Quote (Surfpunk @ Jan 9 2018 01:52pm)

Redacted transcript of the Senate Judiciary Committee's interview with Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS has been released. I have no commentary on contents of that transcript at the time, as it's 312 pages, and haven't seen any analysis of it yet. Feel free to read through, if your afternoon/evening is free. :)

https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/3/9/3974a291-ddbe-4525-9ed1-22bab43c05ae/934A3562824CACA7BB4D915E97709D2F.simpson-transcript-redacted.pdf

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. So when did that -- you had said the FBI
21 then came back and contacted Mr. Steele?
22 A. That's my understanding.
23 Q. When did that, to the best of your
24 knowledge, take place?
25 A. Mid to late September.

Page 173
1 Q. So in that intervening time period
2 Mr. Steele continues his research, he also
3 continues to provide you with memos?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. And at no point in that time between
6 July -- the first week of July when he first met
7 with the FBI and then mid to late September did you
8 suggest to him that he should go back to the FBI?
9 A. Not that I recall. What I would -- what I
10 believe I may have said was have you heard anything
11 from the FBI because by then it was obvious there
12 was a crime in progress. So I just was curious
13 whether he'd heard back.
14 Q. And when you say it was obvious that there
15 was a crime in progress, what specifically are you
16 referencing?
17 A. Espionage. They were hacking into the
18 computers of Democrats and think tanks. That's a
19 computer crime.
20 Q. So the thing that was apparent was Russia
21 or somebody had engaged in cyber intrusion and
22 computer crimes?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. So do you know whether or not Mr. Steele
25 was directed -- you said you did not direct him or

Page 174
1 ask him to go back to the FBI -- whether anyone
2 else either directly or indirectly asked him to go
3 to the FBI after his July 5th --
4 A. To my knowledge, no one else told him to
5 report this. He may have conferred with his
6 business associates, but I don't know.
7 Q. And you said that meeting with the FBI,
8 you said Mr. Steele said he had to go to Rome for
9 this meeting. Do you otherwise know who he met
10 with?
11 A. This gets into the chronology of what I
12 learned when. At some point I learned that he was
13 meeting with the lead FBI guy from Rome. I don't
14 remember when he told me that.
15 Q. And did you have a name associated with
16 who that was?
17 A. Not at that time.
18 Q. You said that he told you of the meeting
19 with the FBI in Rome in mid or late September, that
20 he "gave them a full briefing"?
21 A. A debrief I think is what he probably
22 said, they had debriefed him. I don't remember him
23 articulating the specifics of that. You know, my
24 understanding was that they would have gotten into
25 who his sources were, how he knew certain things,

Page 175
1 and, you know, other details based on their own
2 intelligence. Essentially what he told me was they
3 had other intelligence about this matter from an
4 internal Trump campaign source and that -- that
5 they -- my understanding was that they believed
6 Chris at this point -- that they believed Chris's
7 information might be credible because they had
8 other intelligence that indicated the same thing
9 and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human
10 source from inside the Trump organization.

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In the early -- the very first weekend that I started boning up on Donald Trump, you know, I found various references to him having connections to Italian organized crime and later to a Russian organized crime figure named Felix Sater, S-A-T-E-R. It wasn't hard to find, it wasn't any great achievement, it was in the New York Times, but as someone who has done a lot of Russian organized crime investigations as a journalist originally that caught my attention and became something that, you know, I focused on while other people looked at other things. So from the very beginning of this organized crime was -- Russian organized crime was a focus of interest.

From page 70 :

Q: And what, if anything, did you conclude about the connection between and in the business dealings that then Candidate Trump had had with Mr. Sater?

A: Well, somewhat analogous to the Browder situation I found it notable this was something he didn't want to talk about and testified under oath he wouldn't know Felix if he ran into him in the street. That was not true. He knew him well and, in fact, continued to associate with him long after he learned of Felix's organized crime ties. So, you know, that tells you something about somebody. So I concluded that he was okay with that and that was a troubling thing. I also, you know, began to -- I keep saying I, but we as a company began to look at where his money came from and, you know, that raised a lot of questions. We saw indications that some of the money came from Kazakhstan, among other places, and that some of it you just couldn't account for.

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It's a voluntary interview, and in addition to that he wants to be very careful to protect his sources. Somebody's already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work.

Quote (Arsenic_Touch @ Jan 9 2018 02:50pm)

Hm.

Quote (Surfpunk @ Jan 9 2018 04:00pm)

I'm not even 1/4 way through this, and there is one thing for certain: this completely blows out of the water the Republican narrative that the whole Fusion/Steele Dossier business was a hit piece commissioned by Democrats to tie him to Russia. Fusion was already investigating Russian connections to Trump in 2015, almost a year before anyone started publicly talking about the two together. Fusion was investigating William Browder in 2014.

Quote (Ghot @ Jan 9 2018 05:10pm)

It was released by a Democrat.
What have we learned about politicians that are democrat in the last year?

Quote (inkanddagger @ Jan 9 2018 07:12pm)

That they individually have more morals than the combined sum of all Republicans in this country?