During the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, the leaders of the conservative news outlet Washington Free Beacon hired a private intelligence company, Fusion GPS, to conduct research into the candidates, including Trump. Early in the year, the Free Beacon's interest in the work lapsed.
So by "early March," Fusion GPS approached the law firm Perkins Coie, which represents the Democratic National Committee, offering to continue its investigations into Trump. In April, the law firm agreed, and it began to underwrite the investigation.
Why is this important? After Fusion GPS was initially hired by conservatives, Democrats paid for the phase of the work that included the compilation of the dossier.
Fusion GPS was founded by a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Glenn Simpson, and operates in Washington, D.C. Among the people it engaged to work on its Trump research was a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, who had spent much of his career as a Russia expert for Britain's MI6. Steele, working in London, retained a network of sources in Russia whom he began to ask about Trump's dealings there.
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/25/586040491/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-russia-investigations-the-dossier
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