Page:House-Intel-Glenn-Simpson-Transcript.pdf/32

Rh MR. SIMPSON: Right. Well, so the way that we work is that we're all ex-journalists. And, you know, part of the business idea behind the company is, that, you know, research is expensive, and if we gather it and have it and journalists call us looking for things, you know, we will work with them. And so we would get calls from journalists during the primaries saying, what do you know about Trump this or Trump that? And we would provide them with that information.

So I want to be clear that, you know, it appeared in other places because other journalists called us and asked us about it. And we would ask -- well, I'm sorry. I'm not going to say -- in general, let me just say in general, if a reporter calls you and says, I need information on such-and-such, and it's of significance to your client, you know, you would call the client and say, do you have any objection to, you know, you know, helping this reporter? So in both of these instances, you know, I think those rules would generally apply.

MR. SCHIFF: Well, in that circumstance, though, the reporter calling you would know that the Free Beacon -- that the publication you're working for was a client, right?

MR. SIMPSON: Not necessarily.

MR. SCHIFF: So it might be part of your practice that if you're doing work on behalf of a client, it could be I guess one of two situations: The client could either authorize you to talk to reporters on their behalf; or if a reporter called you and asked you for information, you could check with your client as to whether you have their permission to share the information?

MR. SIMPSON: That is correct. And, I mean, generally speaking, you know, we get a fair number of inquiries about, you know, lots of different subjects. UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE