were doing work for Free Beacon?
MR. SIMPSON: It was one of the first things we found. And I should emphasize, it was, you know -- originally I saw it in the New York Times article, so it wasn't a great investigative discovery. But then when I read into it and I found depositions in which he was, you know, more than evasive about the relationship, that's when I got really interested.
MR. SCHIFF: So during the period of time you were working for Free Beacon, you came across some of the first information about candidate Trump's business ties in Russia, including those with Felix Sater.
MR. SIMPSON: Yep, that's correct. And lots of other issues came up during the primaries that raised concerns in my mind about whether there might be connections -- Donald Trump might have unexplained connections to Russia or people involved in that part of the world.
I mean, among other things, eventually Paul Manafort was appointed to his campaign as the -- first the convention manager and then the chairman -- or the campaign manager. And I knew a lot about Paul Manafort from my career at The Wall Street Journal. I had written a number of stories about his involvement with Oleg Deripaska and the pro-Russia party in Ukraine and another oligarch named Firtash. And I had even written a story about whether he should have registered as a foreign agent.
All that had occurred years earlier. So when he suddenly surfaced, I was, you know, struck by that.
MR. SCHIFF: Now, he surfaced though after you were no longer working for Free Beacon, right?
MR. SIMPSON: I think he originally -- I don't remember the dates, but I
UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
