A bit of a surprise: House Intel released their Simpson transcript

Rather than home in on the nature of Simpson's relationship with Christopher Steele — the former British intelligence officer hired by Fusion to research Trump's Russia ties — Schiff and his Democratic colleagues asked Simpson pointed questions about Russian money laundering, Russian organized crime, and whether Trump could be susceptible to Russian blackmail.

The result was a long trail of breacrumbs for investigators probing Trump's relationship with Russia.

  Business Insider

This could add some time to the Mueller probe. On the other hand, I wonder if Mueller doesn't already know even more about those things.

"You mentioned that you'd done a lot of work as a journalist in terms of Russian organized crime, financial crimes, organized crime more generally," Schiff said. "What can you tell us about how the Russians launder their money and whether that was an issue of concern during the first phase of your work for Free Beacon?"

Yes, do tell. Free Beacon first hired Fusion GPS for opposition research on Trump in 2015.

"I guess the general thing I would say is that, you know, the Russians are far more sophisticated in their criminal organized crime activities than the Italians, and they're a lot more global," Simpson replied. "They understand finance a lot better. And so they tend to use quite elaborate methods to move money...I mean, if you can think of a way to launder money, the Russians are pretty good at it."

Simpson explained that "real estate deals" were a common Russian method of hiding and moving money. Asked whether Fusion had found "evidence" of corruption and illicit finance related to the purchase of Trump properties, Simpson replied that his firm had seen "patterns of buying and selling that we thought were suggestive of money laundering."

[...]

Simpson said Trump's golf courses in Scotland and Ireland were also "concerning" because financial statements obtained by Fusion showed "enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources."

[...]

"And these golf course are just, you know, they're sinks. They don't actually make any money."

GOP Rep. Tom Rooney said "the story about [Trump] financing Doonbeg in Ireland through money that we can't really trace but has sort of the fingerprints of Russian mobsters" was "fascinating."

[...]

Simpson also suggested that the committee examine the travel histories of Trump's children, Don Jr. and Ivanka, " and whether they had other meetings with Russians."

"And specifically, the connections between the Abramovichs and Ivanka and Jared is something that requires looking into, if it hasn’t been," Simpson said, referring to Roman Abramovich and Jared Kushner.

Orange suits all 'round!

I'll just let you take it from here with this article, where names drop right and left. Get comfortable.

And buckle your seatbelt for a Trump twitter storm tomorrow morning.

I wonder how they convinced Nunes to let this out.  Maybe it was just too hot, and keeping it under wraps might have implicated Nunes in a cover up.

The transcript is also published at the end of this article.

...To be continued, no doubt.