SPY VS. LIE
TRUMP DOSSIER SECRETS SPILLED
IT WASN’T a political stunt.
The former British spy who was digging up dirt on Donald Trump and Russia reached out to the FBI because he was worried about “whether a political candidate was being blackmailed,” his employer said in congressional testimony made public Tuesday.
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Tuesday afternoon unexpectedly released the full testimony of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, who was interrogated at length by the Senate Judiciary Committee in August over his ties to Christopher Steele.
Simpson’s organization hired Steele to research Trump’s ties to Russia — and he wound up compiling a cache of documents alleging the Russian government has damaging information on Trump. Steele was worried what was going on was criminal, and told Simpson he had an obligation to report his findings to the feds.
“(The FBI) believed Chris’ 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 committee.
Later in the closeddoor testimony, Simpson clarified that he couldn’t say for sure whether the source was from the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign.
Simpson declined to identify the source by name for “security” reasons.
“It’s been in the news a lot lately that people who get in the way of the Russians tend to get hurt,” he said.
Simpson’s lawyer, Josh Levy, added that his client won’t name the source over fears of fatal retribution.
“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 said, likely referring to the recent and mysterious death of an ex-KGB chief who was suspected of helping Steele.
Alan Garten, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said the idea someone at his company had reached out to the FBI is “pure fiction.”
“Most notably, because the company had and has no relationship with Russia,” Garten told the Daily News in an email.
A person associated with Fusion GPS also disputed Simpson’s testimony about an internal Trump source, telling CNN that the source in question was actually the Australian ambassador, who reached out to the FBI in May 2016 after meeting with then-Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. The ambassador reportedly warned FBI agents that a drunken Papadopoulos had bragged about Russians having dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Fusion GPS did not respond to a request for comment.
Ty Cobb, the White House special counsel for the Russia investigation, said Tuesday afternoon that he had not gotten a chance to look at Simpson’s testimony.
“I don’t know anything about this. I have no idea,” Cobb (photo inset right) told The News over the phone.
The release of Simpson’s testimony prompted outrage from Republicans, who have been blocking it from becoming public for months.
“Love your new found commitment to transparency since it was nonexistent on Fast & Furious, Benghazi, IRS, Clinton emails, DEA, IRS, Homeland Security, etc.,” ex-Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz tweeted at Feinstein, referencing a string of Republican-led congressional probes.
Feinstein fired back that releasing the transcripts was the only way to “set the record straight.”
“The American people deserve the opportunity to see what he said and judge for themselves,”
the California senator said in a statement. “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.”
Trump maintains that the expanding probe into possible collusion between his campaign and the Russian government is bogus, even though it has already produced federal indictments against four of his associates.
Trump has similarly blasted Steele as a “fake spy” whose dossier is simply part of a sweeping political witch hunt.
But intelligence officials have painted a different picture of Steele, who served as an MI6 agent from 1987 until 2009. Steele has a reputation in international intelligence circles as a thorough spy who has done extensive work in Russia.
During his Senate testimony, Simpson echoed that sentiment, repeatedly calling Steele “professional” and “credible.”
He said after Steele started looking into Trump’s connections, he reached out to the FBI because his concern was “whether or not there was blackmail going on, whether a political candidate was being blackmailed or had been compromised.”
Simpson also brought up Trump’s alleged ties to Russian crime families, particularly as it applies to Felix Sater, his business partner for the Trump SoHo development.
He testified that Sater has extensive ties to the Kremlin and Russian organized crime families — and had sent an email to Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen in January 2016, saying that he will get “all of Putin’s team” on board with the idea of a Trump presidency.Trump has tried to downplay his ties to Sater, once insisting that he wouldn’t recognize the businessman if he ran into him on the street. “That was not true,” Simpson said in his testimony. “(Trump) knew him well and, in fact, continued to associate with him long after he learned of Felix’s organized crime ties. So, you know, that tells you something about somebody.”