period immediately after the election we were -- I don't know if you could say we were working on it, but we were certainly unemployed. And obviously this was the central issue in my life at that time. Unfortunately, it sort of still is.
But anyway, so there was --
MR. ROONEY: Well, if you ever make any conclusions on any of those, you probably -- anyway. Go ahead.
MR. SIMPSON: I mean --
MR. ROONEY: Let me go to some specific ones, because we are in a shorter -- are we 15 minutes?
Okay. This is our lightning round.
You may have already answered this with Mr. Gowdy, but did you know who Mr. Steele's sources were in Russia?
MR. SIMPSON: I knew generally where they're positioning. In other words, we would discuss generally where that person sat in relation to a senior government official or, you know, what other position they held. So --
MR. ROONEY: Did you generally consider them credible, if you knew them?
MR. SIMPSON: Well, you can't -- I mean, I can't evaluate the credibility of someone on the other side of the --
MR. ROONEY: So you just trusted Mr. Steele's vouch?
MR. SIMPSON: I have great trust in Mr. Steele's professional ability to find sources with credible information.
MR. ROONEY:Did you know how he paid these sources?
MR. SIMPSON: Yeah. You know, essentially, my -- what I was doing was corroborating the information they were providing -- or trying to -- or
UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
