Sen. Dianne Feinstein released a semi-redacted transcript of testimony Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee.<\/b>
\nSen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) released a semi-redacted transcript of testimony Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee on August 22,2017. Simpson had called for release of the testimony in a New York Times op-ed proclaiming the importance of transparency. Simpson and other Fusion GPS principals have resisted invitations to testify from the committees investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. When faced with a subpoena, Simpson used his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to negotiate for a closed-door interview in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The transcript of the testimony runs 312 pages. Feinstein excluded exhibits that were attached to the testimony and redacted highly relevant information about which FBI agents were working with Clinton-funded operatives to investigate the Trump campaign.
During the testimony, staff for Republican chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley alternated with staff for ranking member Feinstein, each group taking one hour at a time. The two followed different paths of questions. Republicans drilled down on Fusion GPS\u2019s work for Russian company Prevezon Holdings before discussing the work on the Russia dossier. Democrats focused on the contents of the dossier before asking about other Russian contacts.
Fusion GPS is facing scrutiny about whether its work for Prevezon violated federal requirements to register as a foreign agent, whether people mentioned in the unverified and salacious dossier were defamed, and all sorts of unanswered questions about its work creating the dossier on behalf of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
In his testimony, Simpson didn\u2019t answer or carefully answered questions covering areas where he\u2019s legally vulnerable while also defending the dossier product he commissioned. Here are key takeaways.
While the testimony is full of details, far and away the most interesting revelation was Simpson\u2019s claim that the FBI had a source within the Trump campaign. Simpson said that Christopher Steele, the freelance spy paid for dispatches about Trump, was told by an FBI official that they had confidential informant in the Trump campaign. This \u201chuman source from inside the Trump organization\u201d was acting in a \u201cvoluntary\u201d manner. It was someone \u201cwho decided to pick up the phone and report something.\u201d
Understandably, that was the big headline many media outlets put with their initial stories on the transcript, including USA Today: \u201cDossier author Christopher Steele told FBI had source inside Trump Org\u201d and the Washington Post: \u201cEx-spy behind Trump dossier was told FBI had source inside network, testimony reveals.\u201d The only problem is that it apparently is not true.
Ken Dilanian, the NBC reporter who frequently helps Fusion GPS disseminate stories for its clients, said that \u201ca source close to Fusion GPS\u201d had a correction to offer:
While Simpson used his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to negotiate an interview that was not done under oath, it\u2019s still a federal crime to give the committee false information. It is unclear if he corrected the false testimony with the committee or just worked through his collaborator Dilanian.
Sometimes the dossier contained publicly known information, such as Carter Page\u2019s trip to Moscow, or Vladimir Putin\u2019s well-known dislike of Hillary Clinton. As for the salacious and substantive claims of collusion between Donald Trump and Russia, they remain salacious and unverified.
In their testimony on the Hill, various FBI officials have been unable or unwilling to cite anything that was verified from the dossier other than the Page trip or Russian animosity toward Clinton. The creator of the dossier himself told a British court that the information he collected was \u201c unverified.\u201d In his testimony, Simpson says his confidence in the dossier is based on his confidence in Steele, who he says has a history of providing good information.
He says that unlike actual evidence that can be introduced in a court of law, the gossip Steele provided is different. \u201cSo by its very nature the question of whether something is accurate isn\u2019t really asked. The question that is asked generally is whether it\u2019s credible,\u201d he says. \u201cYou don\u2019t really decide who\u2019s telling the truth.\u201d
When Simpson talks about having Sen. John McCain share the document with FBI leadership after the election, he still doesn\u2019t know if it\u2019s accurate, explaining, \u201cwe just wanted people in official positions to ascertain whether it was accurate or not.\u201d
Another interesting tidbit from Simpson is that Steele contacted the FBI because of his belief that Russians had a compromising tape of Trump in a hotel room, referring to the dossier\u2019s allegation that Trump had prostitutes urinate on a bed that President and Michelle Obama had slept on in the Ritz Carleton in Moscow. Amazingly, Simpson reveals this shortly after saying that Steele is a professional at knowing when he\u2019s getting disinformation from a source. But not only is there no evidence that Russians have such a tape, or that such a tape would have any value against known perv Trump in any case, there\u2019s substantial evidence that Steele was the victim of misinformation at best, if not disinformation.
The single most famous and salacious vignette from the dossier is this \u201cgolden shower\u201d scene in the hotel room during a 2013 trip to Moscow. Yet this summer, President Trump\u2019s longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller told congressional investigators that on that trip someone offered to send five women to Trump\u2019s hotel room. Schiller said he took it as a joke, and declined. He also testified that he told Trump about it when he escorted him back to his hotel room and that the two had a laugh. From this nugget of reality was spun a pornographic and difficult to believe scene of Trump using prostitutes to defile the Obama hotel bed.
The reality of the scene versus the unverified dossier\u2019s version of events speaks to the credibility of everything that\u2019s in the dossier. It also speaks to Steele\u2019s ability to discern fact from fiction, and good intelligence from getting played. For that matter, it speaks to Simpson\u2019s judgment about the quality of his researchers.
Yet when congressional investigators asked Simpson if Steele would know if he were being fed false information, Simpson is vehement. He says, \u201ca trained intelligence officer can spot disinformation that you or I might not recognize, certainly that was Chris\u2019s skill, and he honed in on this issue of blackmail as being a significant national security issue.\u201d
This has already been reported extensively, but Steele was sharing information with the FBI. As mentioned above, he immediately took the fantastical sex scene from his first dispatch to the FBI. Simpson details how that happened, asserting over and over that he had nothing to do with going to the FBI with the opposition research he was commissioned to produce for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. He says that Steele said of the FBI, \u201cthey want everything I have.\u201d
Simpson says that the FBI paid for Steele to travel to Rome to share the information, and that they talked about a further financial relationship that didn\u2019t come to fruition. Simpson does reveal that the FBI was also sharing information with Steele. As mentioned in the first point above, the FBI told him they had a source who was corroborating their salacious allegations. It is unclear whether the FBI official was wittingly or unwittingly sharing FBI intelligence with someone being paid by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
Simpson also reveals that he told media outlets that the FBI and Steele were working together. He told congressional investigators that he viewed Steele\u2019s chats with the FBI to be separate from the work he was hired to do by Clinton and the DNC. However, he did admit to highlighting the fact that Steele had interacted with the FBI when he was selling journalists on the dossier before the election.
It\u2019s also worth noting that Congress was briefed on the contents of the dossier during the campaign by the FBI, not Steele or Fusion GPS. That\u2019s according to a Fusion GPS-sourced story in September 2016 by Michael Isikoff for Yahoo! News. The relationship between the FBI and Steele, based on unverified information, was serious.
Sometimes when Simpson is speaking about Russia, such as when discussing why he was investigating Trump\u2019s ties there, he is unsparing. Simpsons says, \u201cone of my interests or even obsessions over the last decade has been corruption in Russia and Russian kleptocracy and the police state that was there.\u201d He says he\u2019s well-versed on Putin\u2019s consolidation of power.
But the other part of the testimony is about his work for Prevezon Holdings, a firm owned by the son of Pyotr Katsyv, a powerful Russian government official. It battled with the U. S. government over its handling of some of its money, settling a few months ago. Fusion GPS was tasked with digging up dirt on Bill Browder, a businessman who launched an international campaign for sanctions against Russia.
One of the key figures in the testimony is Natalia Veselnitskaya. She figures in both the questions about Prevezon, and the questions about the dossier. First, let\u2019s look at how Simpson describes the infamous meeting Veselnitskaya had with members of the Trump campaign at Trump Tower in June. He first cites the dossier claim that Trump and his inner circle have \u201caccepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his democratic and other political rivals.\u201d Then he cites the Trump Tower meeting where Veselnitskaya was supposed to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton as proof of this:
But when Simpson is talking about Prevezon, it\u2019s entirely different. Asked about Veselnitskaya, Prevezon\u2019s lawyer, he admits that she hired Baker Hostetler, which hired him. He acknowledges connecting Baker Hostetler with his former colleague Chris Cooper, who made a film to help fight the sanctions against Russia. He acknowledges meeting with all sorts of people who are lobbying to remove the sanctions against Russia. And he admits that his work was to find dirt on Browder, the man behind the sanctions against Russia. When asked if he understood who his work benefited, he says, \u201cWe did not believe that was being done on behalf of the Russian government.\u201d
If Trump campaign officials meeting with Veselnitskaya was improper and treasonous, one wonders what working for Veselnitskaya is.
In his testimony, Simpson says he had no idea that Veselnitskaya was going to meet with Trump, despite meeting with her both shortly before and shortly after the meeting. He tells investigators that some of Paul Manafort\u2019s notes from the meeting \u201ctouch on things that I worked on\u201d on behalf of Prevezon, but that he didn\u2019t realize she was going to talk about it with them. And he acknowledges that he either worked with or knows of four attendees at the meeting: Irakle Kaveladze, Veselnitskaya, Rinat Akhmetshin, and Anatoli Samochornov. The last one also worked on the Prevezon case.
In the lengthy testimony, Simpson skates in and out of privilege to share the content of the research he works on for clients. But when asked for specifics, or about the marketing of his work, he frequently declined to answer questions. He declined to answer dozens of questions, such as \u201cDid you share that decision with anyone, that [Steele] was going to go to the FBI with this information?\u201d and \u201cDid Fusion disclose hard copies of the memoranda to any journalists?\u201d and \u201cDid Mr. Steele ever share with you who his sources were?\u201d
At the time of his testimony, Fusion GPS was still fighting congressional requests to find out who paid for the opposition research on Trump. It turned out to be Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. His clients were literally the DNC and their nominee for president. Yet when asked if he had ties to Democrats, he denied it.
One of the things that has helped Fusion GPS escape scrutiny or tough stories is the role they play in supplying stories to reporters around town. Simpson\u2019s testimony frequently characterizes the relationship as if reporters come to him seeking information that he then shares. But asked if Fusion GPS\u2019s business involves getting media outlets to publish stories, he says it is.
Some people believed that since the dossier was not published until January 2017, it was not used during the campaign. Simpsons says otherwise. He says part of the purpose of being hired for opposition research was to share information with journalists. He says, \u201csome of it was gathered for the possibility that it might be useful to the press.
And he says he did share it with the press. \u201cI had spoken with reporters over the course of the summer and through the fall about the investigations by the government and the controversy over connections between \u2014 alleged connections between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Some of what we discussed was informed by Chris\u2019s reporting.\u201d
Simpson discusses briefing reporters from The New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo News, The New Yorker, and others in both September and October of 2016. Simpson says the FBI was displeased with the chats with the media. \u201cI remember Chris saying at some point that they were upset with media coverage of some of the issues that he had discussed with him.\u201d
Simpson says he was deeply concerned by FBI Director James Comey\u2019s letter announcing a reopening of the investigation into Clinton\u2019s mishandling of classified information. He says he had been asking reporters or encouraging reporters to ask the FBI about whether they were investigating Trump\u2019s ties to Russia. It backfired.
On October 31, The New York Times published its report saying the FBI had found no problematic ties between Trump and Russia. \u201c[I]t was a real Halloween special,\u201d he said. Court filings say Steele briefed a reporter from Mother Jones on the contents of the dossier in late October. Late in the evening of October 31, David Corn published a piece at Mother Jones titled: \u201cA Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump: Has the bureau investigated this material?\u201d
Simpson also says Steele severed his relationship with the FBI at that point, \u201cout of concern that he didn\u2019t know what was happening inside the FBI and there was a concern that the FBI was being manipulated for political ends by the Trump people and that we didn\u2019t really understand what was going on.\u201d
He also says Steele told him the FBI \u201cmentioned that they didn\u2019t like media coverage, that there was media coverage of, you know, FBI interest in Donald Trump. I don\u2019t know what it was that they didn\u2019t like.\u201d
The testimony included interesting information about the dossier and the FBI\u2019s handling of it. (As well as a claim someone had been killed over the dossier!) Despite Simpson\u2019s refusal to answer many questions, it helps explain how opposition research gets into the mainstream media. And transparency is always nice.
But for a committee that had worked fairly well in a bipartisan manner, Feinstein\u2019s decision to unilaterally release testimony against the wishes of the majority in the middle of an ongoing investigation was a curious one.
She may have been upset with her colleagues Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S. C.) for not consulting her before making a criminal referral for Steele on the basis of false statements to federal authorities. But the committee still has to interview Jared Kushner, who may now consult Simpson\u2019s testimony. If committees are simply deciding to be more transparent, the House faced a request to declassify information related to the dossier\u2019s use by the FBI.<\/p>\n

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