Head of firm behind Trump dossier won’t talk to House panel
WASHINGTON (AP) — The co-founder of a political research firm that was behind a dossier of allegations about President Donald Trump’s connections to Russia refused to speak to two House committees during a closed-door interview Tuesday.
A lawyer for Glenn Simpson said in a statement that he had exercised his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer questions from the GOP-led House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees, which are investigating decisions made by the Justice Department in the run-up to the 2016 election. Republicans on the committee have criticized the department, echoing Trump’s repeated claims that officials there were conspiring against him as they investigated his ties to Russia and cleared his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, in a separate email probe.
The dossier — which was researched by former British spy Christopher Steele, compiled by Simpson’s firm Fusion GPS and paid for by Democrats — contends that the Russian government amassed compromising information about Trump and had been engaged in a yearslong effort to support and assist him. Republicans have argued that the dossier was inappropriately used by the Justice Department before the election as investigators obtained a warrant to put one of Trump’s campaign advisers under surveillance.
Simpson’s lawyer, Joshua Levy, said the committees’ investigation is a partisan attempt to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. He compared it to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist hearings in the 1950s.
“Rather than participate any further in this charade, Mr. Simpson today stood on his constitutional rights,” Levy wrote.
Levy also criticized the committee for forcing Simpson to come in even though he had said he wouldn’t testify. Simpson has already cooperated with three congressional investigations into Russian intervention into the 2016 elections, and two of those committees, the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, have published transcripts of his interviews.