Crime in Progress

by Glenn Simpson;Peter Fritsch;

  The Republicans kept returning to Browder’s many allegations, so Simpson decided to tell them all about Browder: how he’d ducked three lawful subpoenas, once by changing his SEC filings and twice by running away; how he’d surrendered his American citizenship and paid no taxes to his native country on his millions in profits from Russia yet secretly owned a mansion in Colorado, how Fusion found offshore companies he controlled in the leaked money-laundering documents known as the Panama Papers. “William Browder talks a lot about the Panama Papers and the Russians who are in the Panama Papers without ever mentioning that he’s in the Panama Papers,” Simpson said.

  The Republicans probed for any information that suggested Fusion had a record of manipulating the government and the media. Their questions all drew on the myth, perpetuated by the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, that Fusion was some left-wing puppeteer of a pliant press.

  Did Fusion bribe journalists? No. Did Fusion get paid to manipulate the government into opening investigations? No. Those were not the answers Grassley’s investigators were hoping for. What about the FBI? they asked. How many times did you talk to them during the campaign? None. Discouraged, they dropped this line of questioning.

  The Democrats were far more interested in Trump and the Russians, but woefully unfamiliar with the subject matter—unsurprising, given the Judiciary Committee’s belated attempt to snatch the Trump-Russia turf (and limelight) away from their colleagues on the Intelligence Committee. So Simpson spent a lot of time explaining the basics about Trump, Putin, and subjects such as the Russian Mafia. He had to slowly spell out a number of Russian names they’d never heard.

  During a round of questioning by Feinstein’s counsel, Simpson disclosed the gist of his conversation with Steele following Steele’s October 2016 meeting in Rome with the FBI. “Essentially,” Simpson said, “what he told me was they had other intelligence about this matter from an internal Trump campaign source….My understanding was that [the FBI] believed Chris at this point…because they had other intelligence…and that one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization.” The Republicans made no attempt to follow up.

  When the interview finally ended, Simpson and the lawyers attempted to escape the building without having to do another perp walk in front of the cameras. A crew spotted them and came in hot pursuit. They foolishly attempted to hide in a bathroom. The crew followed. They tried hiding in a stall, and the cameras started shooting them over the top of the stall. Cornered, Levy struck a deal with them: He would make a statement in a more dignified setting outside the building, where he offered a bland summation noting that Simpson had patiently replied to every question put to him.

  Afterwards, they repaired to a pub at Union Station. Levy’s first call was to Fritsch. Fusion staff had heard nothing all day and were dying for news. “How did he do?” Fritsch asked. “Killed it,” Levy said.

  * * *

  —

  No sooner had Fusion put the Senate Judiciary testimony behind it than the action shifted back to the House. Devin Nunes’s House Intelligence Committee had reached out to Fusion on August 18 with a vague request for documents about Russia and the election. The committee hadn’t really articulated what it wanted to investigate, but it was clear that they intended to beat up on Fusion in one way or another. They also wanted to hear from Steele, so badly, in fact, that two Nunes committee staffers—unbeknownst to the Mueller team, committee Democrats, or Senate investigators—made a clandestine trip to London in a foolish gambit to find Steele and speak to him. They even showed up outside his lawyers’ office, leaving their business cards before slinking off. This was partisan amateur hour masquerading as aggressive government oversight.

  The committee’s outreach to Fusion was similarly ham-fisted. It took the Nunes team a month to spell out what it wanted. In September, committee Republicans finally said they wanted all Fusion documents related to “the Russian active measures campaign targeting the 2016 U.S. election.” They asked questions they knew Fusion couldn’t possibly answer, including “What possible leaks of classified information took place related to the intelligence community assessment of these matters?”

  In the committee’s haste to fire up its investigative machine, it appeared to have simply cut and pasted some language from a previous missive it had sent to the CIA or some other intelligence agency. Fusion, of course, had no knowledge of what went on inside the intelligence community.

  Nunes, a former Trump transition adviser, had recused himself from any Trump-Russia inquiry after he was busted months earlier surreptitiously collaborating with the White House to surface classified documents that he claimed showed improper “surveillance” of the Trump campaign. That partisan stunt was an ongoing matter of investigation by the House Ethics Committee. It seemed apparent from the attempted ambush of Steele in London and the committee’s pursuit of Fusion, however, that he hadn’t really recused himself and didn’t care about the outcome of the ethics probe.

  Nunes’s staff didn’t really seem bothered by documents or a serious investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. It wanted a series of perp walks to create the impression of guilt, starring Simpson, Fritsch, and Catan. Fusion’s lawyers engaged with the committee to try to figure out what specifically they wanted to know, pointing out that Simpson had already answered questions for ten hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Wouldn’t it make sense to read that transcript to avoid redundancy and make any interview more productive?

  Nunes’s reply: Tell us when you’re showing up or we’ll subpoena you to appear.

  The legal cloud enveloping Fusion darkened further on October 3 when the three oligarchs who owned Russia’s Alfa Bank filed a defamation suit against Fusion in D.C. federal court for its alleged role in publishing the dossier. One of Steele’s reports had highlighted Alfa’s closeness to Putin—a claim later substantiated by the Mueller report—and described alleged details of the owners’ relationship to the Russian leader. The suit disputed the accuracy of Steele’s reporting.

  The next day, Nunes issued subpoenas to Catan, Fritsch, and Simpson. He did so unilaterally, without seeking the consent of Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat on the committee. This was a breach of committee rules, not to mention comity, and a clear message that the investigation had little to do with the committee’s role overseeing the Intelligence Community. There was nothing Schiff could do to stop it.

  Of course, the Nunes strategy all along had probably been to make Fusion an offer it could refuse—baiting them into taking the Fifth, as Grassley had done—to create the impression of guilt. Indeed, the Fusion partners had mixed feelings about doing so and worried that they were playing into Nunes’s hands. Invoking the Fifth was a constitutional right, but few understood why an innocent person would take that course.

  Fritsch tried to explain the nuances of what was happening to his elderly mother, hoping to prepare her for what was likely to be ferocious spin from Nunes and the White House, once the committee leaked Fusion’s intention to take the Fifth.

  “Well, Pete,” she said, “I’m sure that if you just tell them the truth, they’ll understand.”

  “I don’t think so, Mom.”

  Normally, Congress will excuse witnesses from having to appear once they communicate their intention to exercise their Fifth Amendment rights. In the 1970s, the Senate excused the Watergate burglars from having to appear to plead the Fifth. And only months earlier, Nunes himself had excused Michael Flynn from having to appear to take the Fifth. The Fusion partners, however, were given no such consideration. Nunes wanted his moment. So, on the morning of October 18, Fritsch and Catan made their way to the House Intelligence Committee’s secure hearing room in the basement of the Capitol. They took the Fifth and bolted before the handful of reporters assembled by Fox News and the other pro-Trump media knew they were there.

  Nunes h
imself didn’t even bother to show up. He got what he wanted out of the supposedly confidential encounter: a spate of headlines that all blared some version of the people behind the dossier taking the Fifth. Nunes’s biggest fan, Trump, weighed in quickly on Twitter with the first of what would be a steady stream of tweets attacking Fusion: “Workers of firm involved with the discredited and Fake Dossier take the 5th. Who paid for it, Russia, the FBI or the Dems (or all)?”

  Fusion staff would later set those tweets in gaudy gilt frames—an homage to Trump’s own taste for schlock—and hang them as an exhibit in the office entryway.

  The Fifth Amendment wasn’t going to stop Nunes, however. Behind the scenes, his staff was working with Grassley’s to continue peeling the Fusion onion in an attempt to answer Trump’s tweet. Who, indeed, had paid for it?

  Fusion learned of the Republicans’ next, most underhanded attack in early October, thanks to a bit of emergency preparedness.

  Nunes had secretly served a subpoena on TD Bank for every transaction in Fusion’s corporate account for the prior two years. Neither the committee’s Democrats nor Fusion knew of the move, which was just how Nunes wanted it. He gave the bank seven working days to reply and hoped he’d get the records before anyone could object.

  His ploy was outed when Fusion’s lawyers learned of it from TD Bank. The lawyers had feared such a move since Simpson was asked about TD Bank during his testimony in August. They had warned the bank in writing that it should immediately notify Fusion of any subpoenas. So notified, Fusion asked a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order to stop any release, which it got, touching off a big legal fight with the House.

  Nunes’s move was an indication that something even more sneaky was afoot. Simpson had mentioned TD Bank only to the Senate Judiciary Committee, in supposedly confidential testimony. It seemed obvious, then, that Grassley’s staff was back-channeling with Nunes’s staff to get around Feinstein and her fellow Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, who were no longer interested in pursuing Fusion. The bank records would give Nunes a granular view into Fusion’s business operations, including payments from Perkins Coie, who served as lawyers for the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

  “This is existential stuff here,” Fritsch said to Simpson. “We can’t let all our clients be exposed because [Perkins Coie] couldn’t be bothered to pull their heads out of the sand” and admit it had hired Fusion—which was what Nunes was really after.

  It was inevitable that their Trump research clients would be unmasked at some point, but the Fusion partners had all agreed that it was important to protect them for as long as possible. Upholding Fusion’s reputation for protecting clients and denying Trump any ammunition to use against Mueller and the FBI were paramount.

  Fusion filed suit against TD Bank asking a federal court to prohibit the bank from complying with the subpoena on the grounds that the bank had no right to violate the company’s privacy to comply with an improper and overly broad subpoena that aimed to rummage through all of Fusion’s records, not just those related to the Trump research. The filing accused Nunes and his colleagues of waging a campaign of illegal leaks against Fusion and violating the constitutional rights of both the firm and its clients. There was little hope of winning: The courts are not inclined to challenge the powers of Congress. But there were legitimate questions about the validity of a subpoena issued by a chairman under ethics investigation and without a proper committee vote, especially a subpoena written to scoop up records of innocent third parties with no relation to the Russia investigations.

  The House’s lawyers insisted to the court that everything the Republicans had done was completely proper. But when the judge indicated that she was not going to simply reject Fusion’s concerns, they blinked and agreed to a court-approved “protective order” to narrow their demands and prohibit public disclosure of the records—a legal victory for Fusion that put off the day of reckoning for at least another month.

  As the fight dragged on, the political and financial pressure on Fusion mounted, and tensions over how to proceed arose within its ranks. Clients and the press were pelting the firm with queries about what was happening. Death by legal fees was not out of the question.

  Fritsch and Simpson staked out different positions. Fusion should not be spending untold sums, Fritsch said, to protect Perkins Coie and the Free Beacon when neither had stepped forward to help Fusion. They should be encouraged to either contribute to the cause or relieve Fusion of the obligation to protect them any longer.

  Simpson argued that Fusion had no right to expect help from their clients since they hadn’t asked their permission to share Steele’s information. Having the clients essentially out themselves was unlikely to satisfy Nunes, he said. And there was a higher purpose to continuing the fight, even if that meant battling all the way to the Supreme Court. Fritsch took to calling Simpson “Captain America” for his vows to protect the republic at all costs. The partners faced an unappealing choice: loyalty to former clients or loyalty to the partners and employees of Fusion.

  The media made the choice for them. On October 24, The Washington Post reported that Fusion and Steele had been paid by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee through Perkins Coie, a fact that Fusion had managed to keep secret in the nearly eleven months since the dossier broke. Perkins had finally fessed up in the Post story. Simpson was annoyed and accused Fritsch of leaking the story to the Post, a charge he denied. In fact, reporters had been zeroing in on Perkins Coie for days after a Times story said Elias had helped “lead research into Russian efforts to help Donald J. Trump and damage Mrs. Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.”

  The story was going to break no matter what Fusion or anyone else did. But the stress of the situation was beginning to cause suspicions and rifts to build between two old friends and partners.

  * * *

  —

  The news about Perkins Coie meant that Trump’s favorite foil, Hillary Clinton, had now resurfaced to give him a delicious public relations reprieve. The news was red meat for the “lock her up” crowd, prima facie evidence that the dossier was a political hit.

  Fox & Friends jumped on the news. Their viewer in chief followed up on Twitter, decrying the DNC funding of the “Fake News Dossier.” Lost in all the expressions of faux outrage on the right was one question: Why would Fusion or the DNC pay for a phony document it presumably could have made up for free? And if the dossier was such a dastardly political hit piece, why had so little of it filtered into the news before the election?

  Trump’s attempt to lay his troubles at the feet of Democrats was once again short-lived. Three days later, the Republican-funded Washington Free Beacon—a publication widely associated with billionaire and mega-donor Paul Singer—confirmed that it had been Fusion’s first client for the Trump research. The revelation baffled many of the capital’s partisans and underscored what a strange animal Fusion was in the hyper-partisan world of twenty-first-century Washington.

  The Free Beacon revelation was quickly swamped by even worse news for the White House. The following Monday, October 30, Mueller unveiled his first criminal charges against Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates—a twelve-count indictment for conspiracy to commit money laundering related to their work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. Trump’s pathetic reply on Twitter: “Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????”

  Also charged was the obscure former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who admitted to lying to the FBI when asked about his contacts with people claiming to be in a position to arrange meetings with Russian officials.

  The moment was sweet vindication for the Fusion team. Mueller, a Republican former FBI director, had handed down indictments that indicated a pattern of Russian efforts to compromise t
he Trump campaign and its senior officials—the core assertion the first memo in the dossier had made sixteen months earlier.

  But by this time, what seemed obvious to Fusion and many mainstream journalists was no longer sufficient to clear the air of the idea that the firm was a political hit squad. Fusion was under daily assault by a now flourishing ecosystem of pro-Trump propaganda sites that appeared to be working closely with congressional Republicans to bury the facts of Trump’s Russia connections and attack Fusion GPS.

  At the forefront of this alt-right fog machine were Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller and a site called The Federalist. Many of The Daily Caller’s articles about Fusion were attributed to the Daily Caller News Foundation, which appeared to be an oblique way of signaling that the news was sponsored by private donors. The Federalist had been founded by a young blogger who later resigned from the Post amid plagiarism charges, and had previously been exposed for taking cash from lobbyists for the government of Malaysia while writing articles helpful to their client. Still more attacks came from more established news organizations, like Forbes, that were also known to accept contributions from writers on the payrolls of PR firms.

  The sites cranked out a steady supply of outlandish pieces accusing Fusion of various sleazy deeds, including bribing journalists to write articles helpful to Fusion’s clients. It all seemed so absurd to everyone at Fusion that they would have ignored the noise entirely if it didn’t have the pernicious effect of validating what some very powerful people in Congress and the White House were saying: Nunes and Grassley were also pushing the line that the allegations of sinister dealings between Trump and the Russians was all fake news cooked up by Clinton’s goons at Fusion. The partners discussed options for dealing with the whole mess, including having Simpson leave the company, but decided that nothing would satisfy Trump and his defenders.