Co-founder of Fusion GPS, firm behind infamous Trump dossier, won't testify next week after all

When news leaked in early January that the Russians had a dossier on President-elect Donald Trump filled with incriminating evidence — including the “golden showers” anecdote involving prostitutes and a hotel bed once shared by the Obamas — the anti-Trump crowd was even more insistent that the inauguration couldn’t take place as scheduled.

The New York Times’ Charles Blow, for example, couldn’t see how the inauguration could go on, while Lawfare managing editor Susan Hennessey mused that possibly “the biggest scandal in American political history” was about to break.

That was January 10. By the following day, BuzzFeed was selling limited-edition “Failing Pile of Garbage” T-shirts after choosing to reprint —unverified — the contents of the dossier, which had been shopped around to a number of journalists who took a pass. BuzzFeed explained that publishing the dossier was done in the interest of being “transparent with our journalism.”

Since then we’ve learned that the whole thing was a fake put together by Fusion GPS, a political and corporate intelligence firm whose co-founder, Glenn Simpson, was supposed to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Fusion GPS co-founder to testify before Senate Judiciary panel https://t.co/vawJgfF6Ty via @abwrig pic.twitter.com/xJjODp4oj9

— POLITICO (@politico) July 13, 2017

On Wednesday, Politico reported that Simpson would be testifying.

Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, is set to appear as one of several witnesses at a hearing on enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the committee announced Wednesday.

Simpson’s firm in 2015 commissioned Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent, to dig up opposition research on then-candidate Trump.

Steele’s salacious and largely unsubstantiated findings were later leaked to news outlets and published by BuzzFeed.