concerns, as you've mentioned with Mr. Cohen and Mr. Kushner, as to his contacts with Russians as it related to money or investments for the Trump businesses?
MR. SIMPSON: Yes. I’m trying to remember. In general, we knew from the open source work that we had done that Donald Trump Jr. was -- had done a lot of travel to Russia and was involved in a lot of these discussions, that he'd done -- he'd gone to Kazakhstan for reasons that we didn't -- we weren't sure of, he'd gone to Latvia, and he'd been to Russia. And we eventually formed the view that the Russians were very interested in him or that he'd had a lot of deals with them.
I don't remember a lot of specifics beyond that.
MR. SWALWELL: What is your knowledge of Donald Trump, Donald J. Trump, the father's travel to Russia? Can you tell us how many times you believe he has traveled to Russia, in your research?
MR. SIMPSON: I believe that he's been to Russia a minimum of four or five times, and that he's been going to Russia since the late Soviet years.
And we -- we did spend a lot of time digging into the origins of his interest in Russia and his fascination with Russia and it's an interesting tale. I mean, it's —he —one of the few people who Donald Trump calls like a good friend is a guy named Howard Lorber, who is a real estate investor.
And Lorber was one of the --one of the early --there was sort of a swashbuckling crowd of American investors who moved into Russia in those early years when it was really wild. And Lorber --I'm trying to remember the names of the other ones, but there was a small group of people and Donald was pretty tight with them.
UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
