Fusion GPS settles with a House committee over subpoena for it to reveal its records
Before its emergence on the national stage, Fusion GPS was a low-profile firm made up of several ex-Wall Street Journal reporters.
The firm’s co-founder, Glenn Simpson, was a veteran investigative reporter who left the paper in 2009—citing declining support of investigative reporting by the newspaper industry.
One day after quitting the Journal, Mr. Simpson spoke at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, describing his post-journalism career as an effort “to try and see if we can’t pioneer yet another new model to keep investigations going, keep doing things in the public interest.” Mr. Simpson said he hoped that people in the business world who saw corruption would come forward and be sources for his research.
Mr. Simpson formed a short-lived company called SNS Global LLC. In late 2010, Mr. Simpson founded a new firm called Fusion GPS with Peter Fritsch, a Wall Street Journal alumnus.
.. “It’s funny because this is probably a bit of what most folks think opposition research entails, but it’s really nothing like the kind of research typically employed on political campaigns these days,” said Mike Phillips, a former Democratic opposition researcher who now runs a company called Vigilant that provides political research and intelligence tools. “Opposition research is typically about combing through public records and identifying and vetting key issues, not hiring James Bond to poke around in Eastern Europe.”
The Coming Russia Bombshells
The confirmation this week that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid an opposition-research firm for a “dossier” on Donald Trump is bombshell news. More bombshells are to come.
.. there’s something Fusion cares about keeping secret even more than the Clinton-DNC news—and that something is in those bank records.
.. If the House wins, don’t be surprised if those records include money connected to Russians. In the past Fusion has worked with Russians, including lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who happened to show up last year in Donald Trump Jr.’s office.
.. We may learn the FBI knew the dossier was a bought-and-paid-for product of Candidate Clinton, but used it anyway. Or that it didn’t know, which would be equally disturbing.
.. And the more ugly info that came out (Fusion, Democratic clients, intelligence-for-hire) the more former Obama officials seemed skeptical of it. In May, former Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper said his people could never “corroborate” its “sourcing.” In June, Mr. Comey derided it as “salacious and unverified.”
.. it is highly unusual for a law firm to pay bills without a client’s approval. Somewhere, Perkins Coie has documents showing who signed off on those bills, and they aren’t protected by attorney-client privilege.
.. If the Steele dossier reports (which appear to date back to June 2016) were making their way into the hands of senior DNC and Clinton political operatives, you can bet they were making their way to the Obama White House. This may explain why Obama political appointees began monitoring the Trump campaign and abusing unmasking. They were looking for a “gotcha,” something to disqualify a Trump presidency. Of course, they were doing so on the basis of “salacious and unverified” accusations made by anonymous Russians, but never mind.
Clinton Campaign and Democratic Party Helped Pay for Russia Trump Dossier
Fusion GPS began working for the law firm, Perkins Coie, in April 2016. Written by the firm’s managing partner Matthew J. Gehringer, the letter said that Fusion GPS had already been conducting the research “for one or more other clients during the Republican primary contest.”
.. Fusion GPS was started by three former Wall Street Journal employees.
Researchers Tied to Trump Dossier Decline to Testify in Russia Probe
Fusion GPS partners invoke Fifth Amendment to House Intelligence Committee
Two partners at a research firm that compiled a dossier of unverified and unflattering allegations about President Donald Trump invoked their constitutional right not to give testimony before a congressional committee on Wednesday.
Peter Fritsch and Thomas Catan, partners at the firm Fusion GPS, were subpoenaed to appear behind closed doors with the House Intelligence Committee.
The men declined to answer any of the committee’s questions, citing their Fifth Amendment constitutional protection against self-incrimination
.. He noted that the firm’s founder Glenn Simpson gave 10 hours of testimony to a Senate committee in August.
.. Messrs. Simpson, Fritsch and Catan are all former Wall Street Journal reporters.