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1 look in case you have a more focused inquiry too.
2 MS. SAWYER: We can certainly do that. Why
3 don't we take a five-minute break and I'll ask
4 whatever remaining questions we have on the
5 dossier.
6 MR. FOSTER: We'll go off the record at 5:11.
7 (A short break was had.)
8 MS. SAWYER: We're back on the record at
9 5:20.
10 BY MS. SAWYER:
11 Q. We appreciate you are walking through some
12 of these and we understand your general practice
13 and I want to make sure I'm characterizing this
14 accurately. When you would get the memos you
15 would -- from Mr. Steele you would review them, you
16 would see if they resonated with information that
17 you already knew and other research you may already
18 have done. I think you already told me that you
19 don't recall at the time anything jumping out at
20 you as patently inaccurate; is that fair to say?
21 A. Yes, that's fair to say.
22 Q. And I had just asked you to review and I
23 appreciate you taking the time to review the
24 additional memos which would just run from Bates
25 No. 41405 to 41425 to just try to determine for the
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committee if research that you had been doing on
the separate track on some of these topics in
particular amplified the work in the dossier.
MR. LEVY: When you say "amplified the work
in the dossier," what do you mean?
MS. SAWYER: Both kind of verified and maybe
gave you some additional information and insights
on either the factual allegations in them or
whether or not the key players identified had also
engaged in either similar or related behavior on
Russian -- you know, related to Russian
interference.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. I'd say that's generally right. I read a
lot of books and studies on Russia and organized
crime. So over the years I just have a lot of
residual knowledge of some of the people and
subjects that are covered in the memos.
Q. Okay. So nothing certainly jumped out at
you and then as --
A. Nothing jumped out at me --
Q. -- as inconsistent with information that
you had gained from other sources?
A. That's correct.
Q. And did you have any reason to believe
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either then or now that Mr. Steele would have kind
of fabricated any of the information that he
included in any of these memos?
A. No.
Q. I do want to return to a few of the topics
and a few of the specifics, but I think I'll hold
that until the next round because I have a few
other just follow-up questions for you.
It had come up in the last round that there
was a meeting and some information was provided to
Mr. Kramer. Were you still -- at the time that
occurred were you, Fusion GPS, still working on
behalf of a client who had engaged you to do
research as part of the presidential election
campaign or did that occur after that engagement
ended?
A. It occurred after the engagement had
ended.
Q. And besides Mr. Steele, did you discuss
sharing information with Mr. Kramer with anyone
else?
A. Not that I recall.
Q. My colleagues had also asked you about
meetings and particularly that occurred between
June 8th and June 10th of 2016 and some of the
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individuals involved in those meetings. As a
general matter, did you discuss the work you were
doing related to the presidential election campaign
with -- did you ever discuss that with Natalia
Veselnitskaya?
A. I don't believe I ever discussed it with
her. I'd just add that she doesn't speak much
English. So the possibilities are almost none. I
didn't discuss it with her.
Q. Do you have any reason to believe that she
knew that you were doing work -- opposition
research work on then Candidate Trump?
A. No.
Q. Do you have any reason to believe that she
knew that Christopher Steele was doing work for you
as part of that project, the opposition research on
Candidate Trump?
A. No.
Q. What about Rinat Akhmetshin, did you ever
talk with Rinat Akhmetshin about the fact that you
were doing opposition research on Candidate Trump?
A. Not that I recall, no.
Q. Do you have any reason to believe that
Christopher Steele ever spoke with Rinat Akhmetshin
about the fact that Christopher Steele had been
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 1 engaged by you to do work -- related to the
2 opposition work on then Candidate Trump?
3 A. Do I have any reason to believe that he
4 spoke? No, I have no reason to believe he did.
5 Q. Do you know if he did or not?
6 A. It's never -- we've never discussed it,
7 but I have no reason to think he would have.
8 Q. And if he had discussed it, would that
9 have been consistent with the nondisclosure
10 agreement that you indicated you would have had
11 with Mr. Steele?
12 A. That would -- if he discussed it with
13 someone like that without my knowledge, it would
14 not have been consistent with our agreement.
15 Q. And then given that, would it surprise you
16 if Mr. Steele had talked with Rinat Akhmetshin
17 about the work he was doing related to then
18 Candidate Trump?
19 A. Yes, that would surprise me.
20 Q. Did you discuss the fact that you were
21 doing opposition research on Candidate Trump with
22 anyone at Prevezon Holdings?
23 A. Not that I recall, no.
24 Q. And if you had done so, would that have
25 been consistent with your confidentiality
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obligations to that client?
A. No, it wouldn't have been consistent.
Q. Did you speak with anyone at Baker
Hostetler about the work that you had been engaged
to do on then Candidate Trump?
A. Not that I recall.
Q. So the point in time at which you were in
meetings that included -- the meetings that you had
related to the Court hearing at Prevezon that
you've already discussed, the dinner, the Court
hearing, and then a subsequent dinner, they occur
right around the same time that Natalia
Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin and the
individual you described as a translator, Anatoli
Samochornov, met -- or it has been reported met
with individuals in the Trump campaign. Did that
topic just never come up during those three days?
A. It never came up. I don't know what else
to say. It never came up.
Q. So you at the time had no idea that they
were meeting with or met -- and actually, in fact,
met with members of the Trump campaign?
A. I didn't have any idea about that meeting
until quite recently.
Q. So in an August 1, 2017 news briefing
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 1 White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders
2 said "The Democrat linked firm Fusion GPS actually
3 took money from the Russian government while it
4 created the phoney dossier that's been the basis
5 for all of the Russia scandal fake news." What is
6 your response to that statement?
7 A. It's not true?
8 Q. And what in particular is not true about
9 it?
10 A. Well, it's a false allegation leveled by
11 William Browder before this committee and in other
12 places for the purpose of his advantage. She's
13 repeating an allegation that was aired before this
14 committee and in other places that we were working
15 for the Russian government and it's not true.
16 Most importantly the allegation that we were
17 working for the Russian government then or ever is
18 simply not true. I don't know what to say. It's
19 political rhetoric to call the dossier phoney. The
20 memos are field reports of real interviews that
21 Chris's network conducted and there's nothing
22 phoney about it. We can argue about what's prudent
23 and what's not, but it's not a fabrication.
24 Q. And I think you've already answered you
25 contend that you were not taking money from the
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1 Russian government and that was in relation to the
2 litigation work you had done with Baker Hostetler,
3 correct?
4 A. Yes. They are a well-regarded law firm
5 that has obligations to determine the sources of
6 funds when they take a client and, to my knowledge,
7 they did so and the money was not coming from the
8 Russian government.
9 Q. So that was for the Prevezon work for
10 Baker Hostetler. Did you take money in any way,
11 shape, or form that could be attributed to the
12 Russian government for the work that you were
13 doing -- the opposition research work that you were
14 doing on then Candidate Trump?
15 A. No.
16 Q. Did, to the best of your knowledge,
17 Mr. Steele take money in any way, shape, or form
18 that could be attributed to the Russian government
19 for the work that he did on the memos as part of
20 the opposition research on Candidate Trump?
21 A. No.
22 I'll add one more thing to the response to
23 Sarah Huckabee Sanders, which is her assertion that
24 we are a Democrat linked opposition research firm.
25 I think I addressed this earlier, but to be clear,
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we don't have a business of -- we're not an
appendage to the Democratic party. We run a
commercial business, we're all ex-journalists. We
take clients from both sides of the aisle. We have
a long history of that, I'm proud of that. I'm
happy to say I have lots of Republican clients and
friends.
Q. To the extent there have been allegations
or indications that the work that Mr. Steele did,
his research into Russian interference in the 2016
election, or your work could have been influenced
by Rinat Akhmetshin, do you believe that is true
and if -- do you believe it's true?
A. No.
Q. Do you believe that the work that
Mr. Steele did on Russian interference and possible
ties to the Trump campaign or your work could have
been influenced by Natalia Veselnitskaya?
A. No.
MS. SAWYER: I think my time is up for this
round. So I appreciate your patience and we'll
take a break.
MR. FOSTER: It's 5:34.
(A short break was had.)
MR. DAVIS: We'll go back on the record.
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1 It's 5:43 p.m.
2 EXAMINATION
3 BY MR. DAVIS:
4 Q. Mr. Simpson, could you walk us through
5 your itinerary to the best you remember it from
6 June 8th through 10th of 2016, especially any
7 interactions you had with Prevezon team members
8 during those three days?
9 MR. LEVY: Beyond what he's discussed today?
10 MR. DAVIS: Yes.
11 BY THE WITNESS:
12 A. I took the train to New York. I don't
13 recall, but I may have had other business. I don't
14 remember. I think there was a dinner. I went back
15 to my hotel, went to bed. Got up the next morning.
16 I don't remember the sequence, but I remember
17 meeting with Weber Shandwick, the PR firm, about
18 preparations for -- I think we expected there was
19 going to be a trial. I think that's what it was
20 about. It might have been about the press coverage
21 of the hearing. I just don't remember. I went to
22 the hearing and I think -- if I remember the
23 sequence correctly, I went to the hearing, then I
24 had the meeting with those guys, the Weber
25 Shandwick guys, and then I hightailed it home. My
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1 son's junior prom was that night or senior prom and
2 I was under some pressure to go home and be a dad.
3 Q. And then on the 10th, that first day back
4 in D.C.?
5 A. I don't think that was my first day back.
6 I was back the evening of the 9th.
7 Q. Sorry. The first full day.
8 A. I think it was a weekend. So I don't know
9 what I was doing. Probably just relaxing. I went
10 to the dinner, it was at a restaurant called
11 Barcelona up on Wisconsin Avenue, it was a social
12 occasion. I brought my wife, other people brought
13 their wives. We talked about books and other other
14 nongermane topics. It was just a social
15 occasion.
16 (Exhibit 6 was marked for
17 identification.)
18 BY MR. DAVIS:
19 Q. I'm going to show you an exhibit. I think
20 we're on 6. We understand these are meeting notes.
21 Do these phrases about -- including Mr. Browder
22 mean anything to you or relate to any of the
23 research that you conducted or otherwise aware of
24 regarding Mr. Browder?
25 MR. LEVY: When say "meetings notes," meeting
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notes about what meeting?
MR. DAVIS: These are the meeting notes from
the June 9th meeting at Trump Tower. These are
Mr. Manafort's notes or they're contemporaneous.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. I could tell -- obviously you know who
Bill Browder is. Cyprus Offshore, Bill Browder's
structure, you know, investment -- Hermitage
Capital, his hedge fund, set up numerous companies
in Cyprus to engage in inward investment into
Russia, which is a common structure, both partially
for tax reasons but also to have entities outside
of Russia, you know, managing specific investments.
I can only tell you I assume that's what that
references. I don't know what the 133 million --
MR. FOSTER: Can I interrupt? And you know
that from research that you did and provided to --
MR. SIMPSON: Yes.
MR. LEVY: Let him finish.
MR. FOSTER: -- research that you did and
provided to Baker Hostetler and their client?
MR. SIMPSON: Yes. There was a -- I can
elaborate a little bit. As part of the research
into how Hermitage Capital worked we looked at
various things, their banking relationships, the
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Page 263 1 way they structured their investments in Russia. I
2 don't remember how many, but there was a large
3 number of shell companies in Cyprus that were used
4 to hold the investments of individual clients of
5 Hermitage. So one of the things we discovered from
6 that was the likely identities of some of
7 Hermitage's clients.
8 BY MR. DAVIS:
9 Q. Do any of the other entries in here mean
10 anything to you in light of the research you've
11 conducted or what you otherwise know about
12 Mr. Browder?
13 A. I'm going to -- I can only speculate about
14 some of these things. I mean, sometimes --
15 MR. LEVY: Don't speculate.
16 BY THE WITNESS:
17 A. Just would be guesses.
18 Q. Okay.
19 A. I can skip down a couple. So "Value in
20 Cyprus as inter," I don't know what that means.
21 "Illici," I don't know what that means. "Active
22 sponsors of RNC," I don't know what that means.
23 "Browder hired Joanna Glover" is a mistaken
24 reference to Juliana Glover, who was Dick Cheney's
25 press secretary during the Iraq war and associated
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with another foreign policy controversy. "Russian
adoptions by American families" I assume is a
reference to the adoption issue.
Q. And by "adoption issue" do you mean Russia
prohibiting U.S. families from adopting Russian
babies as a measure in response to the Magnitsky
act?
A. I assume so.
Q. The information here, is this generally
consistent with the type of information you or
Baker Hostetler were providing about Mr. Browder
and his activities?
MR. LEVY: Can you repeat that question.
MR. DAVIS: Is the information here, to the
best you can decipher it, consistent with the
information that you and Baker Hostetler and HRAGI
were relaying to other parties about Mr. Browder's
activities?
MR. LEVY: He's just told you that a lot of
what's here he doesn't know what it means, he
doesn't have knowledge or recollection as to these
terms.
MR. DAVIS: The parts you do recognize.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. Couple of the items touch on things that I
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worked on, Cyprus, Bill Browder.
Q. I'm going to jump back to the Russia
investigation. You'd mentioned before you've had
some subcontractors that you've worked with long
enough that you call them super subs; is that
correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Orbis or Mr. Steele, is that one such
super sub in your opinion?
A. It's a loose term. We don't have a list
of super subs.
MR. FOSTER: Is he one of them?
MR. SIMPSON: There is no list. So I can't
tell you if he's one of them. He's a reliable
subcontractor who's worked with us in the past and
we've been very satisfied with the quality of his
work.
MR. LEVY: Just to reiterate, I think as you
described these super subs earlier loosely, even
with some of these super subs Mr. Simpson said that
he would talk about clients only on a need-to-know
basis even with the super subs, so-called.
BY MR. DAVIS:
Q. Beyond the memoranda prepared by
Mr. Steele, did Fusion create any other work
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product relating to this investigation?
MR. LEVY: Which investigation?
MR. DAVIS: The investigation into Mr. Trump
and his associates.
MR. LEVY: In addition to what?
MR. DAVIS: Sorry. The investigation into
Mr. Trump and his associates.
MR. LEVY: I'm sorry. Just repeat the whole
question.
MR. DAVIS: Sure. In addition to the
memoranda compiled by Mr. Steele, did Fusion itself
create any other work product as part of this
investigation?
MR. LEVY: I just want to make sure there's
no confusion. It wasn't Fusion that created the
memoranda.
MR. DAVIS: Right, but it was a subcontractor
giving it back to Fusion.
MR. LEVY: That's correct.
BY MR. DAVIS:
Q. With that understanding, did Fusion create
any work product of its own?
A. Yes.
Q. And can you describe what type of work
product that was?
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1 A. I believe I described it before. We do a
2 lot of public records research, things that are in
3 the news, things that are in court documents. We
4 summarize those things and try to document, you
5 know, and attach them to the underlying source
6 material.
7 Q. So you create sort of summary memoranda of
8 those documents?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Okay. And to whom is that distributed?
11 MR. LEVY: As a general matter?
12 MR. DAVIS: Well, within the course of this
13 investigation.
14 MR. LEVY: Inasmuch as that answer calls for
15 client communications the answer might be
16 privileged, might touch on obligations Mr. Simpson
17 has. So he's not going to answer that question.
18 MR. FOSTER: Did you provide work product to
19 your client?
20 MR. LEVY: Again, the answer to that question
21 might implicate privilege or his obligations.
22 BY MR. DAVIS:
23 Q. Is the version of the Steele memoranda
24 that was published by BuzzFeed identical to the
25 version that Orbis provided Fusion?
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A. To my knowledge, yes.
Q. The version published by BuzzFeed contains
several redactions, not merely the ones by
Mr. Gubarev, G-U-B-A-R-E-V, that were later added.
Were those redactions in the versions Mr. Steele
provided to you?
MR. LEVY: So wait. You're asking about the
version in Exhibit 3?
MR. DAVIS: Right.
MR. LEVY: And you're asking if the
redactions that appear here were delivered to
Fusion?
MR. DAVIS: Right.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. No.
Q. Do you know who added those redactions?
A. No.
Q. Did any version of the memoranda list
source and subsource names rather than referring to
sources anonymously?
A. I'm not sure I understand the question.
Q. In the version that we have as an exhibit
obviously it doesn't give identifying information
for sources, it says source A, subsources, things
like that. Was there ever a version that listed
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1 the actual source names rather than substituting
2 them?
3 A. These are the versions that we received.
4 Q. They're what?
5 A. These are the memos that we received.
6 Q. Those are the memos you received. Okay.
7 MR. FOSTER: But he's asking if you received
8 any other memos that listed the sources?
9 MR. LEVY: He did not -- what I think he said
10 is that he did not receive any versions of these
11 memos that listed the sources.
12 MR. FOSTER: Okay. Did you receive any other
13 documentation from Mr. Steele that listed the
14 sources?
15 MR. SIMPSON: I don't want to get into source
16 information.
17 BY MR. DAVIS:
18 Q. Again, I don't want to repeat questions
19 that have been asked, but I don't want to
20 unintentionally omit anything. Did the version
21 provided to the FBI include all source names?
22 A. I don't know that there was a version
23 provided to the FBI.
24 Q. When Mr. Steele first met with the FBI in
25 the summer of 2016 do you know if he provided the
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first memoranda that he created?
MR. LEVY: He's already answered that
question.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. No, I don't know.
Q. Do you know if he provided any other
memoranda to the FBI on a rolling basis at all at
any point?
MR. LEVY: He's answered that question too.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. I don't know.
Q. So I'd like to go back to Exhibit 4, I
believe. On page 3, paragraph 18 Mr. Steele's
attorneys are describing the December memoranda and
they state "The Defendants" -- again, that's
Mr. Steele and Orbis -- "continued to receive
unsolicited intelligence on the matters covered by
the pre-election memoranda after the U.S.
presidential election and the conclusion of the
assignment for Fusion."
They reiterate this point on Exhibit 5 on
page 4. Request 11 asks "Please state whether such
intelligence was actively sought by the
Defendant" --
A. Where are you at?
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1 Q. Page 4, request 11. It states "Please
2 state whether such intelligence was actively sought
3 by the second Defendant or merely received as
4 presently pleaded." The response they say is "Such
5 intelligence was not actively sought, it was merely
6 received."
7 Did anyone -- are you aware of who sent this
8 unsolicited intelligence to Mr. Steele?
9 A. No.
10 Q. Could you describe his methods of
11 compiling the dossier a little more? I think
12 before you described field interviews. He seems to
13 be talking about unsolicited information coming to
14 him rather than information he sought out?
15 A. I can try. When you're doing field
16 information gathering you have a network of people,
17 sources. It's not like a light switch that you
18 turn on and off, these are people you work with.
19 So they call you and tell you stuff. You know, you
20 don't close the window and stop answering phone
21 calls, you know, when the engagement ends. So I
22 assume this is stuff that came in straggle,
23 whatever you call it.
24 Q. To the best of your knowledge, did
25 Mr. Steele pay any of his sources or subsources in
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the memoranda for information?
A. I don't know. I think there's been a
little bit of confusion I would like to clear up.
Some people were saying that he was paying people
for information. I don't know whether he does or
not, but that's not basically how I understand
field operations to work. You commission people to
gather information for you rather than sort of
paying someone for a document or to sit for an
interview or something like that. That's not how I
understand it works.
Q. To make sure I understand, are you saying
you don't pay for particular information, you would
have an established financial arrangement with
someone?
A. If he did at all, but I did not ask and he
did not share that information. He did not invoice
me for any such.
Q. Did Mr. Steele ever discuss his opinion of
Mr. Trump with you?
A. We didn't discuss our political views of
Mr. Trump, I don't think, at least not that I
specifically remember, if that's what you mean.
Q. That is.
If I recall correctly, you said earlier that
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once Fusion had exhausted public documentary
sources you turned to Mr. Steele and some other
subcontractors for human intelligence; is that
correct?
A. Yeah, field intelligence.
Q. Would your engagement with your client
have ended had you not turned to human
intelligence?
A. I have no idea. I mean, I can't
speculate.
Q. Well, to clarify, when say you had
exhausted the public documentation, are you saying
you reached the end of your work or was there still
more?
A. No. It's a broad project, there's lots of
things going on. We're pulling legal filings and
bankruptcies and all sorts of other stuff on all
kinds of issues. I was talking about specific
lines of inquiry.
Q. To the best of your knowledge, do Rinat
Akhmetshin and Christopher Steele know each
other?
A. I don't know.
Q. To the best of your knowledge, has
Mr. Akhmetshin ever worked with Orbis?
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A. Not to my knowledge.
MR. FOSTER: If Mr. Akhmetshin were one of
the sources in the dossier, would you know that?
MR. SIMPSON: I believe he would have told me
that by now given the public controversy over this
matter, but he hasn't.
BY MR. DAVIS:
Q. I'm sorry. Is the "he" --
A. Chris Steele.
Q. How often would you say you interacted
with Mr. Akhmetshin during the 2016 elections
season?
A. Infrequently, intermittently.
Q. When was the last time you spoke with him?
A. I don't remember, but I don't think it
was -- I just don't remember.
Q. To the best of your knowledge, was Ed
Lieberman aware of your Trump research project?
A. Not to the best of my knowledge.
MR. FOSTER: Could you just tell us generally
who else other than your client was aware of the
Trump research project as it was going on. So
excluding your client and excluding your
subcontractors, who else knew that you were doing
it?
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MR. SIMPSON: Journalists.
MR. FOSTER: In the summer of 2016?
MR. SIMPSON: Yes.
MR. FOSTER: And they knew that because you
were telling them about it?
MR. SIMPSON: We get calls from journalists
who are working on stories about all kinds of
subjects and some things we can answer questions on
and others we don't. I'm a former journalist, as I
think you know, and we do lots of different kinds
of research and people who are working on a story
will call us and say what do you know about, you
know, Carter Page and we'll say, well, here's the
things that we know.
MR. FOSTER: And they're aware you're being
paid to do that research for a client?
MR. SIMPSON: I don't know. Generally that's
not an issue.
MR. FOSTER: So my question was who knew that
you were doing the research, the Trump-Russia
research at the time?
MR. LEVY: He answered the question. He told
you he spoke with journalists and told them what he
had found.
MR. FOSTER: Right. I was trying to clarify.
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My question was whether or not they knew you were
being paid to do that research.
MR. LEVY: He answered that question too and
he said he did not explain that to the journalists.
MR. SIMPSON: It's hard to generalize. I run
a business, it's a research business. Reporters
know we have clients who pay us to do research.
So, you know, I don't remember any specific queries
about whether we were being paid or not, but I
think most journalists would assume that someone
had paid us to do research.
MR. FOSTER: They knew you were doing a Trump
oppo research project as opposed to a Hillary
Clinton oppo research project?
MR. LEVY: From 2015 through the end of the
election?
MR. FOSTER: Can you let the witness answer,
please.
MR. SIMPSON: The word "they" is extremely
broad. Journalists would call and ask questions
about specific things and from that they might
conclude that we were doing a Trump oppo project.
It's just worth pointing out that in a
political season all kinds of people are doing
research on all kinds of things. Some people are
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1 interested in trade, other people are interested in
2 guns. So you wouldn't necessarily intuit exactly
3 what we were doing. Most people are interested in,
4 you know -- they're interested in the story they're
5 working on. So some people will say, hey, I'm
6 interested in whether Donald Trump gets his ties
7 from third-world countries and they wouldn't ask
8 about anything else.
9 BY MR. DAVIS:
10 Q. You mentioned before, if I recall
11 correctly, that Fusion was having issues with
12 persons attempting to hack it?
13 A. That's a current concern, yes.
14 Q. When did that concern -- when did you
15 first become aware of that concern?
16 A. Relatively recently.
17 Q. So after the election?
18 A. Yes.
19 MR. FOSTER: Did you tell journalists that
20 you had engaged Mr. Steele in the summer of 2016?
21 MR. SIMPSON: I don't specifically remember
22 doing that until the fall.
23 MR. FOSTER: After the election or before?
24 MR. SIMPSON: Before the election.
25 MR. FOSTER: Can you remember the context in
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1 which you told them that?
2 MR. SIMPSON: Yes.
3 MR. FOSTER: Can you describe it for us,
4 please.
5 MR. SIMPSON: Sure. Essentially there was --
6 at some point the controversy over the Trump
7 campaign's possible relationship with the Kremlin
8 became, you know, one of the main -- major issues
9 in the campaign and there were things that Chris
10 knew and understood to be the case that only he
11 could really explain in a credible way, and I
12 thought that -- we thought that he should be the
13 one that explains them, you know. So we sat down
14 with a small group of reporters who were involved
15 in investigative journalism of national security
16 issues and we thought were in a position to make
17 use of him as a resource.
18 MR. FOSTER: Do you recall whether that was
19 before or after he ended his relationship with the
20 FBI?
21 MR. SIMPSON: Before.
22 BY MR. DAVIS:
23 Q. Do you recall what the first published
24 article -- when the first published article came
25 out that referenced material from the memoranda?
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A. Not specifically.
MR. FOSTER: Earlier you talked about
evaluating the credibility of the information in
the memoranda that you were being provided by
Mr. Steele and, by way of summary, you talked about
your belief that he was credible and that you had
worked with him before and the information he had
provided you had been reliable in the past. Did
you take any steps to try to assess the credibility
of his sources, his unnamed sources in the material
that he was providing to you?
MR. SIMPSON: Yes, but I'm not going to get
into sourcing information.
MR. FOSTER: So without getting into naming
the sources or anything like that, what steps did
you take to try to verify their credibility?
MR. SIMPSON: I'm going to decline to answer
that.
MR. FOSTER: Why?
MR. LEVY: 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.
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MR. FOSTER: I'm not asking him to identify
the sources. I'm just asking what steps he took to
try to verify or validate the information.
MR. LEVY: He's given you --
MR. FOSTER: If he can answer generally
without identifying the sources, I'd ask him to
answer.
MR. LEVY: He's given you over nine hours of
information and he's going to decline to answer
this one question.
MR. FOSTER: And several others.
MR. LEVY: Not many.
BY MR. DAVIS:
Q. I think you mentioned that you were in
London when you first heard that someone was
interested in hiring Fusion to work on the Trump
research; is that correct?
MR. LEVY: Repeat the question.
MR. DAVIS: If I recall correctly,
Mr. Simpson said that he was in London when he
first heard that somebody was interested in hiring
Fusion to do Trump research?
BY THE WITNESS:
A. That's my recollection.
Q. Were either of the clients on this project
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not American citizens?
A. Were either of the clients on this --
MR. LEVY: Clients on which project?
BY MR. DAVIS:
Q. Were any clients on the Trump research not
American citizens?
A. I don't mind answering that if that's
okay. They're domestic clients.
MR. FOSTER: You said earlier that the
information that you gather in your work is owned
by the client, it's not owned by you, and so
therefore you also referenced your nondisclosure
agreements and that you felt like if you had
information that related to national security or
law enforcement that the nondisclosure agreement
did not prevent you from disclosing that
information to third parties. Is that a fair
summary?
MR. LEVY: Wait. You said a lot there.
Which third parties are you talking about?
MR. FOSTER: Well, to law enforcement.
MR. LEVY: I think he's answered this
already. You're asking him whether it was
permittable under his contractual obligations to
report a crime to the national security community,
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1 and he said yes, it's fine for him to do that.
2 MR. FOSTER: Right. I'm trying to summarize
3 the previous answer as a premise to my next
4 question. Is that an accurate summary of what you
5 said before?
6 MR. LEVY: Summarizing testimony is dangerous
7 after he's given nine hours of it. If you want to
8 ask him a question, ask him a question.
9 MR. FOSTER: Is there a specific provision in
10 your NDA that provides an exception for disclosure
11 to law enforcement or intelligence agencies?
12 MR. LEVY: I think he earlier didn't talk
13 about the contract, but if you want to talk about
14 it as a matter of practice what your understanding
15 is, go ahead.
16 MR. SIMPSON: I don't know.
17 MR. FOSTER: My colleague Ms. Sawyer asked
18 you earlier about public reports that the initial
19 client on the Trump work was a Republican and that
20 it's also been publicly reported that later there
21 was another client who was a supporter of Hillary
22 Clinton. Are you the source for any of those
23 public reports?
24 MR. LEVY: A hundred percent of what you were
25 saying was referring to news articles, right.
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MR. SIMPSON: I've been asked about this by
various journals as to what I've heard, whether
they can report things that they've heard
elsewhere, and I have not -- I don't know if you'd
classify that as being a source, but I've been
asked those questions and I've avoiding getting
into specifics. But I have -- if people have
accurate information of a general nature like that,
I generally would not -- I would confirm things.
MR. FOSTER: Sorry. I didn't understand your
answer.
MR. MUSE: It's quite clear.
MR. SIMPSON: Depends on what you say a
source is. If someone calls me and say I hear
client No. 1 was a Republican, then I'd say I don't
have any problem with you writing that. That's not
quite the same thing.
MR. FOSTER: So you confirm the accuracy of
information?
MR. LEVY: He didn't say that.
MR. SIMPSON: There are certain things that
I've chosen not to deny. You know, generally
speaking, I deal with a lot of journalists. I'm
not going to mislead people.
BY MR. DAVIS:
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1 Q. To the extent you can clarify, is it that
2 there were two sets of clients, one of whom was
3 Republican and one of which was a Clinton
4 supporter, or was it one person's whose views
5 changed?
6 MR. LEVY: We're not going to get into the
7 identity of clients. As you know, we've agreed to
8 an interview about questions 5 through 13 of the
9 March 24 request. Questions 1 through 4 talk about
10 the identities of the clients. The Chair and the
11 Ranking Member agreed with counsel for Mr. Simpson
12 about the scope of this interview and that question
13 is outside of it. In addition, the answer to that
14 question would implicate privilege and obligations.
15 He's talked to you for nine hours, he's given you a
16 lot of information, and he's not going to answer
17 questions about identities of clients.
18 MR. DAVIS: You've asserted attorney-client
19 work product privilege --
20 MR. LEVY: There is no such privilege. I've
21 asserted the attorney work product privilege, we've
22 asserted privileges under the First Amendment,
23 we've asserted the attorney-client privilege, and
24 we've asserted privileges of confidentiality. It's
25 a voluntary interview and he's declining to answer
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the question.
MR. DAVIS: I understand that.
BY MR. DAVIS:
Q. So with the Prevezon matter, then, is it
correct the law firm involved was Baker Hostetler
and the ultimate client was Prevezon, is that
right, while you were working there?
A. Yes.
Q. So any attorney-client privileges within
the context of that information would be -- the
holder of that privilege is Prevezon; is that
correct?
MR. LEVY: That's a legal conclusion that
he's not qualified to draw.
MR. DAVIS: You don't feel that you can speak
to it without their permission?
MR. LEVY: Speak to what?
MR. DAVIS: To questions that would be
covered by attorney-client privilege.
MR. LEVY: I'm not sure he's qualified to
answer that question.
BY MR. DAVIS:
Q. Did you work with any law firms in
relation to the Trump investigation?
MR. LEVY: Again, we're not getting into the
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1 identity of any clients --
2 MR. DAVIS: I didn't say client.
3 MR. LEVY: I understand. Or their lawyers.
4 MR. FOSTER: I think the issue we're trying
5 to deal with is in order to assess your claims of
6 privilege the committee needs to understand at
7 least as much about the context of the dossier work
8 as it does about the Prevezon work in terms of who
9 was involved. So if there's a law firm involved or
10 if he was reporting to a law firm or acting under
11 the direction of a law firm, then we need to be
12 able to assess whether or not that was in
13 anticipation of litigation, whether he was doing it
14 by the direction of a law firm in order to assess
15 your assertions of privilege.
16 MR. LEVY: I understand. We've identified
17 our position. We've been talking -- Mr. Simpson
18 has been answering your questions since 9:30 this
19 morning, it's now 6:15. He's been fully
20 cooperative and he's here because the Chair and the
21 Ranking Member agreed to a limited scope. The
22 questions you're asking are outside of that scope
23 and this is part of why appearing at a hearing was
24 going to be impossible. Through this agreement
25 we're here. He's given you a ton of information.
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1 If you want to discuss the privilege with counsel
2 after the interview, you may do so. He's answered
3 a ton of questions today and he's going to decline
4 to answer this last one.
5 MR. FOSTER: The last one was did you work
6 with a law firm on the Trump matter?
7 MR. LEVY: He's declining to answer.
8 MR. FOSTER: There were several points in the
9 interview where you made a point of saying your
10 firm is not a Democratic linked firm in reference
11 to the Sarah Huckabee Sanders quote. It's been
12 publicly reported that you did opposition research
13 for a client targeting Mr. Romney in the 2012
14 election. Obviously we've been talking about the
15 Trump opposition research. Have you ever done
16 opposition research regarding Mr. Obama?
17 MR. LEVY: We're not going to get into
18 specific client matters that are outside the scope
19 of this interview. He's told you he's represented
20 clients on the right and left, but he's not going
21 to get into other matters beyond Prevezon and what
22 he did in the 2016 election.
23 MR. SIMPSON: I did investigate Senator
24 Obama's campaign in 2008 when I was working for the
25 Wall Street Journal and wrote an article that
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Page 288 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.
BY MR. DAVIS:
Q. Are you party to a joint defense agreement
related to your Prevezon work?
MR. LEVY: He's not going to talk about
privileged discussions or agreements, and he's
probably not qualified to answer anyway.
BY MR. DAVIS:
Q. Is Fusion GPS paying Cunningham Levy for
the firm's representation of you or as a third
party?
MR. LEVY: That's privileged also. He's not
getting into payments to his lawyers and it's
beyond the scope of this interview which has now
gone on for almost nine hours.
BY MR. DAVIS:
Q. Has Fusion GPS ever offered directly or
indirectly to pay journalists to publish
information?
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A. No.
Q. Are you aware of any Fusion clients
offering directly or indirectly to pay journalists
to publish information from Fusion?
MR. LEVY: While working for Fusion on a
Fusion matter or as a general matter?
MR. FOSTER: Can you let the witness answer.
MR. LEVY: Well, if the question's clear he
can answer any question --
MR. FOSTER: I think the question was clear.
MR. LEVY: -- within the scope of the
interview --
MR. DAVIS: Are there any of Fusion's
clients offering --
THE REPORTER: Guys.
BY MR. DAVIS:
Q. I'll repeat the question. Are you aware
of any of Fusion's clients offering directly or
indirectly to pay journalists to publish
information from Fusion?
A. Not to my knowledge or recollection, no.
MR. FOSTER: What was the end date of the
Trump engagement?
MR. LEVY: He told you he didn't recall
exactly.
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MR. SIMPSON: That's not correct. The
election was the end date. I assume you're asking
about the general election? The election date
would have been the end.
MR. FOSTER: So you didn't do any work on the
Trump matter after the election date, that was the
end of your work?
MR. SIMPSON: I had no client after the
election.
MR. FOSTER: It's 6:21. Let's go off the
record for a minute.
(A short break was had.)
MS. SAWYER: We'll go back on the record.
It's 6:30.
EXAMINATION
BY MS. SAWYER:
Q. We appreciate your time today, your
patience in answering our questions.
You've been asked a number of questions just
about -- well, strike that.
Were any of the particular factual findings
or conclusions that you reached with regard to the
research that was being done related to Russian
interference in the 2016 election including
possible ties to the Trump campaign, were any of
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1 the factual findings or conclusions influenced in
2 any way by the identity of the client for whom you
3 were doing that work?
4 A. All the questions you've asked I guess
5 this one I've not given a lot of thought to.
6 Offhand, not that I can think of.
7 Q. So you weren't trying to reach a
8 particular conclusion based on the identity had
9 they asked you to find -- well, strike that.
10 I think what I'm trying to get some sense of
11 comfort around is to the extent there might be
12 concerns that the work being done was driven in a
13 direction designed to reach a particular conclusion
14 for a client or because of the client's identity
15 was that the case?
16 A. I think it's safe to say that, you know,
17 at some point probably early in 2016 I had reached
18 a conclusion about Donald Trump as a businessman
19 and his character and I was opposed to Donald
20 Trump. I'm not going to pretend that that wouldn't
21 have entered into my thinking. You know, again, I
22 was a journalist my whole life. So we were, you
23 know, trained not to take sides and practiced in
24 not taking sides.
25 So most of what I do as a research person is
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1 we try to avoid getting into situations where one's
2 etiology or political views would cloud your work
3 because it's a known hazard, but, you know, I
4 reached an opinion about Donald Trump and his
5 suitability to be president of the United States
6 and I was concerned about whether he was the best
7 person for the job.
8 Q. And given that you had been trained not to
9 allow etiology to cloud your work, it sounds like
10 you reached a conclusion and had concerns about
11 Candidate Trump. What steps did you take to then
12 ensure that your conclusion didn't cloud the work
13 that was being done?
14 A. Well, to be clear, my concerns were in the
15 category of character and competence rather than --
16 I didn't have any specific concerns for much of the
17 time about his views, which I don't share, but that
18 wasn't really the issue. Most of what we do has to
19 do with do people have integrity and whether
20 they've been involved in illicit activity. So
21 those were the things I focused on.
22 Q. So the conclusion that you reached, was it
23 informed by the research that you were -- your
24 personal conclusion, was it informed by the
25 research that you were conducting?
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1 A. Yes. We deal in factual information and
2 over the course of this project we gathered lots of
3 facts about Donald Trump.
4 Q. You mentioned that earlier and I think you
5 made clear a number of times in the course of the
6 day that the specific work on Russian interference
7 and possible ties to the campaign that Mr. Steele
8 was doing was one part of that bigger picture, and
9 I did want to ask you about some of that bigger
10 picture of the work and get a sense from you, if I
11 could, you know, some of the background and
12 findings. In particular one of the things you had
13 mentioned -- well, you just mentioned right now as
14 we were speaking the term "illicit activity."
15 What, if any, research did you conduct that gave
16 you any concerns about then Candidate Trump and
17 potential illicit activity?
18 A. I think the thing I cited to you was his
19 relationship with organized crime figures, and that
20 was a concern.
21 Q. And what can you share with us about the
22 findings, your findings?
23 A. Well, I've tried to share as much as I
24 could think of over the course of today. As I say,
25 there were various allegations of fraudulent
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1 business practices or dishonest business practices
2 or connections with organized crime figures. In
3 fact, you know, there was numerous others that I
4 can't remember the names of. It was a long history
5 of associations with people accused of involvement
6 in criminal activity.
7 You know, just to reiterate, the facts of
8 these investigations are the facts and we don't try
9 to drive an investigation to any particular
10 conclusion, certainly not based on our political
11 views. So I think it would be, you know, not
12 believable for me to tell you I didn't reach, you
13 know, views about Donald Trump's integrity, but,
14 you know, those were -- those didn't influence the
15 research in terms of the findings. Those were the
16 findings.
17 Q. You mentioned specifically and I think
18 with regard to organized crime particularly ties to
19 Felix Sater is one. You indicated a connection to
20 Yudkovich Mogilebich, I think it is.
21 A. Mogilebich.
22 Q. Mogilebich, which we can spell for you.
23 Tell me if I have this correct.
24 M-O-G-I-L-E-B-I-C-H.
25 A. Yes.
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THE REPORTER: What's the first name?
MR. SIMPSON: Semyon, S-E-M-Y-O-N.
BY MS. SAWYER:
Q. Yudkovich, did I get that --
A. I believe I was probably talking fast and
I think I might have made a reference to
Yanukovych, which is the former president of the
Ukraine.
Q. With regard to any of that work, did you
create work product based on that work?
A. I don't specifically recall what we would
have created.
Q. And with regard to that work, did you
share any of that information with law enforcement
agencies?
A. No. I mean, just to reiterate, the only
contact that, you know, occurred during this
engagement was -- at least to my knowledge, was
Chris's dealing with the FBI. Other than that, I
don't remember having any dealings with the FBI.
Q. You had also mentioned earlier in the day
work -- that there was an investigation about money
from Kazakhstan?
A. Yes.
Q. And could you tell me about that and what
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1 you investigated and what you learned.
2 A. There was some parallel litigation in
3 New York involving attempts by the government of
4 Kazakhstan to recover money that had been allegedly
5 stolen from Kazakhstan, billions of dollars in a
6 colossal bank failure. The name of the bank was
7 BTA Bank. It's been well established in various
8 courts that the government's allegations are
9 basically true, which is that large amounts of
10 money were illicitly removed from this bank,
11 laundered across Europe and into the United States
12 apparently. Allegedly.
13 So there was a civil case, at least one civil
14 case in New York involving -- filed by the city of
15 Almaty, A-L-M-A-T-Y, against some alleged Kazakh
16 money launderers. I don't remember exactly how,
17 but we learned that -- it wasn't from Chris. We
18 learned that Felix Sater had some connections with
19 these people, and it's been more recently in the
20 media that he's helping the government of
21 Kazakhstan to recover this money. There's been
22 media reports that the money went into the Trump
23 Soho or it went into the company that built the
24 Trump Soho. I can't remember the name.
25 Q. So the connection in that instance was to
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Felix Sater and through Felix Sater to --
potentially to Donald Trump?
A. Yes. It was a company that Felix Sater
and Donald Trump were involved in together.
Q. And the research you did on that project,
was that public source research? Did you have any
other -- did you have human intelligence sources on
that project?
A. I think I probably did have some human
sources. That's my answer.
Q. And did you use subcontractors at all on
that work?
A. I can't say specifically whether it was --
I remember commissioning some public record-type
research on Felix Sater and his history in
New York.
Q. Did you feel in the course of that that
you had uncovered evidence of any criminal activity
by Donald Trump?
A. In the course of that I don't think so. I
think my concern was the associations with known
organized crime figures.
Q. And that included Felix Sater?
A. Yes.
Q. Anyone else in particular?
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A. There were others.
MR. LEVY: Beyond what we've discussed today?
MS. SAWYER: Yes, beyond what we've already
discussed.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. Another figure involved in the Trump Soho
project was a central Asian person named Arif,
A-R-I-F, is the last name. The first name is
generally spelled Tevfik, it's T-E-V-F-I-K. If you
search under a different transiteration of that
name you can find open source reporting alleging
that he's an organized crime figure from Central
Asia and he had an arrest for involvement in child
prostitution.
Q. You mentioned as well that you had
reviewed tax bills. Were these specifically Donald
Trump's tax bills?
A. They were Trump properties and I believe
we may have reviewed some public information about
estate taxes and things like that. We didn't have
access to his tax returns.
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
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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.
Q. Did any of that indicate anything that
showed a connection to Russia or the Russian
government or Russian officials or Russian
oligarchs?
A. Not that I can recall.
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
and conclusions you reached?
MR. LEVY: With regard to?
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8 describe it, you mentioned research on Scotland. I
9 don't know if it was particular properties or
10 something with regard to Scotland. Can you just
11 describe what that research was.
12 A. Sure. He has golf courses in Scotland and
13 Ireland and one of the facets of UK or anglo
14 company law is that private companies have to file
15 financial statements, public financial statements.
16 So when you're looking at a guy like Donald Trump
17 who doesn't like to share information about his
18 company, it's useful to find a jurisdiction where
19 he's required to share that information with the
20 local government.
21 So we went and ordered the records -- the
22 financial statements of the golf courses. There's
23 also a long-running land use controversy -- I think
24 there's multiple long-running land use
25 controversies over those properties. We haven't
MS. SAWYER: To the work on the golf
properties.
BY THE WITNESS:
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
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1 really touched on this at all, but there were also
2 environmental issues that were part of the
3 research.
4 Q. With regard to the public financial
5 statements, did you reach any conclusions based on
6 that?
7 A. That they were not profitable entities. I
8 don't specifically recall. I just remember that
9 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
11 of money back yet.
12 MS. QUINT: You mentioned a couple of times,
13 Mr. Simpson, that you had particular familiarity
14 with Mr. Manafort and even that you were more
15 familiar with him in particular than Chris Steele
16 was. In general and it might not be easy to be
17 general about it, but what was your focus when you
18 had looked into Manafort? What main areas were you
19 familiar with?
20 MR. SIMPSON: Over the years, originally at
21 the Wall Street Journal we learned of his
22 relationship with Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs.
23 So it was generally continued in that vein. He was
24 subject of some litigation over his business
25 dealings in New York. There was a lawsuit filed by
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1 the opposition politician from Ukraine accusing him
2 of involvement in corruption in Ukraine. So as
3 just a -- not for any particular client, but just
4 because these matters are something I follow I had
5 collected those documents. I think there's
6 probably some other litigation that I collected
7 that was in a similar vein.
8 MS. QUINT: And it was all documentary or did
9 you have human sources for your Manafort research?
10 MR. SIMPSON: I don't think -- for the most
11 part it was just what you call gathering string,
12 just accumulating files on people or subjects that
13 are of interest.
14 BY MS. SAWYER:
15 Q. The committee, certain members of the
16 committee, the Chairman and Ranking Member along
17 with Senators Graham and Whitehouse had sent a
18 request for documents and information on July 19.
19 I understand your efforts to identify that
20 information are ongoing and I know that in response
21 to one of my questions about Mr. Page your attorney
22 has already said that the request for information
23 is pending and being reviewed. I just wanted to
24 ask you a couple of questions about some of the
25 other individuals that we had identified in that
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letter and in particular in request No. 6?
MR. LEVY: Do you have an exhibit or should I
just get my copy out?
MS. SAWYER: I'm happy to enter it as an
exhibit or I can just read the names. I don't
think there's any reason we need to --
MR. LEVY: Just read the names to move it
along, that's fine.
MS. SAWYER: I don't think there's any
reason -- there's nothing in this letter to inform
your answer otherwise.
BY MS. SAWYER:
Q. So with regard to Alpha Group, sometimes
I've heard Alpha Group, sometimes I've heard Alpha
Bank. I don't know if they're two distinct
entities. Do you know anything about Alpha Bank or
Alpha Group with regard to Russian interference in
the 2016 election?
A. Alpha Group is not a corporate person,
it's not an entity. It's just a collective name.
Alpha Bank is a bank. I know a limited amount. I
know, you know, journalists were working on some
issues related to this and they asked us about it,
but the information didn't come from us.
Q. So you were asked by journalists about it,
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1 but you're saying whatever information you had was
2 not generated by Fusion GPS?
3 A. That's right. I know they're a big player
4 and they have long, deep ties to Vladimir Putin.
5 One of the founders, Pyotr Aven, P-Y-O-T-R, second
6 word Aven, A-V-E-N, was an associate of Vladimir
7 Putin when he was in the mayor's office in Saint
8 Petersburg around the time same that Bill Browder
9 was doing business with the mayor's office.
10 They're very powerful politically and economically
11 in Russia and they have -- in the tens of billions
12 are the assets of the founders and they have all
13 sorts of interests. They have epic disputes with
14 western corporations, including BP. So people in
15 my business tend to just have a lot of
16 institutional knowledge about them and, you know, I
17 shared my institutional knowledge about them.
18 Q. You mentioned other founders. Are those
19 other founders Mikhail Fridman and German Khan?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Do you have any information there have
22 been reports about potential communications between
23 a server at Alpha Bank and potentially servers that
24 belong to the Trump organization or Trump -- some
25 entity associated with Donald Trump? Do you have
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1 any information about those particular reports?
2 A. That's kind of an open-ended question. I
3 think what I said is we were asked about that and
4 it wasn't -- that information wasn't generated by
5 us and I'm happy to say it's beyond our competence
6 to have generated, but in the course of being asked
7 about it, you know, people gave us information. I
8 don't know what else to say.
9 Q. And what information were you given?
10 A. A bunch of data. I mean, we were shown
11 like do you know what this would mean, does this
12 mean, and it's beyond -- it's really -- it's
13 certainly beyond my competence.
14 Q. So the data that you were shown, you could
15 not draw any conclusions from it?
16 A. I did not draw any conclusions from the
17 data.
18 Q. Another individual that there's been a lot
19 of press reporting on is Sergei Millian. Other
20 than what -- what, if anything, can you tell us
21 about did you conduct any research into
22 Mr. Millian? And, if so, what conclusions did you
23 reach with regard to Russian interference in the
24 2016 election?
25 A. We learned from sources that he had
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1 connections to the Trump organization and we did an
2 open source investigation of him. We found a
3 picture of him with Donald Trump and another real
4 estate investor in Florida. We've discovered
5 that's not his real name or at least not the name
6 he came to the United States with and that before
7 he became a real estate broker he was a linguist
8 and translator. Speaking generally, people with
9 advanced training in linguistics are oftentimes
10 involved in intelligence matters, but I don't know
11 whether he is or isn't. Various reporters became
12 interested in him because he was boasting about his
13 connections to the Trump organization in the Trump
14 campaign. So we got lots of inquiries about who
15 was he, was he a spy, you know, that sort of thing.
16 Q. And did you make a determination whether
17 or not he had actual ties to the Trump campaign?
18 A. Well, some of the -- yes. I mean, he
19 was -- I think he's Facebook friends with Michael
20 Cohen. I'm sorry. It was some social media
21 connection. It was either Twitter friends or
22 Facebook friends. It was public information. We
23 took it from that that they did know each other. I
24 guess we gradually learned of Michael Cohen's role
25 in the Trump campaign as opposed to in the Trump
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1 organization.
2 Q. And what did you learn about Mr. Cohen's
3 role in the Trump campaign?
4 A. We learned that his job included dealing
5 with inquiries about Russia and he seemed to get
6 all of the serious inquiries, investigative
7 inquiries about Russia. He seemed to know a lot
8 about that. We learned that he was a very
9 intimidating person who had a history of
10 threatening reporters with libel suits. We learned
11 that he's married to -- his father-in-law is a
12 Ukrainian emigre, that he had some Ukrainian
13 clients and connections to the taxi industry in
14 New York which is heavily populated with Russian
15 emigres, and we learned that he was involved in
16 some of Trump's projects where there was a lot of
17 Russian buyers. The only other thing I can think
18 of is that he was also the person who dealt with
19 allegations against Mr. Trump from the tabloids.
20 Q. And with regard to Trump projects with
21 Russian buyers, what specific projects had a number
22 of Russian buyers?
23 A. I don't specifically remember. Florida
24 maybe. I think it was Florida. Sorry.
25 MS. SAWYER: Just give us a minute.
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I think that's really all of our questions.
I don't know if there's follow-up that you all had.
MR. FOSTER: Just very quickly. I can do it
from right here.
So I asked you -- or you were asked earlier
about representations that you're not -- you don't
see your firm as being Democrat linked and in my
previous question I asserted that there had been
public reports that you had done work, opposition
research during the 2012 election aimed at
Mr. Romney, but I didn't ask you to confirm that.
Is that correct?
MR. LEVY: Work for clients outside the scope
of the interview is not within the scope of the
interview.
MR. FOSTER: It's relevant to his claim that
he's not a Democrat linked firm.
MR. LEVY: He's answered that question. He's
given you multiple answers to that question and
significant information in support of his answer to
that question, and that small fact which may or may
not be pertinent is that he's going to decline to
answer because it's outside the scope of this
interview.
MR. SIMPSON: I decline to answer.
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1 MR. FOSTER: In some of the questioning in
2 the last round there was some talk of your -- you
3 didn't have a particular aim in your research, you
4 were following the facts wherever they lead. Is it
5 fair to say -- is it a fair description to say that
6 your job was opposition research aimed at
7 Mr. Trump? That's been widely reported and
8 characterized that way. Do you think that's a fair
9 characterization of what your job was?
10 MR. LEVY: He's been talking for nine and a
11 half hours, a lot of which was describing his work.
12 To simplify it in any particular way at this point
13 I think is unfair to the witness.
14 MR. FOSTER: You weren't hired to find
15 positive information about Mr. Trump, were you?
16 MR. SIMPSON: To the contrary. I think when
17 you're doing research on any subject you're trying
18 to figure out what the truth is. So if Donald
19 Trump's got a good business record and he's really
20 worth billions of dollars, that's important
21 information. In fact, you shouldn't be feeding
22 reporters stories about how Donald Trump is not
23 worth billions of dollars if he's worth billions of
24 dollars. So, you know, I think the connotation of
25 negativity, I get, you know, where you're coming
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from, but, in fact, you're just trying to figure
out what's true.
It's like with the Prevezon case, we were
trying to figure out who's telling the truth, is it
our guys or is it Browder. I do my job well and I
get rehired when I give them the right information,
when I give them accurate information. So if
Donald Trump turned out to be a great businessman,
that's what I would have to tell people.
MR. FOSTER: Nothing further from me.
MR. LEVY: Before we go off the record, will
we be entitled to a copy of the transcript?
MR. FOSTER: You'll be able to review the
transcript and request corrections, make an
errata.
MR. LEVY: Will it be kept confidential?
We'd like to make a request that it be kept
confidential given the sensitivity of the matters
discussed today.
MR. FOSTER: Your request is noted.
MR. LEVY: Noted, but no decision on it?
MR. FOSTER: No decision.
MR. LEVY: And upon reviewing the transcript,
when will we have that opportunity?
MR. FOSTER: We can arrange that off the
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(Whereupon the interview was
concluded at 7:04 p.m.)
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1 record.
2 MR. LEVY: When we do we just reserve the
3 right obviously to correct the record or supplement
4 it.
5 MR. FOSTER: That's why we'd allow you to
6 review it.
7 MR. LEVY: Thank you very much.
8 MR. DAVIS: Nothing further. We're going off
9 the record at 7:04.
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CERTIFICATE OF SHORTHAND REPORTER - NOTARY PUBLIC
I, TINA M. ALFARO, Certified Shorthand
Reporter No. 084-004220, Certified Realtime
Reporter, and Notary Public in and for the State of
Illinois, do hereby certify:
That GLENN SIMPSON, whose interview is
hereinbefore set forth, was duly sworn by me and
that said deposition is a true record of the
testimony given by such witness.
I further certify that I am not counsel
for nor in any way related to any of the parties to
this suit, nor am I in any way interested in the
outcome thereof.
In witness, whereof, I have hereunto set
my hand this ____ day of __________,2017.
_____________________________
Tina M. Alfaro, CSR, CRR
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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.