but he's basically a Boy Scout. You know, he worked for the government for a very long time. He lives a very modest, quiet life, and, you know, this is his specialty. We got along very well because my speciality is public information. So he was comfortable working with me and I was comfortable working with him and, you know, we've both been around a lot of criminal investigations and national security stuff.
When I was at the Journal I spent many years investigating the financing of Al-Qaeda. So I did get introduced to sort of national security law and national security operations and wrote a lot about that and was dragged into court over that a few times for things I wrote about people suspected of funding terrorism. So we had a lot of common interests and background.
Q. And specific to the engagement with regard to the research on Candidate Trump, why did you specifically ask Mr. Steele to do that work?
A. The way our firm runs we pursue things, you know, somewhat out of curiosity. So we didn't know — it was opaque what Donald Trump had been doing on these business trips to Russia. We didn't know what he was doing there. So I gave Chris —
