Trump associate took Russia concerns to FBI, helping trigger investigation before ‘dossier’: Fusion GPS founder’s testimony
The closed-door testimony by Glenn Simpson apparently undermines concerns that his research firm’s unconfirmed ‘Steele dossier’ set the FBI’s Russia investigation in motion
An associate of Donald Trump expressed concerns to the FBI about contacts between Russia and Trump’s presidential election campaign team, helping to trigger the probe into possible collusion, according to closed-door testimony made public on Tuesday by a senior Democrat.
Glenn Simpson, who leads the Washington research firm Fusion GPS, made the claim in his August remarks.
He said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation received intelligence from a “voluntary source” in Trump’s orbit in 2016, before a former British spy gave the Bureau his own “dossier” of allegations about collusion.
Fusion GPS hired former spy Christopher Steele to investigate Trump’s business dealings with Russia.
During the hearing Fusion GPS’s lawyer, Joshua Levy, also claimed that “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.”
He did not expand on that claim in the testimony, nor is there any public information that would tie a specific killing to information in the dossier.