beat Hillary Clinton? Can we make that final step there? Or is that a lot of circumstantial evidence that, you know, one could form an opinion to but never gets beyond the --
MR. SIMPSON: I'm -- I mean, as far as I'm concerned, where we are now, as opposed to back then -- back then we had what appeared to be credible allegations of some sort of a pattern of surreptitious contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian people either working for the government or acting on behalf of the Russian Government. As Chris wrote, it was, you know, I think a wide-ranging conspiracy, was the way he put it.
I think that the evidence that has developed over the last year, since President Trump took office, is that there is a well-established pattern of surreptitious contacts that occurred last year that supports the broad allegation of some sort of an undisclosed political or financial relationship between The Trump Organization and people in Russia.
I'm certainly not prepared to say and never wanted to be the person who had to determine whether that's a criminal conspiracy.
MR. ROONEY: Do you with these investigations, like, you know, the campaign came and went, the Steele dossier is here, the subject matter, but to answer those questions, do you ever continue or did you in this case continue to investigate just to see if you could find the answers to those unresolved questions?
I guess my question is, did you keep investigating even though you weren't being paid anymore?
MR. SIMPSON: Well, I think it's in the record that, you know, Chris continued to supply information to us after the election. And, obviously, in the
UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
