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.