The FBI had evidence that lent credence to an explosive dossier alleging links between Russia and then-candidate Donald Trump, from a source within either Trump’s campaign or business, according to the head of the firm that commissioned the dossier.
Glenn Simpson, founder of Fusion GPS, which commissioned former British spy Christopher Steele to write the dossier, told Senate investigators in August that Steele indicated the FBI “had other intelligence about this matter from an internal Trump campaign source,” according an interview transcript released Tuesday.
Simpson later clarified that he was uncertain whether that source was a member of Trump’s campaign or his business, the Trump Organization.
“[M]y understanding was that they believed Chris at this point — that 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 told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“It was someone like us who decided to pick up the phone and report something,” Simpson said of the source. He declined, however, to name that person, citing “security.”
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/368210-five-takeaways-from-the-fusion-gps-testimony
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday unilaterally released more than 300 pages documenting an interview the panel conducted in August with the founder of the opposition research firm that commissioned a controversial dossier on President Trump.
But while Simpson described his own opposition research work as dealing with hard facts laid out in public records and court filings, he acknowledged that Steele’s endeavors were more subjective and murky and open to interpretation.
According to Simpson, Steele was so concerned by the possibility that a presidential candidate might be “blackmailed” by Russia that he reached out to the FBI of his own accord to share what he knew was “a security issue.”
Steele first met with the bureau in the first week of July 2016. He later met an agent in Rome in the fall, a trip that the bureau reimbursed. The bureau launched its investigation into the Trump campaign in late July.
But according to Simpson, Steele cut off his contact with the bureau after the Times ran a story in the fall alleging that the Trump campaign was not under investigation. The former spy was concerned that “the FBI was being manipulated for political ends by the Trump people and that we didn’t really understand what was going on.”
Simpson said Steele thought there was “a security issue about whether a presidential candidate was being blackmailed.”
“From my perspective, there was a law enforcement issue about whether there was an illegal conspiracy to violate the campaign laws, and then somewhere in this time the whole issue of hacking has also surfaced,” Simpson said.
He said later: “You know, I agreed, it’s potentially a crime in progress. So, you know, if we can do that in the most appropriate way, I said it was OK for him to do that.”
The FBI called Steele back in September and asked him to tell it everything he knew, Simpson said, because it had obtained information from “a human source from inside the Trump Organization” who “was concerned about the same concerns we had” and spoke to the bureau on a “voluntary” basis.
The FBI had in July 2016 opened a counterintelligence investigation into Russia interference in the election, James Comey, the former FBI director, testified in March 2017. But it is not clear whether the bureau told Steele about the ongoing investigation when agents sat down with him in September.
Reading this in whole, watching, listening and reading the media on it, I believe it was the perfect set up.
Follow the CoC within the Government, follow the antics of what was going on in the DNC and then look at the layers of deniability used in the processes to gather the report/dossier.
The fix was in, the RINO Never Trumpers, Hillary’s campaign hiring the Law Firm who hired Fusion GPS and finally Steeledumping the story in the lap of the FBI and walking away.
