Mainstream analysis of Simpson's House testimony

I expected this morning to see blaring headlines about the newly released Simpson testimony to the House Intel Committee last November. The Guardian, RT, al Jazeera, IB Times, Daily Intelligencer all have absolutely nothing. Not even a story down the page somewhere. So, I Googled for other sources.

CNN

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee, said the transcript reveals "serious allegations that the Trump Organization may have engaged in money laundering with Russian nationals."

Simpson "testified that if the Trump Organization did engage in money laundering with the Russians, it would be with the knowledge or approval of the Kremlin and constitute powerful leverage over the President of the United States," Schiff said. "Thus far, Committee Republicans have refused to look into this key area and we hope the release of this transcript will reinforce the importance of these critical questions to our investigation."

  CNN

It's like they've rolled right over the obvious criminal connections with the Russian mob to get to the Kremlin's possible interference in the election. To be fair, I guess possible criminal business activity is not in the purview of their investigation.

Rep. Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat on the committee, also said that Simpson "did not provide evidence," and suggested that the question of criminality was better suited for special counsel Robert Mueller than the intelligence panel.

Should somebody maybe suggest a Congressional investigation? Maybe back in November? Maybe somebody did and got nowhere?

At one point, Schiff seemed to ask Simpson for a blueprint for how to investigate Trump's potential financial improprieties -- a facet of the investigation Democrats have criticized Republicans in the House for not pursuing.

[...]

Simpson advised Schiff to subpoena the people involved in the business deals, the banks that handled their accounts, and the shell companies that are traditionally used to hide financial trails.

[...]

Democrats, including Schiff, pressed Simpson to detail Trump's alleged links to organized crime. In the interview, Simpson went over the connections his firm and Steele found between Russians and numerous figures in Trump's orbit, including Felix Sater, Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. All have denied colluding with Russians during the election.

[...]

Simpson said before Fusion had hired Steele, the firm started looking into Trump's ties to Russia when it was investigating Trump's real estate deals and suspicions of money laundering through Russian officials.

In addition to the Trump Organization real estate, Simpson said that Fusion GPS had also investigated Kushner's real estate deal in Jersey City, New Jersey.

If I'm not mistaken (and I could be), this happened when Fusion was still being paid by Republicans to investigate Trump, before the Democrats hired the company. If that's true, the Republicans should be investigated as to why they dropped the investigation and rallied behind someone they had reason to believe was criminally involved with the Russian mob.

The criminal activities with the Russian mob, which I am personally convinced have been a part of the Trump organization for years concerns me much more than any Russian interference in our elections. Maybe it shouldn't. Maybe the interference is the scandal of scandals and most detrimental to our country. But I feel that our own politicians have gerry-rigged and interefered with our elections to a criminal degree for so long now that it seems almost silly to act like some other country might ruin our democracy. We've ruined it ourselves over many years with voter machine rigging, district gerrymandering, voter suppression, super delegates and corporate funding.

NBC

It was the second release of Congressional testimony by Simpson, and it contained no Earth-shattering revelations, but Simpson went into much greater detail with the House committee than he did with the Senate judiciary committee about his research into Trump’s alleged business dealings with Russians and organized crime figures, in passages that at times read like a work of pulp fiction.

  NBC

So, that's not "Earth-shattering"? Is foreign-mob related criminal activity by a US president just old hat? Meh.

“As we pieced together the early years of his biography, it seemed as if during the early part of his career he had connections to a lot of Italian mafia figures, and then gradually during the 90s became associated with Russian mafia figures,” Simpson said at one point, under oath, about the 45th president of the United States.

Pretty Earth-shattering. Or, it should be.

Simpson also delves into some of his own research on Trump’s business dealings, allegations familiar to reporters but not the general public. For example, Simpson testified that he believes Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland may have been financed with illicit Russian money, something media organizations investigated — but reached no conclusion about — during the campaign.

President Trump's son Eric told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the family's company got much of its funding to build its golf courses from Russia, according to an interview Dodson gave last year to Boston public radio station WBUR. But Eric Trump then went on Twitter and denied saying that.

Simpson said he poured over the financial statements of the golf courses.

Time out. He didn't "pour over" anything. Bugs the heck out of me when I all too often read that somebody "poured over" something. No. You "pore over" documents. You "pour" gravy and sauce over something. Not over documents.  Not on purpose.

Another thing that grates on me every time I see it is the use of "lead" as the past tense of "lead". No, no, no. "Led" is the past tense of "lead".

Okay, that rant is over. Back to the "Earth-shattering" news that doesn't seem to be making much of a splash.

[Simpson's] team also observed patterns in real estate dealings involving Trump properties — purchases by unknown entities that were quickly re-sold for a loss — that "were suggestive of money laundering."

He singled out projects in Panama and Toronto where Russian mafia figures were listed as buyers, which he said "smacks of fraud."

[...]

“That's exactly my point, is that if we knew that Donald Trump was working with the Russian mafia to fund Doonbeg in Ireland, then there's no way he would be President,” [Representative] Rooney said, according to the transcript.

Oh, bullshit. Republicans wouldn't have cared.  There's no way they would vote for Hillary - or any Democrat - andour voting system, with the electoral college is so rigged that, even with 3 million or so more votes, the Democrat lost.

Simpson said at first it seemed to him that Trump's own lawyers would step in to prevent Trump from pursuing real estate deals in Russia, on the basis that transactions could trigger the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Michael Cohen? That lawyer? He's as dirty as Trump.

"What I later came to believe was that he was, in fact, developing different kinds of business relationships with the Russians," he told the committee. "He'd found other ways to profit from his relationship with that."

NBC doesn't clarify which lawyer they're talking about.

Simpson said he was shocked and angry when FBI Director James Comey said publicly he was reopening the Clinton email investigation in October 2016, just weeks before the presidential election.

“I was sitting on this piece of knowledge, which was that, in fact, the FBI was investigating the Trump organization for possibly having illegal dealings with the Government of Russia,” Simpson said. “We decided that if James Corney wasn't going to tell people about this investigation that, you know, he had violated the rules, and we would only be fair if the world knew that both candidates were under FBI investigation.“

It's my understanding that Comey's hand was pushed by the New York FBI branch with Rudy Giuliani's involvement threatening to release some incriminating, but discredited, information about Clinton. Maybe that doesn't absolve him. I thought it explained it anyway.

Simpson also asserted that the Russian government had “infiltrated “ the National Rifle Association, which spent more than $400 million in the 2016 election, according to public records. The NRA supports mainly Republicans.

[...]

"[A]nd there is more than one explanation for why,” he said in the testimony. “But I would say broadly speaking, it appears that the Russian operation was designed to infiltrate conservative organizations. And they targeted various conservative organizations, religious and otherwise, and they seem to have made a very concerted effort to get in with the NRA."

And, that's the other big story floating around, making it sound like we're practically a Russian subsidiary. This time around the "Red scare" isn't that you could wake up Russian, but that you already are.

FOX

The co-founder of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS told the House Intelligence Committee this past November that "people were arrested or died mysteriously" after the existence of the now-infamous "Trump-Russia dossier" was made public.

However, Glenn Simpson did not say whether those affected actually contributed information to the unverified dossier.

[...]

Simpson told the committee that he and Steele began shopping the dossier to media outlets in late October of 2016, after then-FBI Director James Comey announced that the Bureau was re-opening the investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's private email server. He said he was "angry" that Comey, in Simpson's view, had "violated the sort of one of the more sacrosanct policies, which is not announcing law enforcement activity in the closing days of an election."

[...]

In his testimony, Simpson described how Fusion GPS was retained by Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, in the summer of 2016. He said the committee was paid a "flat fee" of $50,000 per month, plus expenses to research Trump on the Democrats' behalf.

[...]

Simpson also detailed facts Fusion GPS claimed to have uncovered about the president while the firm was contracted by the conservative Washington Free Beacon to do research on then-candidate Trump and other GOP contenders for the White House.

"Various [Russian] criminals were buying [Trump] properties," said Simpson.

  Fox

So, Fox News is halfway through a somewhat lengthy article before it makes any mention of the mob ties. No Trump voter has read that far.

Even at that mention, the article identifies only one such criminal, makes a couple of comments about him being seen with Trump, and moves on to the Steele dossier. After a few paragraphs on that, it  then mentions Adam Schiff's claims of possible money laundering.

The committee's top Democrat, California Rep. Adam Schiff, said in a statement that Simpson had made "serious allegations that the Trump Organization may have engaged in money laundering with Russian nationals ..."

"Mr. Simpson ... testified that if the Trump Organization did engage in money laundering with the Russians, it would be with the knowledge or approval of the Kremlin and constitute powerful leverage over the President of the United States," Schiff added.

That's it.  The article then closes with three short paragraphs of Simpson speculating on whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

I'm still waiting for The Most Notable Loser to watch a Fox & Friends segment and find out his mob ties are in the news. If, indeed, they even tell him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.