What did Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, and Christopher Steele say under oath about who funded the research?
Executive summary
Under oath and in congressional interviews Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS told investigators that Fusion’s opposition research on Donald Trump was paid initially by a Republican client (the Washington Free Beacon), and from April 2016 onward by a law firm, Perkins Coie, representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, which retained Fusion GPS and led Fusion to hire Christopher Steele in June 2016 [1] [2]. Public reporting and some filings add detail about subcontract payments to Steele, but Simpson’s sworn testimony included limits, refusals and claimed privileges that left gaps critics quickly exploited [3] [4] [5].
1. How Fusion GPS described its clients under oath
In testimony released to Congress, Fusion GPS’s co‑founder Glenn Simpson said Fusion had been retained in April 2016 by the law firm Perkins Coie on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC to continue opposition research into Trump after an earlier Republican client stopped that work, a sequence confirmed in multiple public summaries of his interviews [1] [2]. Simpson’s congressional interviews—totaling many hours and later published in transcript form—were the primary source for the firm’s official account that the Steele memos flowed from Fusion’s engagement by Perkins Coie [1] [6].
2. The Republican client and the handoff to Democrats
Fusion has acknowledged that before Perkins Coie hired the firm, a Republican donor-funded outlet (the Washington Free Beacon) had paid Fusion to compile opposition research on Trump but that the Free Beacon’s support stopped once Trump became the presumptive nominee; Fusion then found new funding through Perkins Coie representing Democratic campaign interests [1] [2]. That chronology is central to Fusion’s sworn narrative and is repeatedly cited in public reporting and congressional questioning [3] [7].
3. What Simpson said about hiring Christopher Steele
Simpson testified that Fusion subcontracted Christopher Steele, a former MI6 officer, in June 2016 to obtain higher-level intelligence about Trump’s alleged ties to Russia; Steele produced the memos that became known as the “Steele dossier” [1] [2]. Simpson defended Steele’s professional history in his testimony and told committees that Steele did not pay his sources to produce the material, a detail Simpson specifically stated under congressional questioning [5].
4. Public reporting on who paid Steele and how much
Outside congressional testimony, reporting has filled in transactional details: Vanity Fair (reported in secondary sources here) said Fusion subcontracted Steele for roughly $12,000–$15,000 a month, and other filings and reporting have claimed broader donor consortia and sums paid to intermediaries or related entities, including references to TDIP paying Steele over $250,000 in some filings [3] [8]. Those figures come from journalists’ reconstructions and court/filing materials cited in secondary reporting, not from a direct, single line of sworn testimony in the public transcripts cited here [3] [8].
5. What Simpson refused to answer or invoked privilege about
Simpson’s interviews were long and guarded: committee transcripts show he declined to answer dozens of specific operational questions and invoked privilege or refused to detail some contacts and document-sharing, leaving important factual gaps about marketing, distribution and some payment records that Republicans later seized on as suspicious [4] [9]. That partial cooperation shaped both media narratives and political attacks over whether funding biased the work or whether Fusion’s output was the proximate cause of official investigations [4] [10].
6. How political actors framed the sworn statements and why agendas matter
Republican critics emphasized the Democratic funding link to portray the dossier as partisan and to argue it improperly influenced the FBI, while Democratic lawmakers and Fusion allies pointed to Simpson’s testimony and other evidence to argue the dossier corroborated preexisting FBI leads and did not “start” the probe [11] [10]. Both sides selectively amplify parts of the sworn record to advance their political narratives: Republicans focus on origins and payments, Democrats on corroboration and investigative independence [12] [13].
7. Bottom line — what was said under oath, and what remains unsettled
Under oath, Simpson and Fusion were clear on a basic funding chain: early Republican funding by the Free Beacon, followed by Perkins Coie’s retention of Fusion on behalf of the Clinton campaign/DNC, and Fusion’s subsequent hiring of Steele in June 2016 to produce memoranda [1] [2]. Beyond that core timeline, sworn testimony contains refusals and redactions and public reporting fills in some payment details—but several contested transactional specifics and the full accounting of intermediaries remain matters of leaked reports, filings and press reconstructions rather than a single, fully detailed sworn admission in the publicly cited transcripts [3] [4] [8].