Revelations that the Democratic National Committee paid for the Russian-produced "Trump dossier" of phony, gross stories unprintable in a family newspaper have left some pretty disgusting conclusions about them, their ethics, and the company they keep.

According to a fairly good analysis from Aaron Blake of the Washington Post, one of the most important reasons why the news matters is that it's clear that Democrats, not their supporters, paid for the report.  Effectively, that's Hillary Clinton herself.

And second, we all now know that Democrats are willing to pay foreign powers – including enemy powers – big bucks in their quest to win elections at any cost.  That amount may have been more than $9 million, if this report has it right.  And what a coincidence – it's almost exactly the amount the Democrats found themselves in the hole for around the same time.  It sounds as though they paid for that dossier out of money they didn't even have.

That willingness to pay foreign powers puts Democrats in some gamy company.  The Democrats' law firm paid Washington smear artists Fusion GPS for that dirt-digging because it knew that Fusion GPS had the sleazy connections in Russia to do it.  Those same sleazy connections were paying Fusion GPS as well, to do what it could to smear and discredit former hedge fund manager William Browder, whose law firm accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, was tortured to death after uncovering a $230-million tax refund theft by Russian officials and refusing to back away from the discovery due to his disgust at the corruption.

The utter injustice of the act led the U.S. Congress, at Browder's urging, to place the Russians involved in it on sanctions, based on the law they passed known as the Magnitsky Act.  Many in the Kremlin hate the Magnitsky Act, as it threatens their rice bowls, and that is why they are putting so much energy into smearing Magnitsky as a criminal, which he was not, and making life hell for Browder, who refuses to stop campaigning for justice for the man.  Nobody was ever charged with Magnitsky's torture-murder in a Russian prison.  In Browder's excellent book about it, he describes what a gamy, evil bunch they are.

Browder is no Republican, by the way.  He seems like a sort of soggy lefty in his book, and he likes hanging around with human rights types.  What's more, his grandpa used to run the Communist Party USA and was jailed as a KGB agent and then later thrown out as not communist enough in a Stalin-style purge by Gus Hall.  Suffice to say, Browder's background wasn't that of an ordinary leftist, which ought to be worth points to today's Democrats.

But in their urge to win, they gladly climbed in bed with Fusion GPS, the people who made life hell for Browder, smearing him and smearing the Magnitsky Act Browder campaigned for.  They didn't just crawl in bed with Putin and his global power aims; they crawled in bed with Russia's oppression apparatus, the torturers and human rights-violators who are the reason Russia is always under sanctions.

That's whom they aligned with, which ought to forever expose them as hypocrites next time they want to lecture us on some human rights issue.

Blake also points out that the initial reports of Republican sponsorship for the dossier are irrelevant because the creator of the dossier, Steele, the ex-MI6 officer with the Russian ties, wasn't brought onto the case until after the Democratic Party's DNC millions rolled in.

It's almost a political repeat of the Harvey Weinstein scandal in that it leaves the Democrats so discredited.  They crawled in bed with the gamiest political actors on Earth and effectively contracted with the Russians.  Now they want to tell us how to run our lives.