The House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously Thursday to release Fusion GPS cofounder Glenn Simpson's testimony and has made it available to the public on the committee website.
The November 8th transcript of Simpson's appearance is here.
His November 14th testimony is here.
According to the first transcript, Simpson appeared before the committee on the 8th "pursuant to a subpoena issued on October 4th, 2017." Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), ranking Democrat, pointed out Simspon was planning to plead the Fifth due to the way the Republicans on the committee had communicated with him.
Republicans said they had four avenues they wanted to pursue, and Simpson's legal counsel explained that his client could not proceed without a better idea of the intended scope of the committee's inquiry:
MR. GOWDY: Do you take exception with the four pillars of jurisdiction that we have cited for every other witness? What did Russia do with respect to our 2016 election process? Who, if anyone, did they do with? What was the U.S. Government's response? And then the issue of maskings or the dissemination of classified information. Do you object to any of the those four areas?
MR. LEVY: I am not objecting or taking exception. It is more that in nearly every other investigation where I have been representing witnesses or participated as an investigator myself it is reasonable to identify a scope of the interview. And there was no scope of the interview identified. And we asked to work with staff to identify that scope and the answer was no.
After some back and forth, the committee took a recess and came back with an agreement that allowed Simpson to voluntarily testify the following week.
Simpson returned on the 14th.
Business Insider's Natasha Bertrand has a great summary of that session:
Rather than home in on the nature of Simpson's relationship with Christopher Steele — the former British intelligence officer hired by Fusion to research Trump's Russia ties — Schiff and his Democratic colleagues asked Simpson pointed questions about Russian money laundering, Russian organized crime, and whether Trump could be susceptible to Russian blackmail.
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Simpson explained that "real estate deals" were a common Russian method of hiding and moving money. Asked whether Fusion had found "evidence" of corruption and illicit finance related to the purchase of Trump properties, Simpson replied that his firm had seen "patterns of buying and selling that we thought were suggestive of money laundering."
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"There was -- well, for one thing, there was various criminals were buying the properties," Simpson replied. "So there was a gangster -- a Russian gangster living in Trump Tower."
The gangster went by Taiwanchik, and he'd been running a "high-stakes gambling ring" out of Trump Tower, Simpson said. The gangster also "rigged the skating competition at the Salt Lake Olympics" and sat in the VIP section of the Miss Universe Pageant in 2013 along with Trump "and lots of other Kremlin biggies," Simpson said.
Asked whether the Russian government would have been aware of the Russian mafia's efforts to move or hide money in Trump properties, Simpson replied: "The Russian mafia is essentially under the dominion of the Russian Government and Russian Intelligence Services."
"And many of the oligarchs are also mafia figures," he continued. "And the oligarchs, during this period of consolidation of power by Vladimir Putin, when I was living in Brussels and doing all this work, was about him essentially taking control over both the oligarchs and the mafia groups. And so basically everyone in Russia works for Putin now.”
The Intelligence Committee explored issues related to Trump properties abroad, including his buildings in Panama and Toronto and his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland:
A Russian state-owned bank under US sanctions, whose CEO met with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner in December 2016, helped finance the construction of the president's 65-story Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto.
The bank, Vnesheconombank, or VEB, bought $850 million of stock in a Ukrainian steelmaker from the billionaire Russian-Canadian developer Alexander Shnaider, who was constructing the hotel at the time. Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier asked Simpson about Schnaider during the interview.
"Schnaider had no previous hotel or condo development experience," she said. "His most apparent qualification seemed to be that he made a lot of money quickly."
Simpson called Schnaider among "the most interesting" of the Trump-Russia characters, noting that his father-in-law was a "very important figure in the history of the KGB-Mafia alliance."
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Simpson said Trump's golf courses in Scotland and Ireland were also "concerning" because financial statements obtained by Fusion showed "enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources."
"At least on paper it says it's from The Trump Organization, but it's hundreds of millions of dollars," Simpson said. "And these golf course are just, you know, they're sinks. They don't actually make any money."
Simpson also answered questions about the role of the National Rifle Association ("It appears the Russians, you know, infiltrated the NRA"), Aras and Emin Agalarov, the June 9th Trump Tower meeting ("I think it's a reasonable interpretation that that was a Russian Government-directed operation of some sort"), and Donald Trump's 2008 sale of an uninhabitable, overpriced mansion to Dmitry Rybolovlev.
Simpson also suggested that the committee examine the travel histories of Trump's children, Don Jr. and Ivanka, " and whether they had other meetings with Russians."
Read more: Fusion GPS interview with House panel leaves huge pile of breadcrumbs for Trump-Russia investigators (Business Insider)
House Committee Votes to Release Fusion GPS Testimony in Russia Probe (NYT)
Intel Committee Releases Glenn Simpson Testimony Transcripts (Press Release)