Before Simpson worked for
The Wall Street Journal, he was a reporter for
Roll Call, where he broke stories on
GOPAC, a political action committee headed by House Speaker
Newt Gingrich.
Trump opposition research From September 2015 to May 2016, Simpson was retained by a conservative newspaper, the
Washington Free Beacon, to collect
information on many of the Republican presidential candidates, including
Donald Trump. After November 2016, funding from the Democratic Party ceased, and Simpson reportedly spent his own money to fund further work on the dossier.
Congressional testimony In 2017 during Congressional inquiries into
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, Simpson testified before the
House Intelligence Committee that
Roger Stone,
Steve Bannon, and
Ted Malloch, a "significant figure" in the Brexit campaign, had ties to each other. On August 22, 2017, Simpson was questioned for 10 hours by the
Senate Judiciary Committee in a closed-door meeting. The Committee did not release a transcript of the hearing. Simpson reportedly did not reveal the identities of his clients. The transcript was unilaterally released by Senator
Dianne Feinstein on January 9, 2018. ==Publications==