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Also see: Department of Justice; Preet Bharara; money laundering; Natalia Veselnitskaya;
Jump to: 2018; 2019; 2020;
Note: For more detail, see link at bottom of this undated partial article, as well as individual news links for 2018; and 2019;
Undated: Fusion GPS is a commercial research and strategic intelligence firm based in Washington, D.C. The company conducts open-source investigations and provides research and strategic advice for businesses, law firms and investors, as well as for political inquiries, such as opposition research.[1] The "GPS" initialism is derived from "Global research, Political analysis, Strategic insight".[2]
In 2013, the US Department of Justice, represented by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, sued Prevezon Holding, a Republic of Cyprus corporation registered in New York State as a foreign business corporation, under the Magnitsky Act for money-laundering part of $230 million stolen. The lawsuit sought forfeiture of various assets and real estate holdings in the US.[14][15] In May 2017, two months after President Trump had dismissed Bharara, the lawsuit was settled for $6 million, less than half what Bhahara sought[16], without Prevezon admitting to any wrongdoing and with both sides claiming victory.[14][17]
The sole shareholder of Prevezon was Russian citizen Denis Katsyv, whose father is Petr Katsyv, vice president of Russia's state-run rail monopoly and "reportedly a business associate of Vladimir Yakunin, a confidant of Vladimir Putin".[15][18] Katsyv's Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was not licensed to practice in the US, and Katsyv hired the law firm of BakerHostetler to represent Prevezon; BakerHostetler hired Fusion GPS in early 2014 to provide research help for the litigation.[19][20][18][21]
On July 27, 2017, Fusion GPS accused the White House of trying to "smear" it for investigating the president's alleged ties to Russia. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pointed to Browder's testimony as vindication of Trump's claims that ongoing investigations into potential ties between his campaign and Moscow are political ploys to undermine his presidency. Fusion GPS countered that it worked only with a law firm in New York "to provide support for civil litigation" unrelated to Russian efforts to do away with the Magnitsky Act, saying it had no reason to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).[24]
On March 30, 2017, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa called for a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into purported connections between Fusion GPS and Russia, and an inquiry as to whether Fusion GPS was acting as an unregistered foreign agent. The company denied the claims that they were engaged in lobbying or had violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act.[25][20] According to the Washington Post′s "Fact Checker" column, there is "no evidence that the Russian government paid for Fusion’s work on the Prevezon defense at the same time Fusion investigated Trump’s business dealings in Russia."[27]
In September 2015, Fusion GPS was hired by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative political website, to do opposition research on Trump and other Republican presidential candidates. In spring 2016 when Trump had emerged as the probable Republican candidate, the Free Beacon stopped funding investigation into Trump.[28] From April 2016 through October 2016, the law firm Perkins Coie, on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, retained Fusion GPS to continue opposition research on Trump.[29][30][31] In June 2016, Fusion GPS retained Christopher Steele, a private British corporate intelligence investigator and former MI-6 agent, to research any Russian connections to Trump. Steele produced a 35-page series of memos from June to December 2016, which became the document known as the Donald Trump–Russia dossier.[29][32] Fusion GPS provided Marc Elias, the lead election lawyer for Perkins Coie, with the resulting dossier and other research documents.[30][31]
The firm is being sued for defamation by three Alfa-Bank owners named in the dossier as connected to Putin. German Khan, one of the litigants and one of Russia's wealthiest citizens, is the father-in-law of Alex van der Zwaan, who was charged in the Mueller probe for making false statements to the FBI.[33] He pleaded guilty to one count and in April 2018 was sentenced to 30 days in prison and a fine of $20,000.[34][35]
On October 4, 2017, Chairman Devin Nunes of the House Intelligence Committee issued subpoenas to the management of the company, demanding documents and testimony in late October and early November 2017. According to a Democratic committee source, the subpoenas were issued unilaterally by the Republican majority of the committee.[36]
On October 18, 2017, the House Intelligence Committee held a private meeting with two executives of Fusion GPS, Peter Fritsch, and Thomas Catan. The purpose was to seek information about their creation of "the opposition-research dossier that makes salacious claims about President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia."[37] The meeting was attended by committee staff and a single committee member, Representative Tom Rooney (R-FL). In response to the questions asked at the meeting, Fritsch and Catan invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Their attorney, Joshua Levy, said that prior to the meeting he had informed the committee in writing that his clients would invoke their rights, but they were compelled to appear nevertheless. He added they would cooperate with "serious" investigations but that a "Trump cabal has carried out a campaign to demonize our client for having been tied to the Trump dossier."[37][38]
On October 23, 2017, Fusion GPS filed for a court injunction against Nunes' subpoena seeking the firm's bank records for a period of more than two years, arguing it would damage and possibly destroy the business as well as violate their First Amendment rights.[39] On January 4, 2018 U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon struck down Fusion's application, ruling that Fusion's bank must turn over the financial records subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee; Fusion asked the judge to stay his order because they plan to appeal.[40]
On January 2, 2018, the founders of Fusion GPS, Glenn R. Simpson and Peter Fritsch, authored an op-ed in The New York Times, requesting that Republicans "release full transcripts of our firm’s testimony" and further explaining that, "the Steele dossier was not the trigger for the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russian meddling. As we told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump camp."[41]
The committee interviewed Simpson for seven hours on November 14, 2017. The transcript of the interview was released on January 18, 2018.[42][43]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_GPS
-- 2018 --
January 9:
BuzzFeed published the 35-page document in its entirety in January 2017.
January 9: Fusion GPS Head Defends Trump Dossier in Senate Interview Transcript
http://fortune.com/2018/01/09/fusion-gps-donald-trump-dossier/
January 9: Fusion GPS lawyer: ‘Somebody’s already been killed’ over Steele dossier
A lawyer [Joshua Levy] for the research firm that brought to life the dossier that alleged connections between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia told Senate investigators that someone was killed after a disputed dossier was published:
Levy, as indicated in a transcript unilaterally released by Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Tuesday, did not identify who had been killed or by whom.
It could be a reference to an ex-KGB general, Oleg Erovinkin, and a former aide to Rosneft executive Igor Sechin, who was named in the dossier.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fusion-gps-lawyer-somebodys-already-been-killed-over-steele-dossier-2018-01-09
January 9: Fusion GPS: FBI Had a Source in Trump’s Circle During Campaign
When asked by Heather Sawyer, Chief Oversight Counsel for Feinstein, about Steele’s conversations with the FBI, Simpson said the FBI “believed” Steele because they had independently corroborated information about Russian contacts with the Trump campaign with an anonymous source within the campaign itself who had reached out to them out of concern:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/01/09/fusion-gps-fbi-trump-campaign/
January 10: How The Fusion GPS Founder's Testimony Fits In The Russia Saga
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/10/576899194/how-the-fusion-gps-founders-testimony-fits-in-the-russia-saga
January 18: Testimony to the U.S. Congress by the head of a political research firm indicates that the Trump Organization’s sales of properties to Russian nationals may have involved money-laundering, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said on Thursday.
The panel released the transcript of a Nov. 14 closed-door interview with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, whose firm hired a former British spy to research then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign ties to Russians and produced a dossier.
http://time.com/5109253/trump-organization-money-laundering-russians-russia/
January 18: Trump Had Ties to Russian Mob Figures: Testimony
Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson testified that the real estate mogul built relationships with Russian gangsters, who were themselves tied to the Russian government.
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-01-18/trump-had-ties-to-russian-mob-figures-fusion-gps-founder-testifies
January 18: Testimony to the U.S. Congress by the head of a political research firm indicates that the Trump Organization’s sales of properties to Russian nationals may have involved money-laundering, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said on Thursday.
The panel released the transcript of a Nov. 14 closed-door interview with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, whose firm hired a former British spy to research then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign ties to Russians and produced a dossier.
http://time.com/5109253/trump-organization-money-laundering-russians-russia/
Those are just some of the explosive revelations from the newly released testimony that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson gave to a House intelligence committee investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-pattern-russian-money-laundering-testimony-article-1.3764964
January 18: In more than 150 pages of testimony released by the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday, Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of the firm behind the so-called “Steele dossier,” alleged a constellation of business deals that he said suggested the Russians could be laundering money through then-candidate Donald Trump.
Simpson stopped short of saying the firm had found definitive proof of such dealings, telling investigators that, “evidence, I think, is a strong word.”
Some of Trump’s dealings, Simpson told lawmakers, showed “patterns of buying and selling that we thought were suggestive of money laundering.”
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/369654-steele-dossier-firm-suspected-trump-russia-money-laundering
January 19: So far, the release of transcripts of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson’s interviews with the House Intelligence and Senate Judiciary committees have provided rich detail to obsessives but few major headlines for the average reader. The interviews give some more clarity on how Fusion came to investigate Donald Trump, who was paying the company, and how it gathered information, but they offer much help in assessing the Trump dossier.
Perhaps the most interesting thread is Simpson’s suggestion that the Trump Organization could have been used by Russians to launder money—an arrangement that would have both allowed Kremlin-linked figures to scrub cash and would have created possible blackmail material over the now-president, since the Russian government would be aware that a crime had been committed.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/theres-a-potential-for-russian-leverage-here/551024/
January 18: Testimony to the U.S. Congress by the head of a political research firm indicates that the Trump Organization’s sales of properties to Russian nationals may have involved money-laundering, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said on Thursday.
The panel released the transcript of a Nov. 14 closed-door interview with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, whose firm hired a former British spy to research then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign ties to Russians and produced a dossier.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-fusion/sales-of-trump-properties-suggestive-of-money-laundering-researcher-idUSKBN1F727X
January 19: The panel released the transcript of a Nov. 14 closed-door interview with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, whose firm hired a former British spy to research then-presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign ties to Russians and produced a dossier.
"Those transcripts reveal serious allegations that the Trump Organization may have engaged in money laundering with Russian nationals," Representative Adam Schiff said.
The Trump Organization dismissed the allegations as unsubstantiated.
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/01/19/sales-of-trump-properties-suggestive-of-money-laundering-researcher-says/23338104/
March 6: Trump White House quietly issues report vindicating Obama regulations
It was easy to miss, but OMB [Office of Management and Budget] demolishes the GOP’s deregulatory claims.
OMB gathered data and analysis on “major” federal regulations (those with $100 million or more in economic impact) between 2006 and 2016, a period that includes all of Obama’s administration, stopping just short of Trump’s. The final tally, reported in 2001 dollars:
--Aggregate benefits: $219 to $695 billion
--Aggregate costs: $59 to $88 billion
By even the most conservative estimate, the benefits of Obama’s regulations wildly outweighed the costs.
According to OMB — and to the federal agencies upon whose data OMB mostly relied — the core of the Trumpian case against Obama regulations, arguably the organizing principle of Trump’s administration, is false.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/3/6/17077330/trump-regulatory-agenda-omb
August 3: FBI releases documents showing payments to Trump dossier author Steele
The 71 pages of correspondence with former British spy Christopher Steele are heavily redacted.
On Nov. 1, 2016, according to the documents, the FBI told Steele it was unlikely to continue working with him, and he should not "obtain any intelligence whatsoever on behalf of the FBI."
The deal fell apart when Steele pulled out, said the source, who has direct knowledge of the situation.
Steele, a former MI6 operative who opened a private firm, compiled the Trump dossier during the 2016 presidential campaign under contract to the U.S. research firm Fusion GPS.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/fbi-releases-documents-showing-payments-trump-dossier-author-steele-n897506
August 22: Christopher Steele wins libel case over Trump campaign dossier
A British former spy has been exonerated by a US court for producing a dossier which made claims about the Trump campaign and its links to Russia.
Christopher Steele and his intelligence firm, Orbis, were sued by three Russian oligarchs - Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan – for libel, after they were named in the dossier.
The three Russians, who co-founded Russia’s largest private bank, sued for libel, but Judge Anthony Epstein, sitting in the Washington DC superior court, threw out their case.
He ruled that the dossier was not knowingly inaccurate, and therefore protected by the First Amendment because he acted “in furtherance of the right of advocacy on issues of public interest”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/22/christopher-steele-wins-libel-case-trump-campaign-dossier/
November 9: Trump Claims Fusion GPS Is Trying to Steal the Election in Florida
Once again, Florida’s shoddy voting system is stoking the flames of partisan rage.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/trump-claims-fusion-gps-is-trying-to-steal-the-election-in-florida
-- 2019 --
January 8: Russian lawyer in Trump Tower meeting charged with obstruction of justice has past with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson
Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya is charged in federal court with obstruction of justice in connection to a civil money laundering and forfeiture case involving a Russian tax refund fraud scheme ...
https://video.foxnews.com/v/5987172527001/#sp=show-clips
January 15: A complaint that alleges Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee violated campaign finance law by steering money for opposition research through a law firm is still pending with the Federal Election Commission.
The FEC, which is not operating during the government shutdown, has yet to rule on the complaint made by Campaign Legal Center (CLC) that both organizations funneled the cash to Fusion GPS, the group behind a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele – the so-called "Steele dossier."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/legalnewsline/2019/01/15/allegations-that-clinton-campaign-funded-trump-russia-research-still-pending-at-now-closed-fec/#60c899403d99
January 17: Judge won’t dismiss libel suit against Fusion GPS over dossier
Three Russian businessmen mentioned in the dossier of alleged ties between President Donald Trump and Russia scored a legal victory Wednesday when a judge refused to throw out a libel suit they filed against Fusion GPS, the private investigation firm that produced the compilation.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon turned down Fusion’s motion to dismiss the suit on the grounds that the Russians are public figures and that Washington, D.C., law contains special provisions limiting lawsuits over political controversies.
Leon said the public-figure status of the Russian businessmen—owners of Russia’s Alfa Bank—was open to dispute and could not be resolved at this stage of the litigation.
“I unfortunately cannot resolve the public figure issue at this stage on the limited record before me,” wrote Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush.
Leon said prevailing opinion among his judicial colleagues is that the Washington law at issue, known as the Anti-SLAPP Act, can’t be applied in federal court to force early dismissal of a case like the one filed in 2017 by the businessmen, Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan. Leon said he would not depart from the series of rulings limiting the effect of the law in federal suits.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/17/libel-suit-fusion-gps-dossier-1106984
-- 2020 --
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