Page:House-Intel-Glenn-Simpson-Transcript.pdf/128

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128

So even in a sanctions environment, you can move this money in under color of pensions. So all of that was to me, and is, very interesting. And then we identified a woman in Florida, a lawyer whose name escapes me, who used to work for Gazprom, and seemed to have connections to Michael Cohen, who said she was a -- had a legal, you know, some legal role with the Russian Embassy in Washington helping to distribute Russian pension payments. And, so, all that was interesting and curious, and I wish I had been able to follow up on it more.

Other work that we did in the dossier that I think was really useful and is worth following up on, so we did a similar thing when we got the Carter Page information, which was, you know, gee, we will never -- I will never find a way to confirm whether he talked to Igor Sechin, but what was he doing in Moscow at this school meeting? And was he on the schedule in advance? Couldn't find much indication that this had been long announced in advance. Seemed to be hastily arranged. Who is behind this school? Who are the oligarchs? That was interesting. There are some oligarchs that are involved in the school that show up in other aspects of this.

And, you know, eventually after the election, because I was somewhat consumed with these matters, I began -- I began, you know, I guess to back it up a little bit, when I left the Wall Street Journal, one of the reasons why I left the Wall Street Journal was because I wanted to write more stories about Russian influence in Washington, D.C., on both the Democrats and the Republicans. And I had written up a couple cases, the Curt Weldon case, some other cases, and I had talked to some sources, and everyone said the Russians are back, and they are buying influence in Washington left and right, and it's scary and crazy, and they are trying to bribe all these Congressmen. And so I wrote a bunch of stories

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