The Democrats' Rebuttal Memo

I often start these kinds of posts by reminding everyone that I am neither a lawyer nor an expert on FISA warrants.  What I am, however, is someone who used to teach English to college students, and in that capacity, I give Republican Devin Nunes a giant red F.  As we knew from the release of the Nunes Memo, and as we see again today, Devin Nunes paid other people to write his book report.  He himself did not bother to read the book.  The people he paid, meanwhile?  Yeah, he should have picked people who got As in English class.  Let's review with a little point-counterpoint.

• Majority (i.e. Republican / Nunes) Memo.  The integrity of the FISA process "is necessarily dependent on the government's production to the court of all material and relevant facts. This should include information potentially favorable to the target of the FISA application . . . In the case of Carter Page . . . material and relevant information was omitted."
• "The 'dossier' compiled by Christopher Steele (Steele dossier) on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application."
• "Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele's efforts."
• Minority (i.e. Democrat / Schiff) Memo.  "DOJ's October 21, 2016 FISA application and three subsequent renewals carefully outlined for the Court a multi-pronged rationale for surveilling Page, who, at the time of the first application, was no longer with the Trump campaign.  DOJ detailed Page's past relationships with Russian spies and interaction with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign.  [REDACTED.]  DOJ cited multiple sources to support the case for surveilling Page - but made only narrow use of information from Steele's sources."
• "DOJ's warrant request was based on compelling evidence and probable cause to believe Page was knowingly assisting clandestine Russian intelligence activities in the U.S."
• "The FBI had an independent basis for investigating Page's motivations and actions during the campaign, transition, and following the inauguration.  As DOJ described in detail to the court, Page had an extensive record as [REDACTED] prior to joining the Trump campaign."  
• "As early as [REDACTED], a Russian intelligence officer [REDACTED] targeted Page for recruitment.  Page showed [REDACTED]."
• "The FISA applications also detail Page's suspicious activity after joining the Trump campaign in March 2016."
• "It is in this specific sub-section of the applications that DOJ refers to Steele's reporting on Page and his alleged coordination with Russian officials.  Steele's information about Page was consistent with the assessment of Russian intelligence efforts to recruit him and his connections to Russian persons of interest."
• "In subsequent FISA renewals, DOJ provided additional information obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele's reporting."  [Information on those sources REDACTED.]
• "Far from 'omitting' material facts about Steele, as the Majority claims, DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steele's background, credibility, and potential bias."
• Democrats then quote a large chunk of a document provided to the court, which ends: "The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1's campaign."  Put in plainer English, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS was being paid to tank Trump. 
• Majority Memo. "The initial FISA application notes Steele was working for a named U.S. person, but does not name Fusion GPS and principal Glenn Simpson."   
• Minority Memo.  "The Committee Majority, which had earlier accused Obama Administration officials of improper 'unmasking,' faults DOJ for not revealing the names of specific U.S. persons and entities in the FISA application and subsequent renewals.  In fact, DOJ appropriately upheld its longstanding practice of protecting U.S. citizen information by purposefully not 'unmasking' U.S. person and entity names, unless they were themselves the subject of a counterintelligence investigation."
• Majority Memo.  "The Carter Page FISA application also cited extensively a September 23, 2016 Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff, which focuses on Page's July 2016 trip to Moscow.  This article does not corroborate the Steele dossier because it is derived from information leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo News" (emphasis in original).
• Minority Memo.  "The Majority falsely claims that the FISA materials 'relied heavily' on a September 23, 2016 Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff . . . In fact, DOJ referenced Isikoff's article, alongside another article the Majority fails to mention, not to provide separate corroboration for Steele's reporting, but instead to inform the Court of Page's public denial of his suspected meetings in Moscow, which Page also echoed in a September 25, 2016 letter to FBI Director Comey."
• Majority Memo.  "Steele was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations - an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016 Mother Jones Article by David Corn.  Steele should have been terminated for his previous undisclosed contacts with Yahoo and other outlets in September - before the Page application was submitted to the FISC [FISA court]."
• Minority Memo.  "The FBI properly notified the FISC after it terminated Steele as a source for making unauthorized disclosures to the media."  The FBI didn't know about the September disclosures, and "[t]he Majority cites no evidence" that the FBI "actually knew or should have known."
• Majority Memo.  "Before and after Steele was terminated a a source, he maintained contact with DOJ via then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, a senior DOJ office who worked closely with Deputy Attorneys General Yates and later Rosenstein."
• Minority Memo.  "The Majority describes Bruce Ohr as a senior DOJ official who 'worked closely with the Deputy Attorneys General, Yates and later Rosenstein," in order to imply that Ohr was somehow involved in the process, but there is no indication this is the case.  Bruce Ohr is a well-respected career professional whose portfolio is drugs and organized crime, not counterintelligence."
• Majority Memo: "In September 2016" - that is, after everything he had discovered about Donald Trump - "Steele admitted to Ohr his feelings against then-candidate Trump when Steele said he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.  This clear evidence of Steele's bias was recorded by Ohr at the time and subsequently in official FBI files - but not reflected in any of the Page FISA appplications.  During this same time peirod, Ohr's wife was employed by Fusion GPS . . . The Ohrs' relationship with Steele and Fusion GPS was inexplicably concealed from the FISC."
• Minority Memo: "There is no evidence that [Ohr] wold have known about the Page FISA applications and their contents. . . .By the time Ohr debrief[ed] with the FBI, it had already terminated Steele as a source and was independently corroborating Steele's reporting about Page's activities.  Bruce Ohr took the initiative to inform the FBI of what he knew, and the Majority does him a grave disservice by suggesting he is part of some malign conspiracy."
• Majority Memo: Peter Strzok opened the investigation in July 2016 when he dug into Papadopoulos!  PETER STRZOK!  Lisa Page!  The texting lovers! "[T]hey both demonstrated a clear bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton."
• Minority Memo: "Peter Strzok and Lisa Page's text messages are irrelevant to the FISA application.  The Majority gratuitously includes reference to [them] at the end of their memorandum, in an effort to imply that political bias infected the FBI's investigation and FISA applications.  In fact, neither Strzok nor Page served as affiants on the applications, which were the product of extensive and senior DOJ and FBI review.  in demonizing both career professionals, the Majority . . . omits inconvenient text messages, in which they critiqued a wide range of other officials and candidates from both parties."  And of course, the Democrats point out that Strzok co-signed that Comey memo that nuked Clinton's campaign just days before the election.

Let's end with Trump's own view of the Minority Memo, which (as we all know) he read and studied carefully, highlighter in hand.  Tweet #1: "The Democrat memo response on government surveillance abuses is a total political and legal BUST. Just confirms all of the terrible things that were done. SO ILLEGAL!"  And Tweet #2: "Dem Memo: FBI did not disclose who the clients were - the Clinton Campaign and the DNC.  Wow!"  I don't want to alarm you, but the President of the United States may in fact not be a genius.
 

Mueller's Indictment of 13 Russians - A Love Story

Do you know what Robert Mueller loves?  FACTS.  Dates. Times. Verifiable actions.  In an age when the President of the United States screams "fake news" at the slightest suggestion that he is not the best and most beloved leader in American history, it's nice to read Mueller's indictment of 13 Russian nationals who attempted to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, if only because it reminds us that facts still matter to some of the people with power.

As you read the highlights of the indictment, please keep in mind that this is not "My Final Report on Everything I'm Done Now," by Robert Mueller.  You will note, for example, that there is no hacking of the DNC in this report, which is a thing that very famously, you know, happened.  Put another way, any Republican pundits claiming that this exonerates Trump or implicates the Democrats haven't read the indictment, or perhaps have read the indictment and just enjoy lying.  There are also pundits claiming that the FBI has pronounced that the Russians had no impact on election results.  The FBI has not said that, first of all, and second, read this and see if you agree.

When you see "organization," that refers to the Internet Research Agency LLC, "a Russian organization engaged in operations to interfere with elections and politician processes."

• "The ORGANIZATION sought, in part, to conduct what it called 'information warfare against the United states of America' through fictitious U.S. personas on social media platforms and other Internet-based media."  [Note that Mueller is clearly quoting a witness or a document from the organization.]
• "By in or around May 2014, the ORGANIZATION'S strategy included interfering with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with the stated goal of 'spread[ing] distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.'"  [Again, he's quoting, though we don't know whom or what.]
• "Defendant ALEKSANDRA YURYEVNA KRYLOVA worked for the ORGANIZATION from at least in or around September 2013 to at least in or around November 2014. . . . In 2014, KRYLOVA traveled to the United States under false pretenses for the purpose of collecting intelligence to inform the ORGANIZATION's operations." (8-9)
• "Defendant SERGEY PAVLOVICH POLOZOV worked for the ORGANIZATION from at least in or around April 2014 to at least in or around October 2016.  POLOZOV served as the manager of the IT department and oversaw the procurement of U.S. servers and other computer infrastructure that masked the ORGANIZATION's Russian location when conducting operations within the United States." (9)
• "Defendant GLEB IGOREVICH VASILCHENKO worked for the ORGANIZTION from at least in or around August 2014 to at least in or around September 2016.  VASILCHENKO was responsible for posting, monitoring, and updating the social media content of many ORGANIZATION-controlled accounts while posing as U.S. persons or U.S. grassroots organizations." (10)
• "Starting at least in or around 2014, Defendants and their co-conspirators began to track and study groups on U.S. social media sites dedicated to U.S. politics and social issues.  In order to gauge the performance of various groups on social media sites, the ORGANIZATION tracked certain metrics like the group's size, the frequency of content placed by the gorup, and hte level of audience engagement with that content, such as the average number of comments or responses to a post." (12)
• "KRYLOVA and BOGACHEVA, together with other Defendants and co-conspirators, planned travel itineraries, purchased equipment (such as cameras, SIM cards, and drop phones), and discussed security measures (including "evacuation scenarios") for Defendants who traveled to the United States."  (12) [Note that while we were oblivious, they had plans in case they got busted in the middle of their spy missions.]
• "KRYLOVA and BOGACHEVA received visas, and from approximately June 4, 2014 through June 26 2014, KRYLOVA and BOGACHEVA traveled in and around the United States, including stops in Nevada, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas, and New York to gather intelligence.  After the trip, KRYLOVA and BURCHIK exchanged an intelligence report regarding the trip." (13) [It sounds to me like Mueller might have a copy of that report, but who knows!]
• "[In] June 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, posing online as U.S. persons, communicated with a real U.S. person affiliated with a Texas-based grassroots organization.  During the exchange, Defendants and their co-conspirators learned from the real U.S. person that they should focus their activities on 'purple states like Colorado, Virginia and Florida.'  After that exchange, Defendants and their co-conspirators commonly referred to targeting 'purple states' in directing their efforts" (13)
• "Defendants and their co-conspirators also created thematic groups on social media sites, particularly on the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram.  ORGANIZATION-controlled pages addressed a range of issues, including: immigration (with group names including 'Secured Borders'); the Black Lives matter movement (with group names including 'Blacktivist'); religion (with group names including 'United Muslims of America' and 'Army of Jesus'); and certain geographic regions within the United States (with group names including 'South United' and 'Heart of Texas').  By 2016, the size of many ORGANIZATION-controlled groups had grown to hundreds of thousands of online followers." (14)
• "Defendants and their co-conspirators also created and controlled numerous Twitter accounts designed to appear as if U.S. persons or groups controlled them.  For example, the ORGANIZATION created and controlled the Twitter account 'Tennessee GOP,' which used the handle @TEN_GOP.  The @TEN_GOP account falsely claimed ot be controlled by a U.S. state political party.   Over Time, the @TEN_GOP account attracted more than 100,000 online followers." (15)
• "Defendants and their co-conspirators also regularly evaluated the content posted by specialists . . . to ensure they appeared authentic - as if operated by U.S.persons.  Specialists received feedback and directions to improve the quality of their posts." (15)
• "Defendants and their co-conspirators . . . contacted media outlets in order to promote activities inside the United States." (16)
• "By 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used their fictitious online personas to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.  They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump." (17)
• "Specialists were instructed to post content that focused on "politics in the USA" and to "use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump - we support them)." (17)
• "On or about September 14, 2016, in an internal review of an ORGANIZATION-created and controlled Facebook group called 'Secured Borders' the account specialist was criticized for having a 'low number of posts dedicated to criticizing Hillary Clinton' and was told 'it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary Clinton' in future posts" (17)
• "Defendants and their co-conspirators also used false U.S. personas to communicate with unwitting members, volunteers, and supporters of the Trump Campaign involved in local community outreach." (17)
• "In or around the latter half of 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators . . . began to encourage U.S. minority groups not to vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or to vote for a third-party U.S. Presidential candidate. . . . [On] October 16, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the ORGANIZATION-controlled Instagram account 'Woke Blacks' to post the following message: '[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary.  We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils.  Then we'd surely be better off without voting AT ALL." (18)
• "[In] the summer of 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators also began to promote allegations of voter fraud by the Democratic Party" (18).
• "Starting in approximately June 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators organized and coordinated political rallies in the United States.   To conceal the fact that they were based in Russia, Defendants and their co-conspirators promoted these rallies while pretending to be U.S. grassroots activists who were located in the United States but unable to meet or participate in person." (20)
• "In order to build attendance for the rallies, Defendants and their co-conspirators promoted the events through public posts . . . In addition, Defendants and their co-conspirators contacted administrators of large social media groups focused on U.S. politics and requested that they advertise the rallies." (21)
• "On or about July 23, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators usd the email address of a false U.S. persona, joshmilton024@gmail.com, to send out press releases to over thirty media outlets promoting the 'Down with Hillary' rally at Trump Tower in New York City" (26).
• They organized a series of rallies for Trump in the state of Florida called "Florida Goes Trump."  "Defendants and their co-conspirators purchased advertisements on Facebook and Instagram to promote the 'Florida Goes Trump' rallies. . . . Defendants and their co-conspirators asked one U.S. person to build a cage on a flatbed truck and another U.S. person to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform.  Defendants and their co-conspirators paid these individuals to complete the requests" (22-23)
• "On or about August 18, 2016 the real 'Florida for Trump' Facebook account responded to the false U.S. persona 'Matt Skiber' account with instructions to contact a member of the Trump Campaign ('Campaign Official 1') involved in the campaign's Florida operations and provided Campaign Official 1's email address at the campaign domain donaldtrump.com" (27-28)
• "On or about August 31, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, using a U.S. persona, spoke by telephone wiht a real U.S. person affiliated with a grassroots group in Florida.  That individual requested assistance in organizing a rally in Miami, Florida.  On or about September 9, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators sent the group an interstate wire to pay for materials needed for the Florida rally." (29)

Now here comes the part that will prove beyond all doubt (*coughing fit*) that the Russians didn't really want Trump to win.  This is the basis for insisting that the Russians just wanted to interfere generally, and not in favor of Trump.  Ready?

• AFTER the election, Defendants and their co-conspirators "used false U.S. personas to organize and coordinate U.S. political rallies in support of then president-elect Trump, while simultaneously using other false U.S. personas to organize and coordinate U.S. political rallies protesting the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election." (23)

One more point of interest:

• Facebook announced in September of 2017 that it had discovered Russian expenditures on its platform and shared its findings with the DOJ.  "Defendants and their co-conspirators thereafter destroyed evidence for the purpose of impeding [the Special Counsel's] investigation.  On or about September 13, 2017, KAVERZINA wrote in an email to a family member: 'We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our activity (not a joke).  So, I got preoccupied with covering tracks together with colleagues."

A Timeline by Which to Evaluate THE MEMO

As ever, I am not an attorney, an expert on Russia, Boris, Natasha, Moose, or Squirrel. I was trying to get some timing straight in my head, and I started compiling this. These are all things you have to ignore if you're going to play like THE MEMO is a genuine scandal. Since I found this timeline useful, I thought I'd post it. It's neither comprehensive nor exhaustive; I don't have enough paid subscriptions for that!

The formatting is out of control. I can't tame it. It has a will of its own.

1) January 2015. "A court filing by the US government contains a transcript of a recorded conversation [from 2013] between two members of a Russian SVR spy ring, Victor Podobnyy and Igor Sporyshev. Their conversation concerns efforts to recruit 'Male-1,' later confirmed as Carter Page."

Podobnyy, per the transcript: "[Page] wrote that he is sorry, he went to Moscow and forgot to check his inbox, but he wants to meet when he gets back. I think he is an idiot and forgot who I am. Plus he writes to me in Russian [to] practice the language. He flies to Moscow more often than I do. . . . For now his enthusiasm works for me." (Page was not only providing Podobnyy with enthusiasm, but also documents.) Source

2) September or October of 2015. Fusion GPS got word that the conservative news site Washington Free Beacon wanted some research done on Donald Trump. Source

3) Unknown date, fall of 2015: "[Fusion GPS] gave Chris[topher Steele] a sort of assignment that would be typical for us which was pretty open ended. We said see if you can find out what Donald Trump's been doing on these trips to Russia." Source

4) December 2015. "[Carter] Page reached out to New York’s Republican Party chair, Ed Cox, in late December 2015, asking to be put in touch with Trump’s team. Cox put Page in contact with then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who sent him over to [Sam] Clovis, who is said to have put him on Trump’s list of advisers." Source

5) March 21, 2016. "In an interview with the Washington Post, Donald Trump personally names the then-obscure Page as part of his foreign policy team. News coverage at the time focused on how strange a choice this was given Page’s lack of experience. (In the same interview, Trump also listed George Papadopoulos, who graduated from college in 2009.)" Source

6) April 2016. "April 2016, [Russian hacking group] Fancy Bear accessed the Washington servers of the Democrats; Cozy Bear had done so as early as the summer of 2015. Once more, the group was caught red-handed by the Dutch, who again alerted their U.S. counterparts." Source

7) May 2016. A drunk George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat that Russia had dirt on Hillary.

8) June 9, 2016. Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with Russians in Trump Tower to get dirt on Hillary.

9) June 12, 2016. Julian Assange (Wikileaks) said in an interview that he had obtained Clinton's emails, which would be forthcoming. Source

10) June 15, 2016. Guccifer 2.0 published the first leaked DNC email. Source

11) Late June / early July of 2016. Glenn Simpson agreed with Christopher Steele that Steele should approach the FBI. Source

12) July 2016. " Then–Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski approve[d] Page’s trip to Moscow on condition that he not act as an official representative of the campaign while there. Page initially ask[ed] J.D. Gordon, his supervisor on the national security team, who strongly advise[d] against taking the trip. Then, Page email[ed] Lewandowski and Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks for official approval, and Lewandowski approve[d]." Source

13) July 7, 2016. Carter Page delivered a speech in Russia, which the Katehon Think Tank posted on You Tube. This is how they described Page: "Carter Page is one of the youngest advisors of Donald Trump. He is an energy and economic development expert, particularly regarding the countries of the former Soviet Union and the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe. . . .Page lived in Moscow for three years, where he was advising Gazprom. After the reunification of Crimea with Russia and the beginning of operations in Ukraine, he was one of the few American experts who called for understanding the actions of Russia. Page came out openly against the interventionist policy of NATO, which, in his opinion, provoked Russia." Please notice the language here: "reunification of Crimea with Russia." That's not exactly the word the rest of the world would use. Indeed, even though Carter Page called for "understanding," the US government didn't see it that way. We sanctioned Russia over the annexation of Crimea. If you have a fuzzy memory of all of this, see this article.

14) July 19, 2016, during the Republican National Convention, Trump became the Republican nominee. Although I cannot say this is the exact date when the Washington Beacon stopped paying Fusion GPS, it was logically the latest date at which the Beacon would have even considered paying. Hillary and the DNC picked up the tab only after this point.

15) July 22, 2016. Wikileaks published more hacked DNC emails, directly ahead of the Democratic Convention, which ran from July 25-28.

16) July 27 (I think) 2016. Donald Trump: “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” Source

17) Also July 27 2016. "On Wednesday, Trump made a drastic break from bipartisan foreign policy consensus, saying he would consider recognizing Crimea - the strategic Ukranian peninsula Putin annexed in 2014 - as Russian territory, and might also lift US sanctions imposed on Rusian in response. ('We'll be lookingat that. Yeah, we'll be looking,' Trump said in response to a question.)" Source

18) "After a briefing in August, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wrote a letter to the FBI saying 'questions have been raised' about whether Page met with 'high-ranking sanctioned individuals' during his trip [to Russia]." Source

19) September 2016. Steele met with the FBI in Italy. Source

20) "Late summer 2016. The FBI obtain[ed] another secret court order from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge to monitor Page’s communications, after convincing the judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. The FBI waited until the Trump campaign had parted ways with Page to begin surveilling him." You caught that last sentence right? The surveillance started AFTER HE LEFT THE CAMPAIGN. Source

21) November 7, 2016. Lewandowski insisted Page was a "low-level volunteer." 22) January 10, 2017. Buzzfeed published "the dossier" - i.e. a collection of memos Christopher Steele sent to Fusion GPS. Source

23) January 12, 2017. Sean Spicer denied that Trump even knew who Page was. Source 24) March 2, 2017. Page admitted to journalist Chris Hayes that he met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the Republican National Convention. Source

25) February 3, 2018. THE MEMO was released. It regaled us with details of the tremendous scandal of the FBI rigging up facts to justify surveillance of Donald Trump's campaign (read: Carter Page.) It claimed that everything was based on Steele's dossier. The FBI, understandably (if not verbatim), called it a pile of shit.

The Fusion GPS Transcript Highlights

• Glenn Simpson is a co-founder of Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned the intelligence reports that Buzzfeed published as the "Steele dossier".
• In August, Simpson testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The transcript of that testimony was released on January 9, 2018.
• There are a couple of threads on Twitter analyzing the transcript and its import, which are excellent. This is not an attempt to write that kind of thread. I'm not a Russia expert (shocker). I'm also not a spy expert (what?!). I'm just a girl, standing in front of a democracy, asking it to function. To that end, I pulled out the literal pieces of the transcript that will (I hope) help an average human understand what went down.
• Note: What journalists and others refer to the dossier is actually a series of memos that were sent to Glenn Simpson one at a time by Christopher Steele. In the words of Glenn Simpson:
• "To be totally clear, you know, what people call the dossier is not really a dossier. It's a collection of field memoranda, of field interviews, a collection that accumulates over a period of months."

***

1. Who or what is a Fusion GPS?

"[Fusion GPS is] a research company. So generally what we do is provide people with factual information." (21)

"Public information is our specialty. We generally are all ex-journalists and specific type of journalists, investigative reporters, and, you know, being a journalist is all about finding public information. At least, you know, the kind of journalism I practiced was based on documents. I'm a document hound and so are my colleagues. So essentially we gather up large quantities of public information and we process that. We've sort of more recently branched into data science and, you know, digital data, obtaining databases through FOIA. We do a lot of Freedom of Information Act work. We work with court records a lot, corporate records a lot. Some of my employees do a lot of financial crime and money laundering and fraud investigations, tax evasion, that sort of thing. Those are my specialties." (53-54)

***

2.  How the whole thing started

Q. So you had mentioned a few minutes ago that you had done some political or campaign research in the course of the 2016 election and you clarified that that was work related to then Candidate and now President Trump. What can you tell us about that work? Can you just describe it first generally and then I'll ask you some follow-up. 

A. It was, broadly speaking, a kind of holistic examination of Donald Trump's business record and his associations, his bankruptcies, his suppliers, you know, offshore or third-world suppliers of products that he was selling. You know, it evolved somewhat quickly into issues of his relationships to organized crime figures but, you know, really the gamut of Donald Trump. 

What we generally do at the beginning of a case if it's possible is to order all the books about the subject from Amazon so we're not reinventing the wheel and we know what's been written and said before. So this was typical. We ordered every Donald Trump book and, to my surprise, that's a lot of books. I was never very interested in Donald Trump. He was not a serious political figure that I'd ever had any exposure to. He's a New York figure really. So anyway, we read everything we could read about Donald Trump. Those books cover his divorces, his casinos, his early years dealings with labor unions and mafia figures. I'm trying to think what else. His taxes certainly have always been a big issue. Again, it was sort of an unlimited look at his -- you know, his business and finances and that sort of thing. 

Q. And when did this work begin? 

A. It was either September or October of 2015. I recall being in London on other business and hearing somebody wanted for us to take a look at it. 

Q. And what can you tell us about who engaged you initially to do that work? 

MR. LEVY [Mr. Simpson's attorney]: The answer to that question might implicate privilege. 

BY MS. SAWYER: Q. So it has been publicly reported that the initial engagement of September to October 2015 was 19 by someone with ties -- with Republican ties. Can you confirm whether that is accurate or not? 

MR. LEVY: We're not going to talk about the identity of clients.  

[Hint: It was later revealed in the press to be the Washington Free Beacon.] 

***

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. I guess I should just repeat, you know, this is a subject that I covered extensively at the Wall Street Journal. 

***

Q. And specific to the engagement with regard to the research on Candidate Trump, why did you specifically ask Mr. Steele to do that work?

A. The way our firm runs we pursue things, you know, somewhat out of curiosity. So we didn't know -- it was opaque what Donald Trump had been doing on these business trips to Russia. We didn't know what he was doing there. So I gave Chris -- we gave Chris a sort of assignment that would be typical for us which was pretty open ended. We said see if you can find out what Donald Trump's been doing on these trips to Russia. (82-83)

***

"The thing that people forget about what was going on in June of 2016 was that no one was really focused on sort of this question of whether Donald Trump had a relationship with the Kremlin. So, you know, when Chris started asking around in Moscow about this the information was sitting there. It wasn't a giant secret. People were talking about it freely. " (87-88)

3. How the investigation proceeded to the first memo

"So the purpose of this was to see if we could learn more, generally speaking, about his business dealings in Russia. What came back was something, you know, very different and obviously more alarming, which had to do with -- you know, which outlined a political conspiracy and a much broader set of issues than the ones that we basically went looking for. You know, initially we didn't know what do with this. The main thing we did with it, the use we made of it was as intelligence, which is to understand what's happening. So when this arrived the first indicators were starting to float around that there was something bigger going on, the government of Russia or someone was doing some hacking. I don't really remember the precise details. I just remember there were rumblings at that time about whether there had been lot of hacking and there was going to be -- political digital espionage was going to be a component of the campaign." (143-44)

***

After being asked how they assessed the accuracy of what Steele reported in:

"We [who operate the company] do public records work. So we deal in documents and things that are very hard and that are useful in court. . . . Chris[topher Steele] deals in a very different kind of information, which is human intelligence, human information. So by its very nature the question of whether something is accurate isn't really asked. The question that is asked generally is whether it's credible. Human intelligence isn't good for, you know, filing lawsuits. It's good for making decisions and trying to understand what's going on and that's a really valuable thing, but it's not the same thing. So when you evaluate human intelligence, human reporting, field reporting, source reporting, you know, it's sort of like when you're a journalist and you're trying to figure out who's telling the truth, right. You don't really decide who's telling the truth. You decide whether the person is credible, right, whether they know what they're talking about, whether there's other reasons to believe what they're saying, whether anything they've said factually matches up with something in the public record. So, you know, we would evaluate his memos based on whether he told us something we didn't know from somewhere else that we were then able to run down." (93-94)

4. How Fusion GPS evaluated what Christopher Steele was telling them in the first memo

Q. You had indicated that when you received it you found it unusual, it was sensitive information. Did you take steps to verify any of the information?

A. We assessed it for credibility, whether it was credible. The question of the credibility of the information is obviously a big question here, can this be believed. There's other secondary questions that would follow on from that, can it somehow be used, does it have any use and that sort of thing, but the threshold question is is it credible information. You know, there were two background factors to that. One was who is it coming from. It's coming from Chris Steele who's a guy that I've worked with for, you know, about eight or nine years and Chris, as I say, has a Sterling reputation as a person who doesn't exaggerate, doesn't make things up, doesn't sell baloney. In my business, I mean, there are a lot of people who make stuff up and sell baloney. So the one thing that you get good at if you do this for a while is finding reliable sources, finding reliable people who have a record of giving it to you straight and not making stuff up and not making mistakes. So from that perspective, you know, this was alarming because Chris is a credible person, he's well respected in his field, and, as I say, everyone I know who's ever dealt with him thinks he's quite good. That would include people from the U.S. government. So the issue is where is it coming from and then the other issue is does it make sense or are there events in there that can be externally, you know, reviewed or backed up. On the question of whether it makes sense -- well, let me stay on the question of some of the events that are described. We were aware of some of these trips and we were obviously aware of the hostility toward Hillary Clinton and, you know, there was a lot of general knowledge that we had that fit with this just in terms of dates and places and roles of people in the Kremlin. (148-49)

5. Did the first memo suggest Russian interference in our election?

[Q] "So this particular memo that we've been talking about, this first one doesn't specifically mention, as far as I can see, any efforts to interfere by Russia. It does talk about potential -- as it's called in here, a dossier of compromising material on Hillary Clinton. Did you take any steps to verify whether that dossier of compromising material existed on Hillary Clinton?

A. I will answer that, but can I just back you up a little bit. I think your observation it doesn't mention anything about interfering I wouldn't agree with.

Q. Okay.

A. I mean, one of the key lines here in the second paragraph says "However, he and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his democratic and other political rivals." So the issue with the Trump Tower meeting, as understand it, is that the Trump people were eager to accept intelligence from a foreign government about their political rivals and that is, you know, I would say, a form of interference. If you're getting help from a foreign government and your help is intelligence, then the foreign government's interfering. I mean, you know, I think that also -- of course, in retrospect we now know this was pretty right on target in terms on what it says. So anyway --

Q. In reference to you think that particular sentence?

A. I mean, it clearly refers to, you know, them being interested in and willing to -- it depicts them as accepting information. What we have seen to date with the disclosures this year is they were at a minimum super interested in getting information. (154-55)

6. The second memo

"I believe -- it's my recollection that what prompted this memo was, in fact, the beginning of public reporting on the hack. I think -- what is the date again? Yeah, it's 26 July. So by this time Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been the subject of a very aggressive hacking campaign, weaponized hack, the likes of which, you know, have never really been seen. We've seen hacking in politics before, but this kind of, you know, mass theft of e-mail and then to dump it all into, you know, the public sphere was extraordinary and it was criminal. So the question by now of whether this was Russia and whether this might have something to do with the other information that we'd received was, you know, the immediate question, and I think this is also -- by the time this memo was written Chris had already met with the FBI about the first memo.

So he's -- if I can interpret a little bit here. In his mind this is already a criminal matter, there's already a potential national security matter here." (158-59)

7. Who had the idea to contact the FBI?

"I mean, this is basically about a month later and there's a lot of events that occurred in between [the two memos]. You know, after the first memo, you know, Chris said he was very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat and said he wanted to -- he said he thought we were obligated to tell someone in government, in our government about this information. He thought from his perspective there was an issue -- a security issue about whether a presidential candidate was being blackmailed. From my perspective there was a law enforcement issue about whether there was anillegal conspiracy to violate the campaign laws, and then somewhere in this time the whole issue of hacking has also surfaced.

So he proposed to -- he said we should tell the FBI, it's a national security issue. I didn't originally agree or disagree, I just put it off and said I needed to think about it. Then he raised it again with me. I don't remember the exact sequence of these events, but my recollection is that I questioned how we would do that because I don't know anyone there that I could report something like this to and be believed and I didn't really think it was necessarily appropriate for me to do that. In any event, he said don't worry about that, I know the perfect person, I have a contact there, they'll listen to me, they know who I am, I'll take care of it. I said okay. You know, I agreed, it's potentially a crime in progress. So,you know, if we can do that in the most appropriate way, I said it was okay for him to do that." (159-60)

8. When and how did that go down?

Q. And do you recall when you -- when you and Mr. Steele decided kind of that he could or should take this to the FBI, approximately the time frame of that?

A. I believe it was sometime around the turn of the month. It would have been in late June or at latest early July. That's my recollection.

Q. And Mr. Steele was the one who was then responsible for doing the initial outreach to them and making that contact?

A. Yes. Well, I mean, let's be clear, this was not considered by me to be part of the work that we were doing. This was -- to me this was like, you know, you're driving to work and you see something happen and you call 911, right. It wasn't part of the -- it wasn't like we were trying to figure out who should do it. He said he was professionally obligated to do it. Like if you're a lawyer and, you know, you find out about a crime, in a lot of countries you must report that. So it was like that." (163-64)

***

Q. Did you seek anyone else's approval for him to go to the FBI?

A. No.

Q. Did anyone ever encourage you to ask him to go to the FBI?

A. No.

Q. Did anyone discourage you from having him go to the FBI?

A. No. (167)

9. Do you know what did the FBI did with the information Steele gave them?

Q. Was there a discussion about whether and when he would take [additional] information to the FBI?

A. Not that I recall. After the initial memo he told me that he had briefed him. I don't remember anything specific about the issue arising again other than to say generally that as the summer progressed the situation with the hacking of the Democrats and the efforts by the Russians to influence the election and the possibility that the Trump organization was, in fact, doing things to curry favor with the Russians became more and more serious as external developments occurred.

So, for instance, they changed the Republican platform, which is addressed in here. Carter Page shows up in Moscow and gives a speech. He's a campaign advisor and he gives a speech about dropping sanctions. Trump continues to say mysterious things about what a great guy Putin is. So I vaguely recall that these external events prompted us to say I wonder what the FBI did, whoops, haven't heard from them. So that was basically the state of things through September. (169-70)

10. But Steele did meet with the FBI again, right?

Q. So when did that -- you had said the FBI then came back and contacted Mr. Steele?

A. That's my understanding.

Q When did that, to the best of your knowledge, take place?

A. Mid to late September. . . .

11. What the FBI told Steele in September (!!!)

Q. You said that [Mr. Steele] told you of the meeting with the FBI in Rome in mid or late September, that he "gave them a full briefing"?

A. A debrief I think is what he probably said, they had debriefed him. I don't remember him articulating the specifics of that. You know, my understanding was that they would have gotten into who his sources were, how he knew certain things, and, you know, other details based on their own intelligence. Essentially what he told me was they had other intelligence about this matter from an internal Trump campaign source and that -- that they -- my understanding was that they believed Chris at this point -- that they believed Chris's information might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization.

Q. And did you have any understanding then or now as to who that human intelligence source from inside the Trump campaign might have been?

MR. LEVY (Simpson's lawyer): He's going to decline to answer that question.

MS. SAWYER: On what basis?

MR. SIMPSON: Security.

MR. LEVY: Security. (173-74)

***

"It was someone like us who decided to pick up the phone and report something." (176)

12. What the FBI did next (HOLY SHIT)

Q. Now, with regard to -- just to finish up on the interactions with FBI, do you know were there any additional interactions between Mr. Steele and the FBI?

A. There was some sort of interaction, I think it was probably telephonic that occurred after Director Comey sent his letter to Congress reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton's e-mails. That episode, you know, obviously created some concern that the FBI was intervening in a political campaign in contravention of long-standing Justice Department regulation. So it made a lot of people, including us, concerned about what the heck was going on at the FBI. So, you know, we began getting questions from the press about, you know, whether they were also investigating Trump and, you know, we encouraged them to ask the FBI that question. You know, I think -- I'm not sure we've covered this fully, but, you know, we just encouraged them to ask the FBI that question.

On October 31st the New York Times posed a story saying that the FBI is investigating Trump and found no connections to Russia and, you know, it was a real Halloween special.

Sometime thereafter the FBI -- I understand Chris severed his relationship with the FBI out of concern that he didn't 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't really understand what was going on. So he stopped dealing with them."

***

Q. So you had indicated that Mr. Steele said he had -- I think your phrase was "broken off" with the FBI. What did you understand that to mean?

A. That Chris was confused and somewhat disturbed and didn't think he understood the landscape and I think both of us felt like things were happening that we didn't understand and that we must not know everything about, and therefore, you know, in a situation like that the smart thing to do is stand down. (230)

**Editorial pause**

The Republicans and Democrats trade off every hour, which means that every hour, you get dragged to a completely different line of inquiry. EVEN AFTER HEARING that someone in Trump's camp was saying the same thing, they plowed their way right back to trying to make Fusion GPS look shady and shitty. That was their only goal. They were not successful, in my opinion, but the questions were pointedly about - or at least aimed at - Fusion. The Democrats, meanwhile, asked about Steele, Trump, the FBI, etc., so those are the things I've been quoting.

This is the Republicans' first mention of Christopher Steele that I noticed, and it occurs on page 192:

Q. Do you believe that the FBI generally considers sources more credible if they have previously provided reliable information?

A. That's my understanding.

Q. Was Mr. Steele's reportedly successful history in working with the FBI a factor in deciding to hire Orbis for the Trump project?

A. No.

13 What about the White House claim that Russia is paying you to talk shit?

Q. So in an August 1, 2017 news briefing White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders 2 said "The Democrat linked firm Fusion GPS actually took money from the Russian government while it created the phoney dossier that's been the basis for all of the Russia scandal fake news." What is your response to that statement? 

A. It's not true? 

Q. And what in particular is not true about it? 

A. Well, it's a false allegation leveled by William Browder before this committee and in other places for the purpose of his advantage. She's repeating an allegation that was aired before this committee and in other places that we were working for the Russian government and it's not true. Most importantly the allegation that we were working for the Russian government then or ever is simply not true. I don't know what to say. It's political rhetoric to call the dossier phony. The memos are field reports of real interviews that Chris's network conducted and there's nothing phony about it.. . .

Q. And I think you've already answered you contend that you were not taking money from the Russian government and that was in relation to the litigation work you had done with Baker Hostetler, correct? 

A. Yes. They are a well-regarded law firm that has obligations to determine the sources of funds when they take a client and, to my knowledge, they did so and the money was not coming from the Russian government.   (256-58)

14.  But aren't you just a Democrat who works for Democrats and eats Democrat food and sleeps on Democrat sheets?

MR. LEVY: We're not going to get into specific client matters that are outside the scope of this interview. He's told you he's represented clients on the right and left, but he's not going to get into other matters beyond Prevezon and what he did in the 2016 election. 

MR. SIMPSON: I did investigate Senator Obama's campaign in 2008 when I was working for the Wall Street Journal and wrote an article that  caused his campaign chair to resign. The record is replete -- or the public report of my work is replete with examples of investigations I've done of Democrats that resulted in them losing their elections and being prosecuted.

MR. LEVY: At the Wall Street Journal?

MR. SIMPSON: Yes.

15.  But don't you just hate Donald Trump and love Democrats? (questions that follow asked by a Democrat)

Q I think what I'm trying to get some sense of comfort around is to the extent there might be concerns that the work being done was driven in a direction designed to reach a particular conclusion for a client or because of the client's identity was that the case?

A. I think it's safe to say that, you know, at some point probably early in 2016 I had reached a conclusion about Donald Trump as a businessman and his character and I was opposed to Donald Trump. I'm not going to pretend that that wouldn't have entered into my thinking. You know, again, I was a journalist my whole life. So we were, you know, trained not to take sides and practiced in not taking sides.

So most of what I do as a research person is we try to avoid getting into situations where one's etiology [sic] or political views would cloud your work because it's a known hazard, but, you know, I reached an opinion about Donald Trump and his suitability to be president of the United States and I was concerned about whether he was the best person for the job.

Q. And given that you had been trained not to allow etiology [sic] to cloud your work, it sounds like you reached a conclusion and had concerns about Candidate Trump. What steps did you take to then ensure that your conclusion didn't cloud the work that was being done? 

A. Well, to be clear, my concerns were in the category of character and competence rather than -- I didn't have any specific concerns for much of the time about his views, which I don't share, but that wasn't really the issue. Most of what we do has to do with do people have integrity and whether they've been involved in illicit activity. So those were the things I focused on. 

Q. So the conclusion that you reached, was it informed by the research that you were -- your personal conclusion, was it informed by the research that you were conducting? 

A. Yes. We deal in factual information and over the course of this project we gathered lots of facts about Donald Trump. (291-93)

***

Q. And what can you share with us about the findings, your findings?

A. Well, I've tried to share as much as I could think of over the course of today. As I say, there were various allegations of fraudulent business practices or dishonest business practices or connections with organized crime figures. In fact, you know, there was numerous others that I can't remember the names of. It was a long history of associations with people accused of involvement in criminal activity.  (294)

16.  Can you give us some Donald dirt, beyond the dossier?

Q. Did you reach any conclusions based on your review of his tax bills? I think you mentioned that in connection with trying to assess either financial connections or his financial standing. Did you reach any conclusions with regard to either of those? 

A. Yes. I concluded -- we concluded that his statements about what individual properties were worth were greatly exaggerated and at odds with the information that he'd supplied, you know, in legal filings with tax authorities and other records, corporate records.  (298-99)

***

Q. You mentioned as well, you brought up Trump golf courses. What in particular were you looking into with regard to Donald Trump's golf courses? 

A. The original inquiry was into the value of the courses, whether he had to borrow money to buy them, whether they were encumbered with debt, how much money they brought in, what valuations he put on them, and property tax filings. 

Q. And in general can you share what findings 24 and conclusions you reached? . . . .

A. A number of them don't make any money. His valuations of the properties are questionable. I guess those would be the main findings. 

Q. You just mentioned broadly but didn't 8 describe it, you mentioned research on Scotland. I don't know if it was particular properties or something with regard to Scotland. Can you just describe what that research was. 

A. Sure. He has golf courses in Scotland and Ireland and one of the facets of UK . . . company law is that private companies have to file financial statements, public financial statements. So when you're looking at a guy like Donald Trump who doesn't like to share information about his company, it's useful to find a jurisdiction where he's required to share that information with the local government. So we went and ordered the records -- the financial statements of the golf courses. There's also a long-running land use controversy -- I think there's multiple long-running land use controversies over those properties. We haven't really touched on this at all, but there were also 2 environmental issues that were part of the research. 

Q. With regard to the public financial statements, did you reach any conclusions based on that? 

A. That they were not profitable entities. I don't specifically recall. I just remember that these were not doing very well and that he'd sunk a 10 lot of money into them and he hadn't gotten a lot of money back yet. 

17.  But seriously.  You're a democrat and you fucking hate Trump, eh? (Question that follows from a Republican)

MR. FOSTER: You weren't hired to find positive information about Mr. Trump, were you? 

MR. SIMPSON: To the contrary. I think when you're doing research on any subject you're trying to figure out what the truth is. So if Donald Trump's got a good business record and he's really worth billions of dollars, that's important information. In fact, you shouldn't be feeding reporters stories about how Donald Trump is not worth billions of dollars if he's worth billions of dollars. So, you know, I think the connotation of negativity, I get, you know, where you're coming, but, in fact, [as a researcher] you're [meaning "I'm"] just trying to figure out what's true.