Fusion GPS co-founder spurns House GOP subpoena
By KYLE CHENEY 10/11/2018 05:41 PM EDT
Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS — the firm that commissioned a now-infamous anti-Trump dossier — intends to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to decline a subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee.
Simpson will invoke his "rights not to testify under the First and Fifth Amendments," his lawyers said in a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who had subpoenaed Simpson to appear in a closed-door deposition on Oct. 16.
"This Committee’s inquiry is not designed to discover the truth. The obvious — and at times explicitly stated — goal of this Committee is to discredit and otherwise damage witnesses to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election," the lawyers wrote, "all as part of an effort to protect a President who has sought to placate and curry favor with a hostile foreign power and who demands that the Justice Department stop investigating him."
The move by Simpson to reject the subpoena is sure to escalate a bitter and politically explosive confrontation just weeks before the midterm elections. Goodlatte has sought Simpson's testimony, along with a list of high-profile former FBI and Justice Department officials, as part of a Republican investigation into allegations that anti-Trump bias in the bureau led officials to ratchet up their probe of the Trump campaign and downplay the investigation of Hillary Clinton's email server.
Democrats have argued that there's been no evidence that anti-Trump sentiment affected either probe and that Republicans are pursuing the allegations as part of an effort to undermine the ongoing investigation of Trump's inner circle.
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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/11/fusion-gps-gop-subpoena-895347
