Fusion GPS, Democrats claim scoops for material found on internet

Rowan Scarborough:

Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson is defending the Democrat-financed Russia dossier by crediting its author with turning up facts that can be found on the Internet.

Mr. Simpson’s testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence follows a pattern by fans of the dossier commissioned by Fusion and written by former British spy Christopher Steele.

Some committee Democrats have credited Mr. Steele with first disclosing events that actually had been reported previously in the open press. One network news site applauded him for disclosing that Donald Trump looked at possible real-estate deals in Russia. Yet Mr. Trump’s failed attempts to build a hotel in Russia over three decades have been chronicled in the press and by the president himself.
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Mr. Simpson was asked how he corroborated Mr. Steele’s series of charges. He gave two examples. The examples did not outright prove illegal conduct by Trump associates. Instead, they were comprised of Mr. Steele’s sources expressing knowledge in the dossier of a known organization and a Russian public official.

Firstly, Mr. Simpson goes to bat for what appears to be one of the most far-fetched assertions by Mr. Steele. He accused Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s attorney, of secretly traveling to Prague in August 2016 to meet with aides to President Vladimir Putin. There, they supposedly conspired to cover up the Russian hacking.

Mr. Cohen has denied he ever traveled to Prague and showed his passport to prove it. There has been no public or FBI confirmation that such a mission took place. Mr. Cohen on Jan. 9 filed a libel suit against Fusion GPS.

Mr. Simpson seemed to vouched for the Cohen story by testifying that Mr. Steele included knowledge of a Russian foreign/cultural exchange group called Rossotrudnichestvo.
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But the group’s connections were well known publicly. In 2012-13, there were stories, including in the Washington Post, that FBI counter-intelligence suspected Rossotrudnichestvo agents of trying to recruit Americans as informants. Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported the same elements in a June 2017 story days before Mr. Steele began writing the first dossier memo.

Mr. Simpson‘ second example of dossier accuracy was the alleged role of a senior Russian insider, Sergei Ivanov.

Mr. Steele wrote of second-hand information. An “official close to” Mr. Ivanov quoted him as saying that Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page met with another Putin aide to discuss obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton.

(Mr. Page has said repeatedly he never meet with the aide during a July 2016 trip to Moscow to deliver a public speech. He has filed a libel suit.)

Mr. Ivanov was a well-known and along-time ally of Mr. Putin. They served together in the old KGB internal intelligence agency. Mr. Ivanov went on to hold a number of inner-circle posts, including as chief of Mr. Putin’s administrative staff. Mr. Putin fired the 63-year-old in August 2016 in what the local press said was a staff shakeup to bring in a new team of younger, totally loyal, bureaucrats.
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There is more.

The FBI has not corroborated any of this.  The fact that Trump at one time looked at building a hotel in Russia has never been a secret and it never got off the ground.  If Trump had all those connections to Russia you would think he could get a hotel built there like he has elsewhere around the world.

There is evidence that the Coney story is false.  The proponents of the dossier can claim that Carter Page took a trip to Moscow but there is no evidence he met with the Russians mentioned in the dossier.  In the case of Cohen, his passport is evidence that he did not make the alleged trip and he has witnesses who say he was in Los Angeles at the time of the alleged trip.