Deputy White House press secretary Raj Shah, as expected, is making a power play to get his boss Sarah Sanders’ job as Press Secretary, according to multiple inside sources.

Shah, a former Republican National Committee staffer, is known for marginalizing the independent media in press-related matters, instead favoring the corporate mainstream press.

Mike Cernovich reports on Shah’s alleged duplicity:

Raj Shah leaked that story about Sarah Huckabee Sanders leaving the WH to drive a wedge between her and POTUS, so he could hopefully get her spot.

Raj thought by including himself in the article, it'd throw people off the trail.

My WH sources all laughing about this.

— Mike Cernovich 🇺🇸 (@Cernovich) June 14, 2018

lol, I asked if we could finally admit that Raj Shah was a leaker and @Cernovich said yes pic.twitter.com/sUb1Dt6Yjx

— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) June 14, 2018

Raj Shah is an ardent NeverTrumper who was the subject of a masterful Olivia Nuzzi piece in New York magazine exposing him for calling Trump “deplorable.” The piece included a vociferous defense of Shah from Hope Hicks, the former right-hand day-to-day woman for President Trump.

Nuzzi reported: 

Dated December 15, 2015, at 12:09 p.m., the email — the subject line was “Dawg” — contains a 2008 CNN transcript in which Trump speaks positively of then-president-elect Barack Obama and describes his decision to make Hillary Clinton secretary of State “a great appointment.” Shah asked for footage of the interview — “Can we see if we’ve got?” — while telling Hemming to be cautious not to use an official RNC email while discussing the topic. “Nothing on GOP mail,” he wrote.

Hemming quickly replied to Shah that he would look into the matter. At 1:04 p.m., he said, “Yep we have it on DVD. Let me know what you want me to do with it.” At 2:21 p.m., he sent him the clip. “Tks man!” Shah replied.

Three days later, on December 18, the seven-year anniversary of the CNN interview, the Jeb Bush campaign released a 15-second ad titled “Happy Anniversary, Donald!” It featured precisely the clip that Shah requested.

The editor of the Washington Free Beacon Matthew Continetti and the outlet’s chairman, Michael Goldfarb, posted a statement about the outlet’s participation in the research project on President Donald J. Trump, which developed into the so-called “Trump Dossier.”

Continetti is the son-in-law of Weekly Standard Editor-at-Large William Kristol, a vehement opponent of Trump.

Last Friday, it was Washington Examiner journalist Byron York, who broke the story that Free Beacon, which is backed by billionaire Paul Singer, originally hired FusionGPS to dig up dirt on Trump. Singer was a supporter of Sen. Marco Rubio (R.-Fla.) and Speaker Paul D. Ryan Jr. (R.-Wis.). One of Ryan closest private advisors is Singer staffer Dan Senor.

The Washington Examiner is a sister publication of The Weekly Standard, along with Red Alert Politics—part of the DC Media family of media properties.

York reported that after it appeared that Trump had secured the GOP presidential nomination, FusionGPS kept the project going by bringing it to Hillary R. Clinton’s campaign. It was then that FusionGPS hired former English intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

Statement by Matthew Continetti and Michael Goldfarb:

Since its launch in February of 2012, the Washington Free Beacon has retained third party firms to conduct research on many individuals and institutions of interest to us and our readers. In that capacity, during the 2016 election cycle we retained Fusion GPS to provide research on multiple candidates in the Republican presidential primary, just as we retained other firms to assist in our research into Hillary Clinton. All of the work that Fusion GPS provided to the Free Beacon was based on public sources, and none of the work product that the Free Beacon received appears in the Steele dossier. The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele. Nor did we have any knowledge of the relationship between Fusion GPS and the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and the Clinton campaign.

Representatives of the Free Beacon approached the House Intelligence Committee today and offered to answer what questions we can in their ongoing probe of Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier. But to be clear: We stand by our reporting, and we do not apologize for our methods. We consider it our duty to report verifiable information, not falsehoods or slander, and we believe that commitment has been well demonstrated by the quality of the journalism that we produce. The First Amendment guarantees our right to engage in news-gathering as we see fit, and we intend to continue doing just that as we have since the day we launched this project.

Roger Stone claimed on Thursday that Paul Singer, a Never-Trump billionaire hedge fund manager, was the original funder of the Fusion GPS dossier.

Appearing on InfoWars, Stone asserted that “we can now reveal that hedge fund manager Paul Singer was the original financier of this Trump smear document.”

“Representatives for Singer, a major GOP donor, denied in 2014 that the billionaire had hired Fusion GPS, the company that produced the dossier, to investigate the Argentine government. However, Singer’s team refused to confirm or deny this year whether the hedge fund tycoon had worked on the Trump dossier,” InfoWars reported.

Further, Stone declared that Senator John McCain was the one who acted as a go-between for Singer’s team and the FBI.

“The Democrats want to talk about dirty tricks, this is the dirtiest trick that I have ever seen,” the king of “dirty tricks” declared.

The dossier was a creation of former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele outlining a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government through a series of wild accusations. While none of the claims have been proven, several have been debunked. For instance, the report claims that Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, met in Prague with Russian officials who were involved in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. This claim was immediately refuted when the attorney posted a photo of his passport asserting that he has never been to Prague.

After Trump secured the Republican nomination, the Clinton campaign took over funding the research contained within the dossier.

On Wednesday, when asked about the Democratic Party’s funding of the dossier, Trump asserted that they made up the entire Russia hoax as an excuse for losing the election.

“The whole Russia thing … this was the Democrats coming up with an excuse for losing the election,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “They lost it and they lost it very badly. And they didn’t know what to say, so they made up the whole Russia hoax.”