Excerpt of Fusion Director being interviewed by House Members

Glen Simpson Fusion Director: "You know, we threw a line in the wtaer and Moby Dick came Back

And we didn't know what to do with it at first"

Representative Gowdy: "What were you asked to do?"

Mr. Simpson: "it was an open-ended look at Donald Trump's business career and his litigation history and his relationshiops with questionable people, how much he was really worth, how he ran his casinos, what kind of performance he had in other lines of work."

It was a very broad unfocused look, which is the way we do our business."

"---At the very beginning of this project, one of the very first things that I focused on was Donald Trump's relationship with a convicted racketeer named Felix Sater, and who was alleged to have an organized crime, Russian organized crime background. And over the course of thie first phase of this or the first project, we developed a lot of additional information suggesting that the company that Donal Trump had been associated with and Felix Sater, Bayrock, was engaged in illicit financial business activity and had organized crime connections.W e also had sort of more broadly learned that Mr. Trmp had long time associations with Italian organized crime figures. And as we pieced together the early years of his biography, it seemed as if during the early part of his career he had connections to a lot of Italian mafia figures, and then gradurlly during the nineties became associated with Russia Mafia. All of that had developed by the spring of 2016 to the point where it was not a speculative piece of research: it was pretty well-established.

Mr. Schiff: "So during the period of time you were working for Free Beacon, you came across some of the first information about candidate Trumps' business ties in Russia, including those with Felix Sater?"

Note: The Free Beacon is Republican research done for a Republican group that didn't like Trump at the time end note.


Mr. Simpson: "Yep. That's correct. And lots of other issues came up during the primaries that raised concerns in my mind aout whether there might be connections--Donald Trump might have unexplained connections to Russia or people involved in that part of the world. I mean, among other things, eventually Paul Manafort was appointed to his campaign as the--first the convention manager and then the chairman-- or the campaign manager. I I knew a lot about Paul Manafort from my career at the Wall STreet Journal.

I had written a number of stories about his involvement with Oleg Deripaska and the pro-Russia party in Ukraine and another oligarch named Firtash. And I had even written  story about whether he should have registered as  a foreign agaent. All that had occurred years earlier. So when he suddenly surfaced, I was, you know, struck by that.

Mr. Schiff: So if you would go through with us some of the Russia-related things that concerned you that you learned int hat first phasewhile you are doing work for the Free Beacon (for Republicans) as best you can recall.

Mr. Simpson: "Well, the Bayrock, the funding of Bayrock was, I think, much of what we initially were concerned about and focused on. The company seemed to have some srotorf funding source from either Russia or the Former Soviet Union that was opaque.

So we spent a lot of time looking at the people around that and their backgrounds and why Mr. Trump would be in business wtih them? So that was one of the major issues.


Another one that I think surfaced in probably the early winter was the amazing number of peopel from the former Soviet Uion who ahd pruchased proerties form Mt.R. Trump, including Dmitry Rybolovlev, who purchased a derelict estate at an extreme markup in Florida.

So far, I'm up to 6:14 pm PT on Rachel Maddows show on MSNBC. I guess the House had released this information recently regarding Trump

So, if you want to see or hear more of this go to to todays Thurday's January 18th 2018 Show by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC as my fingers are getting tired of typing all this.