Well, Dianne Feinstein has released the full transcript of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
This would seem to be a pretty notable break in terms of her cooperation with the Republican chairman of the committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley.
Grassley’s spokesman said Feinstein released the transcript with “no agreement” from committee Republicans.
As Politico writes, “Feinstein’s move came days after Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham referred Steele to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation. Feinstein said Grassley and Graham did not consult committee Democrats beforehand.”
Fusion GPS transcript shows that what Senators Grassley & Graham did last week in publicly referring Christopher Steele for criminal investigation was, at best, a partisan publicity stunt and, at worst, intentionally designed to mislead the American people. https://t.co/EWyPsd2vd9
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) January 9, 2018
“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,” she said in a statement, adding that “the only way to set the record straight is to make the transcript public.”
Yes, “the only way to set the record straight is to make the transcript public.”
So that’s what she did, by God.
And make no mistake, there are some notables. Specifically, Simpson says Christopher Steele was told that the FBI had an informant from within Donald Trump’s network providing agents with information.
Thank you @SenFeinstein for releasing the testimony of Glenn Simpson & doing what our Framers wanted: to be a check and balance on @POTUS. Also, this FBI walk-in whistleblower testimony is quite extraordinary. #GOP Members will look mighty stupid when more indictments happen. https://t.co/9w64Eav1iF
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) January 9, 2018
Also, there’s this “fun” bit:
Simpson’s lawyer: “Somebody’s already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier…” (Page 279) pic.twitter.com/ilhV3Mtwd6
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 9, 2018
Here’s a summary of other notables from CNBC:
- Simpson touched on how the Trump Organization handles paying taxes: “One of the things we found out was that, you know, when it comes to paying taxes, Donald Trump claims to not have much stuff. At least the Trump organization. So they would make filings with various state and local authorities saying that their buildings weren’t worth much.”
- Simpson discussed Trump’s relationship with Felix Sater: “This was something he didn’t want to talk about and testified under oath he wouldn’t know Felix if he ran into him in the street. That was not true. He knew him well and, in fact, continued to associate with him long after he learned of Felix’s organized crime ties. So, you know, that tells you something about somebody.”
- Fusion GPS did not secure full access to Trump’s tax returns, Simpson said: “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.”
- Simpson said he only become aware of the infamous Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer when it was reported in the New York Times: “I was stunned.”
- Simpson had no “factual reason to believe” the Trump Tower meeting was a Russian attempt to make contact with the Trump campaign, but: “You know, as a sort of question of counterintelligence and just general investigation of Russian methods and that sort of thing, I think that’s a reasonable interpretation.”
- Fusion GPS concluded that Trump “exaggerated” his properties’ worth in legal filings – but that did not indicate or show connections to Russia: “Not that I recall.”
- Simpson said Trump’s golf clubs aren’t making any money: “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 lot of money into them and he hadn’t gotten a lot of money back yet.”
Below, find the full document, followed by an Op-Ed penned by Simpson earlier this month that gives you a bit of context for why this was leaked.
Transcript:
A generation ago, Republicans sought to protect President Richard Nixon by urging the Senate Watergate committee to look at supposed wrongdoing by Democrats in previous elections. The committee chairman, Sam Ervin, a Democrat, said that would be “as foolish as the man who went bear hunting and stopped to chase rabbits.”
Today, amid a growing criminal inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, congressional Republicans are again chasing rabbits. We know because we’re their favorite quarry.
In the year since the publication of the so-called Steele dossier – the collection of intelligence reports we commissioned about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia – the president has repeatedly attacked us on Twitter. His allies in Congress have dug through our bank records and sought to tarnish our firm to punish us for highlighting his links to Russia. Conservative news outlets and even our former employer, The Wall Street Journal, have spun a succession of mendacious conspiracy theories about our motives and backers.
We are happy to correct the record. In fact, we already have.
Three congressional committees have heard over 21 hours of testimony from our firm, Fusion GPS. In those sessions, we toppled the far right’s conspiracy theories and explained how The Washington Free Beacon and the Clinton campaign – the Republican and Democratic funders of our Trump research – separately came to hire us in the first place.
We walked investigators through our yearlong effort to decipher Mr. Trump’s complex business past, of which the Steele dossier is but one chapter. And we handed over our relevant bank records – while drawing the line at a fishing expedition for the records of companies we work for that have nothing to do with the Trump case.
Republicans have refused to release full transcripts of our firm’s testimony, even as they selectively leak details to media outlets on the far right. It’s time to share what our company told investigators.
We don’t believe the Steele dossier was the trigger for the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russian meddling. As we told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump camp.
The intelligence committees have known for months that credible allegations of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia were pouring in from independent sources during the campaign. Yet lawmakers in the thrall of the president continue to wage a cynical campaign to portray us as the unwitting victims of Kremlin disinformation.
We suggested investigators look into the bank records of Deutsche Bank and others that were funding Mr. Trump’s businesses. Congress appears uninterested in that tip: Reportedly, ours are the only bank records the House Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed.
We told Congress that from Manhattan to Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., and from Toronto to Panama, we found widespread evidence that Mr. Trump and his organization had worked with a wide array of dubious Russians in arrangements that often raised questions about money laundering. Likewise, those deals don’t seem to interest Congress.
We explained how, from our past journalistic work in Europe, we were deeply familiar with the political operative Paul Manafort’s coziness with Moscow and his financial ties to Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin.
Finally, we debunked the biggest canard being pushed by the president’s men – the notion that we somehow knew of the June 9, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower between some Russians and the Trump brain trust. We first learned of that meeting from news reports last year – and the committees know it. They also know that these Russians were unaware of the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s work for us and were not sources for his reports.
Yes, we hired Mr. Steele, a highly respected Russia expert. But we did so without informing him whom we were working for and gave him no specific marching orders beyond this basic question: Why did Mr. Trump repeatedly seek to do deals in a notoriously corrupt police state that most serious investors shun?
What came back shocked us. Mr. Steele’s sources in Russia (who were not paid) reported on an extensive – and now confirmed – effort by the Kremlin to help elect Mr. Trump president. Mr. Steele saw this as a crime in progress and decided he needed to report it to the F.B.I.
We did not discuss that decision with our clients, or anyone else. Instead, we deferred to Mr. Steele, a trusted friend and intelligence professional with a long history of working with law enforcement. We did not speak to the F.B.I. and haven’t since.
After the election, Mr. Steele decided to share his intelligence with Senator John McCain via an emissary. We helped him do that. The goal was to alert the United States national security community to an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power. We did not, however, share the dossier with BuzzFeed, which to our dismay published it last January.
We’re extremely proud of our work to highlight Mr. Trump’s Russia ties. To have done so is our right under the First Amendment.
It is time to stop chasing rabbits. The public still has much to learn about a man with the most troubling business past of any United States president. Congress should release transcripts of our firm’s testimony, so that the American people can learn the truth about our work and most important, what happened to our democracy.
For more on that, check out this thread from former FBI counterintelligence agent Asha Rangappa:
https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/948391105367891969
Do you think that it is possible that a vast criminal network, operated with state-level access and the backing of certain governments, was responsible for a disinformation campaign that helped to elect a buffoon to the highest office of what is currently the most powerful nation in the world?
Do you think that this buffoon, who, in a bid to build his business, ran a campaign on a nationalist agenda that he didn’t really believe in or understand, was able to fool tens of millions of people into voting for him? Do you think that he was able to sell himself to blue-collar workers despite the face that not only has he never changed his own oil, mowed his own lawn or even programmed his own VCR?
Do you believe that this confluence of events was brought about due to systemic problems within the United States; problems of governance in a system where one party governs and the other party stonewalls? Problems where trust in civic institutions run by public servants is at an all time low? Problems exacerbated by a market where the will of the people usually means the will of the highest bidder? Where a company can be trusted to think to itself, in all seriousness, ‘I wonder if instead of complying with regulations designed with the public good in mind, I would better spend my money to convince people to allow me to operate unfettered, despite the face that I have no vote of my own?’ How about such a system, when brought under the microscope of the highest court in the land, the court that was put in the place by the founders to interpret and enforce the law, saw this and literally said ‘This is a feature, not a bug.’?
I believe all of that. I believe it all, and a whole lot more.
Those bullet points, from CNBC near the top of the article, taken in total, are pretty damning. I can see them turned into articles of impeachment.
Senator Feinstein has just sealed her legacy and will now be a large person in this part of our American history. This may be the most important moment in the “Liar in Chief’s” failing presidency. More to come, drip, drip, drip……………………