Washington—Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today [Tuesday, January 9, 2017] released the transcript of Glenn Simpson's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee with the support of committee Democrats. Simpson is the co-founder of Fusion GPS.
"After speaking with majority and minority committee staff for 10 hours, Glenn Simpson requested the transcript of his interview be released publicly. The American people deserve the opportunity to see what he said and judge for themselves," said Senator Feinstein. "The innuendo and misinformation circulating about the transcript are part of a deeply troubling effort to undermine the investigation into potential collusion and obstruction of justice. The only way to set the record straight is to make the transcript public."
The transcript is available here and corrections made after the transcript was finalized are available here
This press Release was from Senator Diane Feinstein’s Office on January 9, 2018.
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January 10, 2018
Post Script. Senator Feinstein, frustrated by disinformation spread by the GOP about the Trump Dossier released it yesterday. You can read it above. The article on Digg.com, What the Man who Oversaw the Trump Dossier told Sanators..... , printed below, offer a summary of what we learned from the Transcript.
Simpson Testified That Steele Shared His Findings With The FBI Because He Thought Trump Could Be Blackmailed
In the transcript, Simpson tells the Senate Judiciary Committee that Steele shared his findings with the FBI unilaterally, without encouragement or permission from any of Fusion GPS's clients.
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...
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 15 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.
Simpson's Testimony Shows That The FBI Was Already Investigating Trump When Steele Approached Them
Simpson also testified that Steele told him that the FBI already had some of the same information from a source inside the Trump campaign. This contradicts the Republican theory that the FBI based its investigation on the Steele dossier — the FBI clearly had already started its own investigation at the time that Steele approached them, according to Simpson.
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...
I don't think this implicates any of the issues to say I think it was a voluntary source, someone who was concerned about the same concerns we had.
However, new reporting suggests that the source inside the Trump campaign was foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. The New York Times recently reported that Papadopoulos inadvertently got the FBI investigation rolling when he blabbed about potential Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton to an Australian diplomat.
Simpson Testified That Steele Cut Ties With The FBI After A News Report Said It Wasn't Investigating Trump
Simpson told the committee that Steele was confused when the New York Times reported that the FBI wasn't investigating the Trump campaign, shortly before the November 2016 election.
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.
The Transcript Also Reveals That Someone Involved With The Steele Dossier Was Killed After It Was Published
One of Simpson's lawyers, Joshua Levy, defended Simpson's decision not to share details of how the dossier was sourced and verified by disclosing that someone was killed as a result of the dossier being published.
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.
