A Russian gangster operated an illegal gambling ring out of a Trump Tower apartment. President Donald Trump had a “pattern” of making real estate deals with Russians indicative of money laundering. Eric Trump bragged about having unlimited access to Russian money for his golf course developments. And Trump associates crossed paths with a number of Kremlin-connected oligarchs during the campaign.
Those are just some of the explosive revelations from the newly released testimony that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson gave to the House Intelligence Committee investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Simpson’s organization is first and foremost known for tasking former British spy Christopher Steele with digging into Trump’s Russian entanglements.
Steele made international headlines after it was revealed that he compiled the “Trump-Russia dossier” — an infamous cache of documents that claims the Russian government has blackmailed Trump to do its bidding after obtaining damaging information about him, including a video tape allegedly showing him engaging in “perverted sexual acts.”
During his testimony before the House select intelligence committee on Nov. 14, Simpson told investigators that none of the information Steele obtained about Trump stood out as improbable.
“What we did do is look at names and places and people and whether they matched up with information we could get elsewhere. And all of that, as far as it went, checked out,” Simpson told the committee.
Simpson gave similar testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee in August — transcripts of which were made public by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein last month.
Contrary to the Senate testimony, Simpson’s House testimony was predominantly focused on Trump’s alleged history of cutting shady business deals involving Russians and money laundering.
Simpson testified that Russian gangster Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov ran a “high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower” while on the run from authorities trying to arrest him over allegedly rigging a skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah.
“Generally speaking, the patterns of activity that we thought might be suggestive of money laundering were, you know, fast turnover deals and deals where there seemed to have been efforts to disguise the identity of the buyer,” Simpson said of Tokhtakhunov’s Trump Tower operation.