Here is a link to Mother Jones and David Corn’s initial report on the dossier.
In June, the former Western intelligence officer—who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients—was assigned the task of researching Trump’s dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm. This was for an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul. (Before the former spy was retained, the project’s financing switched to a client allied with Democrats.) “It started off as a fairly general inquiry,” says the former spook, who asks not to be identified. But when he dug into Trump, he notes, he came across troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. According to his sources, he says, “there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit.”
Yes, it was known that both Republicans and Democrats funded the opposition research.
Names and dollar amounts were not disclosed in Corn’s reporting...some of those details are provided in the WaPo report...which does make this news.
And while the Republican funder(s) for the Fusion GPS research is believed to be allies of Jeb Bush and/or Jeb Bush himself, that information has not been unmasked...which is...curious.