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Rh by the client, or did you come up with those on your own?

MR. SIMPSON: Generally speaking, we seek and usually receive a lot of leeway to develop our lines of inquiry. And typically, when you're already familiar with the subject and the client isn't -- and that was obviously the case here -- you're running the investigation.

So we like to get -- we like to have a lot of freedom to pursue everything or the things that we think are important, because we have found from experience that clients, you know, generally they have something that they maybe are trying to do or have some preconceived notions about things, and we find that to be unhelpful. So I'd say, in general, we were the architects of the research and we made most of the decisions about what to look for and where to look.

MR. GOWDY: What was the budget for you to enjoy the freedom to pursue the lines of inquiry you wanted to pursue?

MR. SIMPSON: I don't remember being given a specific expenses budget. I think the fees were $50,000 a month.

MR. GOWDY: Flat fee, $50,000 a month?

MR. SIMPSON: That's right.

MR. GOWDY: Plus expenses, minus expenses?

MR. SIMPSON: Plus expenses, yes.

MR. GOWDY: How did you come to know Christopher Steele?

MR. SIMPSON: I met Chris in -- I left the Wall Street Journal in 2009. And in my last few years at the Wall Street Journal, I had been living in Belgium, in Brussels, and had developed a line of reporting around the former Soviet Union and crime and corruption in the former Soviet Union.

And I had written a series of articles about Vladimir Putin and a lot of UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE