Letter to Chairmen Goodlatte and Gowdy September 27, 2018 Page 1 of 6 September 27, 2018 Bob Goodlatte Chairman Committee On
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Letter to Chairmen Goodlatte and Gowdy September 27, 2018 Page 1 of 6 September 27, 2018 via Electronic Mail Bob Goodlatte Chairman Committee on the Judiciary U.S. House of Representatives Trey Gowdy Chairman Committee on Oversight and Government Reform U.S. House of Representatives c/o Arthur Baker [email protected] Re: Glenn Simpson Dear Chairman Goodlatte and Chairman Gowdy: We are in receipt of your letter, dated September 24, 2018, inviting our client Glenn Simpson to participate in a transcribed interview. After due consideration, Mr. Simpson, who has already cooperated with three congressional committees regarding the same subject matter,1 will not agree to the interview. 1 See, e.g., Voluntary Transcribed Interview of Glenn R. Simpson, Senate Judiciary Committee, Aug. 22, 2017, available at https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/politics/read-the-full-transcript-of- glenn-simpsons-senate-testimony/2700/; Voluntary Transcribed Interview of Glenn R. Simpson, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Nov. 14, 2017, available at https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG00/20180118/106796/HMTG-115-IG00-20180118-SD002.pdf. Letter to Chairmen Goodlatte and Gowdy September 27, 2018 Page 2 of 6 The so-called “task force,” formed by members of the two committees you chair, has demonstrated a propensity to flout rules of confidentiality in order to manipulate the record and prejudice witnesses. The “task force” is comprised of some of the President’s staunchest protectors, who have misspent American taxpayers’ dollars to undermine the Special Counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, even after the U.S. Intelligence Community and the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence both confirmed that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election for the purpose of electing Donald J. Trump.2 The “task force” justified this misuse of their committees’ powers under the false premise that the Department of Justice investigation was brought on by the President’s 2016 campaign rivals, when in fact it was initiated by a tip from the Australian government and eventually took the form of a Special Counsel investigation at the behest of the President’s own appointee, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Part and parcel of this concerted effort by the President’s congressional allies has been a campaign of retaliation against the government’s whistleblowers, including our client Mr. Simpson, for their willingness to cooperate with US law enforcement and for their exercise of their constitutional rights to free speech and political activity as American citizens. While it is a fact that the Australian government, one of the U.S. government’s strongest and most trusted allies, provided the information that initiated the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia,3 the President and his allies on the Hill have sought to bury that fact by emphasizing the provision of information to the Justice Department by our client and Mr. Steele. Further, they have buried the impeccable professional credentials and talents of our client, a principal at one of the country’s leading research firms and a former investigative journalist with the Wall Street Journal, and Christopher Steele, one of the leading Western intelligence experts on 2 See Martin Matishak, Senate Intelligence Committee Backs Assessment of Russia Election Meddling, POLITICO, Jul. 3, 2018, available at https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/03/senate-intelligence-russia- election-meddling-692616. 3 The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence majority concluded: “Finding #17: The Federal Bureau of Investigation opened an enterprise counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign after receiving information related to Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos.” HPSCI, Report on Russian Active Measures, Mar. 22, 2018, at 47, available at https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_russia_investigation_report.pdf; see also Sharon LaFraniere, Mark Mazzetti & Matt Apuzzo, How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 30, 2017, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/politics/how-fbi-russia-investigation-began-george- papadopoulos.html. Letter to Chairmen Goodlatte and Gowdy September 27, 2018 Page 3 of 6 Russia, by disingenuously painting them as rank partisan political operatives. Picking on these two sources from an ocean of people who shared their concerns with law enforcement about possible illegal activities involving nefarious foreign actors, the “task force” and its allies on the Hill have applied unprecedented pressure on the Justice Department to produce documents related to an ongoing investigation. Such disclosure could jeopardize sources, methods and the Justice Department investigation itself. The “task force” smears of whistleblowers and responsible government actors have continued from antecedent practices of the President’s allies on the Hill. For example, just days after the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Mr. Simpson a request for documents and information and well before the letter’s deadline,4 the Chair released to the public a letter to the Department of Justice that falsely accused Mr. Simpson of non-existent crimes.5 Likewise, the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee smeared former British intelligence official Christopher Steele by publicly referring him to the Department of Justice for having allegedly made a false statement to the Department of Justice based on classified information that, unlike the criminal referral, the public could not see.6 It was a publicity stunt that fooled no one.7 The “task force,” for its part, has established a clear and abundant record of abusing the confidential interview process in order to mischaracterize the statements of 4 See Letter from Sen. Charles E. Grassley to Glenn R. Simpson, Mar. 24, 2017, available at https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2017-03- 24%20CEG%20to%20Fusion%20GPS%20(Trump%20Dossier).pdf. 5 See Letter from Sen. Charles E. Grassley to Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente, Mar. 31, 2017, available at https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2017-03- 31%20CEG%20to%20DOJ%20(Anti-Magnitsky%20FARA%20violations)%20with%20attachments.pdf. 6 See Letter from Sen. Charles E. Grassley and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, Jan. 4, 2018, available at https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2018-01- 04%20CEG%20LG%20to%20FBI%20DOJ%20(unclassified%20cover%20letter%20for%20classified%20S. ._.pdf. 7 See Nicholas Fandos & Matthew Rosenberg, Republican Senators Raise Possible Charges against Author of Trump Dossier, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 5, 2018, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/us/politics/christopher-steele-dossier-judiciary-committee.html. Letter to Chairmen Goodlatte and Gowdy September 27, 2018 Page 4 of 6 witnesses and unjustly slander and impugn them in public.8 My client is no stranger to this process, having already cooperated with Congress on multiple occasions in interviews held behind closed doors, only to later watch Republican members and staff knowingly obfuscate his testimony and the record as a whole, through selective leaks of what were supposed to be confidential proceedings. Mr. Simpson has already complied with demands for closed-door interviews by three congressional committees, providing a total of some 20 hours of testimony concerning his knowledge of Donald J. Trump’s questionable business practices, his extensive ties to organized crime, his presidential campaign’s surreptitious and illicit connections to Russia, and Russia’s attempts to infiltrate the Republican Party and undermine the democratic system of the United States. Much of Mr. Simpson’s information, including testimony that was harshly ridiculed by Republican members, has now been substantiated. Regrettably, Republican members and staff selectively quoted and otherwise misrepresented to the media and public the contents of Mr. Simpson’s prior confidential testimony in a series of transparent and cynical attempts to impugn him and incriminate him. This blatant manipulation of the record, in turn, caused Mr. Simpson and his business partner Peter Fritsch to exercise their First Amendment rights to publish a commentary in The New York Times summarizing the accurate substance of Mr. Simpson’s testimony and calling for the release of the actual testimony, in full.9 The disclosure of Mr. Simpson’s full transcripts severely undermined attempts by President Trump and his allies in Congress to discredit Mr. Steele’s reports in what is now referred to as the “Dossier.” Since then, the numerous Special Counsel indictments and convictions of Russian government agents and various associates of President Trump (many of whom were named in the “Dossier”) have only strengthened the credibility and validity of Mr. Simpson’s and Mr. Steele’s disclosures to the Department of Justice (to say nothing of President Trump’s alarming statements in Helsinki elevating Vladimir Putin’s credibility over that of the U.S. Intelligence Community, President Trump’s public 8 See, e.g., John Parkinson, Republicans Say They Have New Leads after Interview with Former FBI Lawyer Lisa Page, ABC NEWS, Jul. 16, 2018 (reporting leak from Congressman Darrell Issa, who slandered the witness and her testimony), available at https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/republicans- leads-interview-fbi-lawyer-lisa-page/story?id=56632046; Kimberley A. Strassel, What Bruce Ohr Told Congress, WALL ST. J., Aug. 30, 2018, available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-bruce-ohr-told- congress-1535668660?mod=hp_opin_pos2&ns=prod/accounts-wsj (paywall). 9 See Glenn R. Simpson & Peter Fritsch, The Republicans’ Fake Investigations, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 2, 2018, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/opinion/republicans-investigation-fusion-gps.html. Letter to Chairmen Goodlatte and Gowdy September 27, 2018 Page 5 of 6 laments about signing a sanctions bill against Russian oligarchs into law, and President Trump’s unstaffed personal meetings with Mr.