Democrats’ Dossier Team Was Hired By The Kremlin’s Sanctions-Busting Russian Lawyer PRIOR To Her Luring Trump Advisers

By Yoichi Shimatsu - Part 1 Of A Series
Rense.com

Last things first, meaning that this article must lead off with a look at why Sen. Dianne Feinstein released, without authorization, an online file of the transcript from the Senate Judiciary closed-door hearing of August 22 on Fusion GPS, the research team that produced the Trump-Russia Dossier. This first installment analyzing the Senate Judiciary transcript, augmented with background information, is the opener for the can of worms involving Fusion GPS in Russian intrigue. Hold your breath!

 A detailed look at the many themes probed by the Senate legal counsels will continue in upcoming articles in this series, including the rogues’ gallery of suspect Russian businessmen influencing U.S. politics;  Russian mafia-linked players who have infiltrated the U.S. real estate market; the spy who loved money more than truth Christopher Steele; and miscellaneous curiosities, all with a cautionary warning: Don’t look for good guys here, because they’re all crooks.

 First off, examined here, is the transcript’s revelation of Fusion GPS’s very own Russiagate, which points to the strong possibility of the Russia dossier being, from its inception, a cynical forgery fabricated to implicate candidate Trump (in a clever ploy to extend Kremlin influence over the Democrats). An astonishing fact is that Fusion GPS was hired by Natalia Veselitskaya, the notorious journalist who lobbied for an end sanctions on Russia. The timing is significant because her contract with Fusion GSP began two months prior to her (in)famous meeting with Trump’s trio of advisers, which was the nub of the Russiagate scandal. That was a set-up from the start.

 From June until October 2017, Russian agent Veselitskaya’s relationship with Fusion GPS overlapped simultaneously with the Trump-Russia Dossier contract for the Hillary campaign, a situation much too close for comfort. The dossier contract, arranged just a month prior to the Democratic National Convention, indicates that Simpson was possibly involved in collusion with DOJ-FBI-CIA officials to exercise control over the nomination process of both parties, and only later to set up an entrapment scheme against candidate Trump to prevent populist control of the executive branch. When the mysterious deaths of Seth Rich and Shawn Lucas are taken into account, several lines of investigation point in the same direction toward gross interference by the Deep State in the democratic electoral process.

 The transcript of the judicial hearings is a complex text that requires close perceptive reading to distill not just the facts presented and various stratagems by Glenn Simpson and his lawyers to avoid self-incriminating disclosures, but more importantly key missing pieces in the Trump-Russia Dossier puzzle that are not mentioned, including who exactly negotiated the Hillary campaign’s contract with Fusion GPS, now that Donna Brazile has denied any DNC involvement. What tantalizing information was on offer to seal the Fusion GPS deal with the Dems, along with how much was paid by Hillary campaign and who signed the check for Fusion GPS?

Upon discovery of these still-hidden residuals, arrest warrants can be issued since libelous forgery with an intent to blackmail or harm a presidential candidate is a felony with a mandatory prison sentence. In this particular case, the involvement of a known Kremlin agent means the second count is treason. Sorry, Mr. Bannon, it's not Donny who's implicated. The treason belongs to Glenn Simpson and some yet-to be identified individuals in the Hillary Clinton campaign.
 

 Pressure Cooker for a Head Cold

 In mid-January, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) gave two different accounts for why she released without authorization the transcript of the Senate Judiciary closed-door hearing of August 22, 2017, which is  focused on Trump-Russia Dossier producer Glenn Simpson, founder of Fusion GPS. Feinstein’s jarringly different claims are:

 “I meant to tell him (Judiciary committee chair Charles Grassley), and I didn’t have a chance to tell him, and that concerns me, I just got pressured, and I didn’t do it, I didn’t do anything illegal. That transcript has become so abused that time has come for people to take a look at it.” (January 9, 2018)

 "The one regret I have is that I should have spoke with Senator Grassley before. And I don't make an excuse but I've had a bad cold and maybe that slowed down my mental facilities a little bit." (January 10)

 Her public release of the transcript more than five months after the Senate Judiciary hearing could not have been some impulsive act or precipitated by a lapse of judgment due to sinus congestion. Her headache indicated that Feinstein had come to the realization she had disclosed too much in her initial statement that “I just got pressured”. So let’s prescribe a capsule, a hot cup of lemon tea, a dose of truthfulness and a pair of handcuffs.

 To “get pressured”, passive tense, indicates that some other individual(s) actively urged Feinstein to release the transcript, which she must have passed around for review by her advisers without Senate committee approval. Her casual violation of national security precautions are reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s carelessness with her private server, which is unacceptable for a former chair of Senate Intelligence and senior minority member in the Judiciary Committee. Oh, those dizzy dames!

 What is most intriguing in the Senate Judiciary transcript are the highly damaging revelations about the Democratic Party’s connections via Fusion GPS to the Russian lobbyist who (in)famously met with Don Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner. Since the hidden Dem-Russia connection was related to the Kremlin campaign to end the Magnitsky Act sanctions, the Democrats’ Jewish donor base should be downright angry at the collusion between DNC-Hillary relationship with Glenn Simpson and his Fusion GPS crew, who were paid by Russian journalist Natalia Veselnitskaya on behalf of Prevezon Holdings, the money-laundering company implicated in the arrest and death in prison of crusading accountant Sergei Magnitsky.

 The timeline of events discussed in the transcript indicates something much more important and secretive was going on between the Dems and Fusion GPS than the pretext of opposition research on the then “unelectable” Trump, i.e. a secret pact toward an agreement with the Kremlin to end Magnitsky Act sanctions against Russia following Hillary Clinton’s anticipated electoral victory. Revival of trade with Russia would mean billions in profits for her corporate supporters.

 Before proceeding into the Feinstein intervention, one observation must be laid out: the Hillary-influenced State Department and the CIA were probably aboard the sanctions-killing deal, but the counterintelligence bureaucracy needed to be sucked into the secret agreement. That would explain the role of the Department of Justice officials, Bruce Ohr,  his superiors and wife Nellie, all of them being connected with Fusion GPS through the DOJ-friendly Main Justice blog run by Simpson’s wife Mary Jacoby, a blood relative of top executives at the Clintons’ longtime patrons with Stephens Inc. 

Pressure’s on for the Midterm Elections

 Feinstein’s political logic is simple enough to pin. The 85-year-old San Francisco warhorse is the oldest living senator, having served more than a quarter-century in the Senate, and she’s planning to run for a fourth term in the June primaries and the midterm elections in November. Ah, yes, don’t forget the midterms, elections already and so soon.

 Her political advisers realize by now that the Republican leadership could well be intentionally holding back disclosures about the Fusion GPS-Kremlin-Democrat connection for later release during the midterm campaigns to inflict maximum damage to the Democrats' dream of capturing majority control of Congress.

 Similar to how Hillary Clinton was challenged by the Sanders rebels, Feinstein’s reelection bid is being threatened by 50-year-old Kevin DeLeon, head of the California Senate. His young voter base is among Latinos, Sanders progressives and apparently Governor Jerry Bown’s policy team. In other words, Feinstein needs a substantial warchest to stop DeLeon’s young activists.

 Jewish donors, however, are demoralized by the impact of the Harvey Weinstein scandal on Hollywood, a major base of donations for liberal candidates. Due to the aging of Nancy Pelosi and retired Barbara Levy-Boxer, Feinstein in increasingly dependent on her protégés Sen. Kamala Harris (the dubious “female Obama”) and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (arch-opportunist dancing to anyone’s fiddle). This trio is propped up by political and media strategist Bill Carrick.

 With his old-guard stable facing ever-greater adversity from grassroots progressives, the veteran Carrick must have realized the looming threat of critical damage from delayed-release of the Senate Judiciary transcript, which with its disclosure about Fusion GPS involvement in overturning the Magnitsky sanctions sure to dismay Jewish donors, upon learning they have been sold down the Russian River by the Hillary campaign.

 This political backgrounder therefore shows why the Jewish-owned mainstream media is choking, and not playing up the Senate Judiciary transcript delivered by Dianne Feinstein because it’s not only toxic, it makes the Jews look like contemptible fools and oafish simpletons for trusting the Democrat leadership. More damaging revelations are yet to come, and Donald Trump has yet to play the joker in the deck, a lawsuit against Fusion GPS.
 

 The Kremlin Connection

 The most explosive revelation in the transcript is that, prior to the Trump Dossier assignment from the Hillary Campaign and the DNC, Simpson’s research team was hired by the attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya (the money was cleansed through the Baker Hostetler law firm) for her lobbying campaign to lift sanctions against Russia.

 The source of those questionable funds was Prevezon Holdings, the Kremlin-linked money-laundering real-estate company owned by fraudster Denis Katsyv, which accountant Sergei Magnitsky was sleuthing at the time of his arrest and subsequent death in prison. (p.26) Natalia was not some independent third-party attorney in this venture, since she was formerly married with Alexander Mitusov, former deputy to the Moscow region Transport Minister Pyotr Katsyv, the father of Denis Katsyv. To cut to the quick, Natalia V. is an agent of the Russian Federation.

 Simpson eagerly took on the task of hounding and discrediting Magnitsky’s employer Bill Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital, who was the driving force behind the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which imposed sanctions on Russia for human rights violations.

 The Russian-backed campaign to discredit Browder took a nasty turn with the release of an anti-Browder propaganda film on the Magnitsky affair, promoted by Chris Cooper of the Potomac Square Group and director Andrei Nekasov. Early on in production, Nekasov deceived Browder into believing the film was in defense of Magnitsky’s reputation. That turned out to be double-cross, a knife in Browder’s back. The film premiered at the Newseum with avid support from Glenn Simpson. The Russian ploy was to use a group called HRAGI, to entice Americans to oppose sanctions in exchange for adoption of Russian children. (How cynical can anyone get? Kids-for-trade privileges. It makes the Iraqi food-for-oil deal seem like child's play.)

 After admitting to a 10-year consultancy relationship with Cooper, including payment for services, Simpson stated that the film premier was a fundraiser for HRAGI, arranged by his client Prevezon: “They (wanted to round up people who would be interested in coming, journalists, friends, people interested  in Russia, and we supplied names for them.” (p.129)

 By conducting research, providing comfort and aid to Kremlin lobbyists, and disseminating factually erroneous and libelous propaganda in collusion with the Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya against both Browder and Donald Trump to the news media, Glenn Simpson acted as a pawn of Kremlin state interests wooing the Hillary campaign. Despite his function as a publicist for the notorious Prevezon and its boss Denis Katsyv, Simpson did not list Fusion GPS under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which is mandatory whenever acting on behalf of a foreign interest.
 

 Bogus Oppo Research Trap for Team Trump

 Most revealing is that Veselnitskaya’s client relationship with Fusion GPS began in May 2016, two months before her much-publicized offer of “opposition research” at a private meeting with Trump campaign advisors Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner. Despite Simpson’s repeated denials under Senate counsel questioning, the question that go begging is whether her introduction to the Trump team was strategized and the promised “opposition research” was prepared by Simpson’s Fusion GPS.The problem here is that Simpson is lying through his teeth, knowing full well that his house of cards will soon be blowing in the wind.

 Simpson admitted under intense questioning that he had dinner with Natalia Veselnitskaya on June 8, the day before the Trump team meeting. On the night after, at that now-celebrated gathering, which failed to turn up any oppo research for Trump as promised, Simpson claimed that he heard no news of it from Veselnitskaya with this lame alibi: “(at) the dinner on the 10th I was at one end of the table talking to a woman about her biography on Simon Bolivar and she (Natalia V.) was at the other end with Rinat (Akhmetshin) and she doesn't really speak much English.” (p. 132 onward)

 So us gullible peons are expected to believe that Natalia and Rinat had just met with the top Trump advisors, including that most familiar face in Moscow Paul Manafort, and forgot to mention it to Simpson. My adze, because you need a hoe to plant those peas.

 Simpson claimed to have first learned of the Trump Team meeting from The New York Times. Reuters US also immediately published a witness account of that fateful meeting. These two media groups happen to be at the top of Simpson’s go-to list for planting news stories in favor of his clients, and besides nobody at the June 10 meeting had any interest in informing the press over meeting where nothing transpired.

 Simpson is a straight-up liar, no doubt about it, and he had probably wired Natalia for the Trump meeting, since by his own admission her English is not good enough to draft a written report on the conversations printable at the Times and Reuters. It’s lucky for Simpson, that he wasn’t grilled in a court room where he’d be found guilty of perjury and spend a night in detention.
 
 The sequence of events, as laid out in the Senate transcript, shows that Fusion GPS worked with Veselnitskaya from May until October 2016. The Natalia V.-Trump Team meeting occurred on June 9. The Democratic National Convention started on July 15, with weeks of intense preparations prior to it.

 Therefore, it can be surmised that the rat (let’s call him for what he is, a flea-infested plague-spreading sewer rodent) notified his contact inside the Democrat leadership with some tasty bait, a secret recording of the Veselnitskaya-Trump Trio meeting. The June 9 meeting with the Trump advisers was an entrapment scheme, especilly since Natalia had no intention of delivering on her promise of opposition research. Clearly she herself was not interested in Trump, indicating the Kremlin did not then consider him to be a possible presidential candidate. Trump’s only usefulness then was to create a straw man for competition with Hillary Clinton in the race to end sanctions and thereby gain billions of dollars and rubles in lucrative trade deals.

 After the Democrats tried to discredit Trump with loud allegations about his Russian connections force-fed to them by Fusion GPS (nearly all claims have since proven to be untrue), it is now the turn of the Democratic Party, which was all along in bed with Natalia’s circus, to listen to their own music, a symphony that sounds much like the Damnation of Faust.

 The Kremlin connection via Fusion GPS is now a ticking time-bomb for the Democrats caught in bed with the Kremlin while pointing the finger at Trump’s supposed infidelity. Isn’t this just like a romance gone sour? Sorry, if this sort of play-acting led to a divorce. Their calumny  include the supposed visit of Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen to Ukraine that never really happened, the absurd fiction of the Ritz Carlton urination spectacle, Trump’s supposed real-estate interests in Russia since proven to be nonexistence, and list goes on and on.
 

Eye for an Eye

When the unwary Jewish donors discover that the Democrat leadership has been double-dealing behind their backs on the Magnitsky sanctions, there will be a quiet firestorm as pen and checkbook are slipped back into the top drawer. The impending cutoff of campaign funding for the duplicitous Dems is based on deep emotions from stories told by immigrant grandparents. While exact statistics are unavailable, the largest percentile group among American Jews are descendants of immigrants from Russia since the 1880s. This includes Dianne Feinstein’s ancestors from the Russian Goldberg and Rosenberg families.

 The Magnitsky Act is understandable only in the historical context of Russian persecution of its Jewish minority over past centuries. The Black Hundreds secret society’s terrorism and the pogroms that murdered and displaced defenseless Jews across Russia and the environs of Odessa were rooted in feudal landlord brutality against downtrodden Russian serfs in general and especially the rural Jewish minority.

 The historical memory of the terror is a dark legacy for American Jews of Russian descent, which led to American support for the emigration of Soviet Jewry championed by Sen. Scoop Jackson, and more recently the Khordokovsy-Yukos affair and the Magnisky Act. That the Democratic leadership had engaged in a secret connection with Putin’s Mata Hari, Natalia Veselitskovsky, is not going to sit well on Wall Street or in Hollywood. Nor will the fact that Fusion GPS, the producer of the Trump dossier, was actively involved in the attempt to discredit Bill Browder, the man who stood by his late Jewish associate Sergei Magnitsky through thick and thin, despite media harassment and personal slander from Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, who needs to fit on a pirate’s patch because from hereon in, it’s an eye for an eye.
 

Merchant of Blackmail

 Of course, Glenn Simpson’s claim of nondisclosure between his clients has zero credibility like nearly all of his phony ethical claims, when this late in the game he’s failed to disclose how much was paid by the Russians for his dirty hit on Magnitsky champion Bill Browder or, more tellingly, his ill-gotten income from the fabricated Trump-Russia Dossier.

 The transcript shows that Simpson is anything but an honest broker, who on repeated questioning failed to disclose that the CIA Russian translator Nellie Hauke Ohr was on the Fusion GPS payroll. Nor, when queried about his contacts with the Department of Justice (DOJ), did he ever mention that his wife Mary Jacoby ran a DOJ-friendly blog called Main Justice, apparently funded by the Clinton-allied Stephens Inc. in Little Rock. Her father and brother are top executives with Stephens, the family that created the monster called Bill Clinton.

 Simpson is a shameless liar, a profiteer, a disgrace to journalism, without a shred of press ethics. It is high time for his mainstream media partners to fess up to all the leaks and confidential trash he’s supplied them over the years because that information is packed with distortions and falsehoods. By his own admission, after a severe grilling from the Senate counsel, a welcome mat is placed for Fusion GPS at: Bloomberg, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Legal 360, Financial Times, Politico, NBC and the New Republic. (p.97) Isn’t it funny how, these usual suspects with only CNN absent for the roll call belong to the same brand of reportage that Trump calls “fake news”?
 

Dems Losing the Jewish Vote and Funding

 Traditional liberal Jewish support for the Democrats is already crumbling due to Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Now, with the Senate Judiciary revelations, Fusion GPS is an albatross of Kremlin complicity hanging from the Democrats neck, the Prevezon contract and Veselnitskaya patronage proving without a shadow of doubt the duplicity toward the fate of Russian Jewry while the entrenched Orthodox Christian bureaucrats under Putin’s rule are tightening their grip against Jewish political candidates. This is not to put the entire blame on Putin, it's simply the realities of economic power since the drunkard Boris Yeltsin allowed his Jewish pals to loot state assets. It's too bad that it's always the inoffensive little guys who get crushed in the power plays.

 Once again, the lesson for rich Jews is that all the money in the world cannot buy lasting loyalty, but only disgust and distrust from the natives. As for Vladimir Putin, who has taken many courageous stances to oppose military aggression and terrorism, needs to comprehend that putting  Russian children up for adoption in exchange for trade privileges is beyond horrific and downright immoral. Russia needs to act like an honorable society and nation, especially when the current American administration, as opposed to the scoundrels of the recent past or during the perestroika debacle, can appreciate moral integrity and honest dealings.
 

Ground Rules for the 312-page Transcript:

 Here some of the ground rules, procedures and political divisions affecting the Senate Judiciary Committee are outlined, in order to better understand the objectives and limits of this sort of closed hearing. The first point is that the hearing does not have the prosecution powers of a court of law, but instead is a gathering of testimony for Congress based on voluntary consent of the witness(es).
 
 Legal counsels conducing a Senate hearing are limited to persuasion and psychological pressure, and Sen. Charles Grassley’s counsels conduct a remarkable inquiry, getting a reluctant and resistance Simpson to cough up facts and admissions. This is a stunning achievement when considering that, although an oath of truthfulness is required, witnesses are under no obligation to cooperate or be succinct with direct answers. Instead of taking the Fifth in courtroom cross-examination to avert self-incrimination, the witness can simply refuse to answer the counsel. There is no equivalent of a judge to lay rules of conduct or guide proceedings. In a hearing, the counsels do not have the power to overrule a nondisclosure agreement between a company such as Fusion GPS and its client, Prevezon.
 

Ugly Brawl

 The one-day Senate Judiciary hearing lasted more than 10 hours, resulting in a 312-page transcript. The session went into overtime due to several factors:
 

• Patrick Davis, deputy chief investigative counsel for Judiciary Committee Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), and his colleagues with the Grassley legal team faced massive obstruction and delay tactics from the witness’s lawyer and also from Feinstein’s chief oversight counsel Heather Sawyer. Here, let me be the stand-in judge. Verdict: BRILLIANT.
• Glenn Simpson (Fusion GPS) was evasive about the tough issues, repeatedly using expressions such as “I have no recollection of that” and “I don’t recall”. His faulty memory was cited so frequently it had to be feigned, and coached by his attorneys. Nobody could be that forgetful. Then he would suddenly regain his pinpoint memory whenever the discussion went off-topic. Simpson was uncooperative, vague as to dates of events, and unprepared without any list of meeting dates and names. Another part of his strategy was to disclose only publicly available information, while pretending to be ignorant of insider statements from his clients. By contrast, Fusion GPS had no problems with disclosing confidential information in its Trump-Russia Dossier. Verdict: GUILTY.     
• Joshua Levy, lead lawyer for Simpson, raised as many objections as possible to disrupt the Senate counsels’ line of inquiry. Levy, a law professor at Georgetown, is partner in Cunningham Levy Muse, which has taken on pro-Clinton/Obama defense cases including Whitewater, Soyndra, Fast and Furious, and Beghazi. Verdict: SHYSTER.
• Heather Sampson, legal counsel for minority committee leader Sen. Dianne Feinstein, tossed softball questions and over-broad questions to the witness with the obvious objective of running out the clock. Her partisan background is as a lesbian-gay rights campaigner in Obama’s turf Chicago. (Aside from Hillary Clinton), according to Windy City Times, she has the reputation of being the most famous lesbian to come out of Chicago. Her claim to fame is winning a verdict in (BSA vs Dane) overturning the Boy Scouts of America refusal to hire a gay male job applicant. After college she worked at Sesame Street, but missed her calling at Pizza delivery. Verdict: DISBARRED.

 On that tragic-comic note so reminiscent of the Pizzagate controversy involving the Podesta-Obama predators, which is yet to prosecute a single suspect involved in pedophilia and trafficking of child sex slaves, the quest for justice shall continue though hell or high water. Meanwhile, Part 2 of this report will be cranked out soon.

 

PART 2