One of the co-founders of the company that assembled the infamous “Russian Dossier” on President Trump in 2016 has done an about-face and is now agreeing to give an interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Late last week, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and his attorneys told the committee Simpson would invoke his Fifth Amendment Rights, and said the numerous committee investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections had been overtaken by “partisan agendas.”
The top senators on the committee, Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a joint statement, “Our goal remains obtaining substantive information from witnesses to advance our oversight work and get answers the American people deserve.”
By agreeing to an interview, the subpoena Simpson faced which previously demanded he attend a hearing this Wednesday has been waived.
Fusion GPS hired former British spy Christopher Steele to compile the so-called dossier which contained 35 pages of unsubstantiated and oft-salacious claims about Trump and many of his associates. The dossier also alleged numerous ties between Trump and some of his associates with Russian people and businesses.
The provenance of the document is important to Senate investigators because before its existence was known to the broad public, it was influencing events behind the scenes.
For example, the dossier was used in-part as the FBI’s justification in obtaining a warrant to surveil Carter Page, the New York energy businessman who briefly served as a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, according to a media report.
Also, report from the Washington Post in late February also claimed the FBI reached an agreement with Steele to pay him to continue his work. Ultimately, however, that payment didn’t happen.
Because the dossier was being assembled as opposition research against Trump, the notion that the FBI might have paid to have that work continue has fueled criticism from conservatives.
