“He wants to be very careful to protect his sources.”

Ranking Judiciary Committee Member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) released the closed testimony of Glenn Simpson, a founder of Fusion GPS, which produced the dossier in 2016 of then-candidate Donald Trump, along with his attorney Josh Levy. From The New York Times:

“The American people deserve the opportunity to see what he said and judge for themselves,” Ms. Feinstein said. “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.”

Fusion GPS hired former British spy Christopher Steele to compile the dossier. The company received funding from failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign along with the DNC.

It caught fire due to it’s supposed revelations about a Russian effort to work with the Trump campaign to win the election. Republicans have lashed out at the dossier, claiming the contents are unsubstantiated and the FBI used this information to start a Trump-Russia investigation.

The document Feinstein released is about 312 pages, but here are a few interesting tidbits.

First off, it appears someone has already died because of the dossier. From Fox News:

Among the many revelations in the document, though, is the claim from Simpson’s attorney that someone died because the dossier — which was commissioned by Fusion GPS — was publicly released. “He wants to be very careful to protect his sources,” attorney Josh Levy said during the Aug. 22 Senate Judiciary Committee interview of his client. “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.” Levy didn’t elaborate on who was killed. The website BuzzFeed first published the dossier online last January, airing its unverified allegations about President Trump’s connections with Russia.

He did not specify on the person, but former KGB general, and one in its successor FSB, Oleg Erovinkin was found dead in his car in December 2016 in Moscow. He helped Steele develop the dossier.

Simpson and Steele also discussed about turning over their findings to the FBI, but Simpson did not know anyone. Steele said he knew someone:

“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,’” Simpson recalled. Steele also told Simpson the FBI had “an internal Trump campaign source,” he said. “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,” Simpson said of the FBI. Simpson, a journalist before forming Fusion GPS, also admitted in the interview being opposed during the election to Trump becoming president. “I think it’s safe to say that, you know, at some point probably early in 2016 I had reached a conclusion about Donald Trump as a businessman and his character and I was opposed to Donald Trump,” Simpson said.

Simpson applauded Feinstein’s decision to release it, but she did so without the aid of Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassleu (R-IA), who initially rejected Simpson’s request to publish his testimony. From Politico:

“It’s totally confounding that Senator Feinstein would unilaterally release a transcript of a witness interview in the middle of an ongoing investigation – a witness that Feinstein herself subpoenaed last year for lack of cooperation,” said Grassley spokesman Taylor Foy. “Feinstein’s unilateral decision was made as the committee is still trying to secure testimony from other witnesses, including Jared Kushner. Her action undermines the integrity of the committee’s oversight work and jeopardizes its ability to secure candid voluntary testimony relating to the independent recollections of future witnesses.”

Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked the DOJ last week to investigate Steele because they believe he made false statements to the FBI concerning his talks with news outlets about the dossier.

Former FBI Director James Comey told a House panel in March that the dossier was filled with “salacious and unverified” allegations against Trump and those who worked with him.

Back in November, Byron York reminded everyone that the FBI has not verified the information in the 35 page dossier. The House Intelligence Committee has become frustrated by testimony from FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe since he did not provide them with more information on the dossier and contradicted testimony of former witnesses.

McCabe told the panel that the FBI worked hard “to verify the contents of the anti-Trump ‘dossier’ and stood by its credibility.” However, he could not tell the lawmakers if “the bureaur has been able to verify the substantive allegations in the dossier, or even identify a substantive allegation that has been corroborated.”

The lawmakers asked him which part of the dossier was true and McCabe only pointed to the part “that the unpaid, low-level Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page visited Moscow in July 2016.”



