trump & Co. targetedJoe Biden for dirt-digging. In the latest effort to paint Biden as corrupt through his son's past private dealings, Trump's Republican allies in the Senate last week were brandishing subpoenas, possibly for the elder Biden's former advisers. Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), wasstill working to secure witness depositions voluntarily, but the negotiations sputtered, Politico reported.

One focus for Johnson remainsHunter Biden's formerrole with the Ukrainian gas firm Burisma. After a lot of drama, TV appearances, denunciations and waving of papers, Rudy Giuliani, the president's reportedly unpaid attorney, never presented a sensible case for wrongdoing.

But along the way, the ex-mayor's activitiessplashed up on him.In September, one month before Giuliani's ex-associateLev Parnas was indicted on campaign finance charges, Parnas'wife received $1 million from a lawyer for a Ukrainian oligarch, Dmytro Firtash, who's been ducking U.S. extradition on bribe-related charges.

That's according to federalprosecutors. But whatever the Firtash transaction meant, atleast Trump didn't have to pay. Nor did Trumphave to compensate forthe disruption of federal operations involved in his own failed gambit to get the Ukrainian president to announce an investigation into Biden and the Democrats. Had this unheard-of bit of extracurricular diplomacysucceeded, Trump could have effectively outsourced his opposition research. Instead he was impeached.

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Taxpayers can be relied on to financeTrump'sresearch interestson another front beyond the Senate probe. Attorney General William Barr announced nearly a month ago on Fox News that Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham's investigation of the Russia probe's origins would yield "developments" before summer is over.

Regardless of whether Dunham's projecthelps the campaign, at least the president won't have to foot the bill.

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Janison: Trump can put costs of dirt-digging on taxpayers - Newsday