Ok, I howled. 
Rather strange section of the Simpson testimony:
What am I supposed to take away from this?
I read it as an attempt to tie Fusion GPS to Russia, in support of the theory that Fusion GPS was functioning as an unregistered foreign agent, working indirectly for the Russian government.
Fusion GPS did investigation work for a law firm (later disqualified) that was defending a Russian backed firm in a federal money laundering case brought by Preet Bharhara. The case was settled after Trump fired Bharhara.
I’ve been reading the transcript of Simpson’s testimony that Sen. Feinstein released. Fascinating.
Is there a different on-line version of this transcript — one that facilitates Saving, Searching and Copy/Paste?
Looks like everyone is using the same format. But if you go to the “text” tab you can search and copy/paste.
Click on the ‘Text’ tab to get a search box. Click on the bottom ‘full screen’ button and the right sidebar has a PDF option.
I literally meant, “What a strange bit in the testimony.” I was curious if anyone had any ideas.
It’s hard to tell without video. Simpson’s attorneys seem to imply that it was a question that Davis didn’t take seriously, but who knows what was in Davis’ mind when he asked it?
Maybe he thought, “I’ve got him (Simpson) now.” Or maybe it was, “I have to ask this stupid question because the party hacks told me to, and I don’t believe it.”
You can download the PDF here: 934A3562824CACA7BB4D915E97709D2F.simpson-transcript-redacted.pdf - Google Drive
(Courtesy of Talking Points Memo)
If I understand correctly what causes you to think it’s strange…
In my experience, uually when these comments are made on the record, it is for the purpose of providing context to the questions and answers being asked. Obviously a transcript alone does not reflect the gestures or facial expressions of the people doing the asking and answering.
Johnny Ace has got it right. Simpson’s attorneys are providing the context that Davis was smiling as he asked what, in print alone, sound like very grave and important questions. It was as if he understood he had to ask them, but was perhaps a little embarrassed that he did, or even found it amusing. If Simpson was smiling in a “gotcha!” kind of way, I doubt Simpson’s lawyers would have drawn attention to the smile in the official record.
Well, so, I read the whole thing last night.
Simpson comes across well. However, I think there’s a pretty good case to make that Fusion GPS isn’t quite as noble a venture as he makes it out to be. While I’m reasonably willing to believe that they work in truth, from other things that I have read, it seems likely that they are also quite willing to find the truth for anyone that asks and to represent a selective truth that they have worked to develop with their clients.
The movie that is referenced, for example, I have read was pretty one-sided and made heavy distortions of the truth.
I also note that Simpson talks about their team making outreach attempts to the press during the fall of 2016, allowing reporters full access to Chris Steele, and yet no one reported on the collusion front until Buzzfeed released the memos. The reporting world, presumably, has a pretty good idea of who Fusion GPS is and how trustworthy they are, and in most of the instances that could be verified, they don’t seem to have followed Fusion’s lead. They seem to have been quite skeptical of their work on Trump and their work on Prevelon.
This isn’t to say that Simpson is creating outright fabrications per se, just that he is less selective of his clients than we would really desire, and quite willing to defend his clients’ versions of the truth and point them to PR people and other sources who can and will distort the facts.
But there are also a lot of things that he said which, even though we can’t verify, it would presumably be quite easy for the Senate Committee to have verified and/or for the FBI to do so. I think that we can safely assume that outside of corporate puffery, he didn’t say anything that would fall under the heading of “perjury”. Given the setting, I think it’s reasonable to say that anything he said which can be verified will probably check out.
In Simpson’s letter, asking for the transcripts to be released, he said that the testimony contained a section on Trump’s dealings with Deutsche Bank. I did not see any such bit and a word search did not reveal any such text.
In his description of his work in the transcript, he mentions quite a lot of things that his team investigated, related to Trump, that was outside of the Russia memos. Sawyer runs him through a few of these things late in the testimony, but doesn’t really dive deeply into it. Mostly, they spend their time getting a detailed account of how Steele came to be involved, their interaction with the FBI, etc. Simpson is unable to provide any more evidence to back up the dossier than straightforward assertions that Steele is just “that good”.
I have read a large number of articles by (I believe it is) The New Yorker that go through each of the Trump properties around the world and cast aspersions about all the questionable figures and events that may have been involved in the construction and running of that property. These articles sound very close to Simpson’s description of his research into Trump. They bring up questions, but they don’t answer those questions. It’s difficult to say whether they are reasonable appraisals of the situation, or simply a selective account of some facts and aspersions that may or may not be very relevant. I feel like these works were probably the result of Fusion’s investigation. Lacking any real smoking guns, I guess that the opposing campaigns decided to not dive into it deeply.
I think that the fact that Simpson presents himself well and that Davis did a poor job of getting him to admit to sleazy work by Fusion, added into the general confusion caused by Wolff’s book, will help the testimony to take on some legs in the public sphere, and that’s probably for the better. But unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like Simpson’s testimony really does anything beyond confirm that we’re still stuck with a bunch of unprovable assertions by Steele, and hoping that the FBI has a lot more than that to go on.
As I understand it, that’s the job of a firm like his. Similar to a lawyer or PR firm or private detective. His job is to dig up facts which help his client by harming the client’s opponent.
If he’s honest, he’s not going to fabricate anything, but if he was purely impartial then he wouldn’t be doing his job properly, any more than a lawyer who presents both sides of the story in context.
Question is: at what point does the continued inability to come up with anything more than “unanswered questions” and the like take on a weight of its own? For some people, never, and there are people still yammering about who might have been on the grassy knoll. But I think it’s already a pretty strong point, and only getting stronger as time goes on.
I don’t see this as problematic - that’s exactly the line of work that they’re in. They were paid to find dirt on a political opponent, like pretty much any background investigator that specializes in political opposition research. They’re not paid to present a complete, balanced sketch of the subjects they research. The only real question that needs to be answered is whether their dirt can be corroborated with other evidence and to what degree.
Same here, and I tend to agree with your general assessment. As an aside, though it looks rather daunting, it only took a few hours to get through the 312 pages of testimony, where it took roughly 7 1/2 hours to be stated.
There were a number of places where Simpson’s attorneys deferred some answers to a time after his testimony, and I wonder if there was a subsequent interview. The Deutsche Bank assertions he made in his letter might support that too.
Ultimately, it’s Mueller who counts here anyway. The other investigations are just bread and circuses, and I’m sure Mueller’s team is already delving into this.
Other than subbing in “unverified” instead of “unprovable,” I agree. I think at least some of the assertions are provable, even if they never are.
I think Feinstein took advantage of a good moment to drop this into the public sphere, but I don’t think what’s there is as powerful as many others believe. Of course, I’ve been as wrong as wrong can be fairly often!
The only really powerful thing about it is dissolving the Republican case that the whole investigation is sourced by and based upon The Dossier. It wasn’t, still isn’t, and that’s that.
Somehow this “Republican case” that “the whole investigation is sourced by and based upon The Dossier” managed to slip past me, as I don’t recall having ever heard of it (prior to it being “debunked” by Fusion assertions).
What I do recall hearing a lot of is the notion that the dossier was given undue influence due to sympathetic Obama people and Deep Staters in the FBI and DOJ. But that’s something else entirely.
I don’t see that it really does that in any clear way. Yes, it has a guy claiming the FBI had other information, but does it really go beyond that? If I were not inclined to take Simpson at his word, is there anything about his statement, or something else that would make me feel like this testimony had some heft to it?
I feel almost like the only heft it has is that Grassley didn’t release it.
I’m happy to be shown the error of my ways, however.
It’s been a conservative talking point for a couple months now.
This goes back to the October news that the Clinton campaign funded it.
These are US congressmen saying this, so they’re smart enough not to outright say the dossier was the impetus behind the FBI investigation, they’re just asking questions…