Page:House-Intel-Glenn-Simpson-Transcript.pdf/85

Rh And, again, that was one of the reasons the whole thing struck me as mysterious, because it seemed like he had been there, you know, numerous times and never come back with a deal. And, you know, there could be an innocent explanation for that, which is that he could never find somebody that -- you know, an honest partner. In any event, I wanted to try to figure that out.

MR. SWALWELL: Does the name Bennett LeBow sound familiar to you?

MR. SIMPSON: LeBow is an associate of Lorber's, and Liggett-Ducat was his company. And they are the ones who, it appears, introduced Donald Trump to Russia, from what we can tell.

MR. SWALWELL: To your knowledge, prior to the 2013 trip for Miss Universe, when had he last gone to Russia?

MR. SIMPSON: There's reporting In the Steele memos about another trip prior to that to St. Petersburg.

MR. SWALWELL: When do you believe that trip took place?

MR. SIMPSON: I would be guessing.

MR. SWALWELL: I'm going to yield back to the ranking member. And Mr. Castro might have some questions.

MR. CASTRO: In all of your research and your review of Trump assets, did you come across any reason to believe that any Kushner assets had been used to pay off Trump debts or there was any mixing of the businesses by the two families and companies?

MR. SIMPSON: Well, the Jersey City project was -- I remember there was some Trump involvement in the Jersey City project, which was kind of a Kushner branded project. So there clearly was things that they were doing together. UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE