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Rh [4:18 p.m.]

MR. SIMPSON: I think what we've said before and what I'm in a position to say is that we talked generally about the findings of this to a select group of news organizations.

MR. ROONEY: Which ones?

MR. SIMPSON: Major media.

MR. ROONEY: Anything specific?

MR. SIMPSON: I --

MR. ROONEY: Okay. Did you direct Steele to brief the media outlets, and why?

MR. SIMPSON: Yeah. We did it together. Initially, the reason was that we were -- everyone assumed that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election,and when we initially briefed the media, that was our assumption.

And I have a sort of different longstanding interest, which is Russian influence in the United States and foreign interference in elections. And, I mean, this may sound hard to believe, but I wanted people to know about what we had found, because I thought it was important. And so a lot of the people that we briefed weren't campaign reporters, they were national security reporters.

And, you know, I started out doing work on this issue of foreign interference in American elections at The Wall Street Journal in the '90s, and I wrote a series of articles about a Chinese government operation to help elect Bill Clinton. And so it's been something that I've been very interested in and concerned about for a very long time.

MR. ROONEY: Did you learn that Steele had briefed the FBI on the dossier materials? UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE