Read It. Read all of it and don’t stop to take notes – highlight or abstract anything – on the first read. That’s the best way to limit one’s bias, avoid overvaluing what may be minor, and get a gestalt perspective.
A few things stand out from a first read.
Issue One – Prevezon
Simpson was far more sure-footed in addressing questions about Prevezon than anything else. He didn’t struggle with any direct questions on it and was forthcoming and expansive. Any “I don’t know” or “I don’t recall” answers sound truthful. My overall sense on the Prevezon questions was that counsel appropriately asked for clarification on a question but there were few, if any, objections and instructions not to answer the question.
Why this is fascinating is that Simpson/Fusion was on the opposite side from the USG, Bill Browder, and the Magnitsky Act, all of which allege that the Russian Government was the malefactor.
Natalya Veselnitskaya, Prevezon’s Russian attorney, hired the BakerHostetler law firm, and BakerHostetler in turn hired Fusion GPS to as Simpson repeatedly said, find the truth. Simpson/Fusion’s task and how they went about it is well-detailed in Simpson’s testimony, including the hiring of a PR firm. The data collected and analysis of it appears solid to me even after factoring who was paying them.
Note: possible reasons why Simpson freely discussed Prevezon (facts that I don’t recall Simpson citing in his interview) are 1) BakerHostetler was bounced from the case by the 2nd Circuit in October 2016. (“Prevezon was represented at the 2nd Circuit by Michael Mukasey of Debevoise & Plimpton,”). 2) The case was settled in May 2017. Prevezon was represented by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan
Issue Two – Senator Grassley’s outrage that Senator Feinstein unilaterally released the transcript.
Grassley is right on this. All subsequent interviews with relevant parties have been compromised or contaminated. OTOH, as the committee was given a decent partial road-map on who and what to ask of other parties, moving at a glacial pace shouldn’t have been an option. Four months should have been an adequate amount of time to complete that work. However, the release probably means that too much has been lost and will never be captured.
Given the significant amount of time spent on Prevezon and the bi-partisan congressional position on it, Grassley is unlikely to have considered that Feinstein would act in this manner.
Issue Three – hard/factual data/information that Simpson added to what is already available.
As to be expected from a non-voluntary witness, Simpson declined to answer many questions. His counsel objected to many more and Simpson rarely, if ever, over-ruled counsel and answered the question. Recall this interview on 8/22/17 was before it became publicly known that 1) Fusion’s first client for Trump oppo research was only identified as an individual Republican 2) Perkins Coie contracted with Fusion for oppo research on Trump and 3) Perkins Coie’s client was the Hillary campaign and DNC. Simpson declined to reveal any of that. (A House Intelligence committee subpoena for Fusion’s bank records shook some of that loose in October. The Hill, 1/5/18: A congressional lawyer said Friday that TD Bank “produced all remaining responsive documents” to the House Intelligence Committee under the terms of a confidential settlement, CNN reported. This was after a federal judge declined Fusion’s request to quash the subpoena.)
According to Simpson (all of which can be confirmed) and seem not to have been previously disclosed (at least not that I’ve seen):
- Fusion/Simpson was a media source during the campaign on Trump-Russia.
- Steele met with the FBI in Rome in September. (He also met with the FBI early in July but i don’t recall if the location of that meeting was defined.) These were meetings that Simpson knew had taken place and he did allow that there may have been other Steele-FBI meetings. Why Rome? (Simpson did state that Fusion had not paid for Steele’s travel expenses to Rome.) Somebodies have a some ‘splain-in to do on this.
From the above, refuting that the FBI investigation was not prompted by Steele’s dossier just got a hundred times more difficult and implausible. It also makes the old report that it was initiated by Carter Page’s travel and the recent report that it was Papadopoulus’ shenanigans that initiated it more curious.
Four – a connect a dot:
HuffPo on Shattered
…
Soon after Clinton’s defeat, top strategists decided where to place the blame. “Within 24 hours of her concession speech,” the authors report, campaign manager Robby Mook and campaign chair John Podesta “assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”
…
A lavishly-funded example is the “Moscow Project,” a mega-spin effort that surfaced in midwinter as a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It’s led by Neera Tanden, a self-described “loyal solider” for Clinton who also runs the Center for American Progress (where she succeeded Podesta as president). The Center’s board includes several billionaires.
…
Is it plausible that Podesta didn’t receive Steele’s reports shortly after they were issued? My one strong impression from reading the Podesta files is that he was the adult in the room. No way would he have allowed his or the campaign’s fingerprints on Steele’s reports during the campaign. Thus, Simpson was used to toss out hints to the media. As it developed, the hints didn’t have enough solid substance for the Trump-Russia story to gain the traction needed to take Trump out.
Is it credible that Steele all on his own took his reports to the FBI as Simpson claimed in the interview? Based on the current public disclosures, I’m not about to go out on a limb one way or another on that question. What I will tackle is Simpson’s testimony on the Steele’s dossier and Russia election interference in a separate diary.