Page:House-Intel-Glenn-Simpson-Transcript.pdf/113

Rh And I think he has a little more knowledge of Manafort's Ukrainian activities. And they both -- Stone was a protege of a Republican political fellow named Arthur Finkelstein, who hired him to work on the Nixon campaign. And Finkelstein was one of the first consultants to really appreciate how to target voters in a way that somewhat resembles the way the Trump campaign and the Russians did. And he spent many years -- he worked -- Finkelstein worked with Stone and Manafort in Ukraine in or around 2005, 2006, for the same cast of bad guys. And later went off to Hungary to work for the pro-Russian prime minister there, Victor Orban, and went into business over there. And there is a lot of allegations coming out of the Hungarian expat community about all of that. And, so, I think that is an important area. That is one of the -- you know, we've picked up that Hungary is inside the EU, and it's essentially -- you know, Orban is essentially a Putin puppet and the GRU has a big station there, and there is a lot of unexplained travel by various people. And we have heard a lot of rumors about that, and a lot of allegations since beginning of last year.

MR. SCHIFF: And I mean this is obviously a public transcript, we know about Carter Page's travel there. Are there other individuals --

MR. SIMPSON: Well, it was our information that Gorka had been there about three times. At least two of those he tried to keep low profile. I am told J.D. Gordon did, but I don't know -- I just don't know whether that is reliable. I guess this is transitioning into another area, if you are interested in looking at things, is, you know, the European travel of certain people. And I would include Jared and Ivanka in that.

And there is a very puzzling sequence of events that we spent a lot of time looking at -- first of all, I will just back up and say, you know, travel records. My UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE