Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Thursday flatly denied his presidential campaign was the unidentified GOP client that hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Donald Trump during the Republican primaries.
In an interview on CNN's "Wolf," Rubio became the latest former primary contender to deny funding the opposition research.
"As far as whether it was my campaign, it wasn't, and I'll tell you why, because I was running for president, I was trying to win" Rubio told host Wolf Blitzer. "If I had anything against Donald Trump that was relevant and credible and politically damaging, I would've used it. I didn't have it."
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee partly funded the research that led to the controversial Trump dossier. But the initial report about Fusion GPS by The New York Times reported the research started at the request of an anonymous Republican.
Rubio, who ran for president last year and faced off against Trump in the Republican primaries, denied his campaign was the anonymous client — and said it is "abundantly clear" from press reports that former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele's involvement in writing the dossier did not begin until the Republican primaries ended.
"I don't know who it was," Rubio said. "The one thing we do know, this thing about the dossier you're discussing, all those press accounts, and I'm just going off press accounts, they all make it abundantly clear that the work that Mr. Steele did on that dossier didn't even start until April or May or June, after the Republican primary was over. So that was the DNC, and that was the Clinton campaign."
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., denied Wednesday he had anything to do with the opposition research either.
"It might have been one of other primary candidates," Paul told "Fox & Friends." "There were 16 of them. All I can say it wasn't me."
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