Record hints at death
Transcript of Senate interview says former spy was told FBI had another source
The political battle over the FBI and its probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election intensified with the release of an interview with the head of the firm behind a dossier of claims against Donald Trump.
The transcript of Fusion GPS cofounder Glenn Simpson’s interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee was released by Senator Dianne Feinstein, the panel’s senior Democrat, over the objections of chairman Charles Grassley, (R). Feinstein’s action comes alongside an effort by Republicans to discredit the dossier as a politically motivated document that the FBI has relied too heavily upon in its investigation. Feinstein sought to push against that perception and bolster the FBI’s credibility. She said: “The innuendo and misinformation circulating about the transcript are part of a deeply troubling effort to undermine the investigation.”
Grassley, who said Feinstein’s move “undermines the integrity of the committee’s oversight work,” had refused requests by Simpson to release his entire 10-hour interview, which was conducted in August.
The Senate committee has been probing how the FBI handled allegations it received from a British ex-spy, Christopher Steele, who compiled a series of memorandums, later collected as a dossier, alleging that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin — a claim the President has repeatedly denied.
The transcript shows Republican staffers on the committee pressed Simpson about whether he had political motivations in hiring Steele.
Simpson said he didn’t like Trump as a candidate but said his job was to find facts, not to push an agenda.
In his testimony, Simpson said Steele contacted the FBI with concerns about Russian meddling in early July 2016. When the bureau reinterviewed Steele in early October, agents made it clear, according to Simpson’s testimony, they believed some of what Steele had told them.
Simpson also said Steele was told that the FBI had someone inside Trump’s network providing agents with information. “My understanding was that they believed Chris at this point — that they believed Chris 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 organisation.”
Simpson said he didn’t know whether the person was connected to the Trump campaign or a Trump company, adding that his understanding was that the source was “someone like us who decided to pick up the phone and report something”.
Several people familiar with the probe said Simpson’s comments refer to a report from an Australian official who contacted US officials in late July with concerns about a conversation months earlier in London with Trump