A CNN contributor and former CIA and FBI official blasted Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson on Thursday, saying that he “wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”
“I wouldn’t trust the Fusion guy,” Philip Mudd, who worked under Robert Mueller at the FBI, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about Simpson.
Mudd was responding to allegations that Simpson made during a Nov. 14 interview before the House Intelligence Committee about Donald Trump’s business dealings with Russians.
During questioning led by Democratic members of the committee, Simpson spouted out various names of Russian businessmen who he said have been linked to Trump over the years.
Curiously, Simpson focused much less on allegations laid out in the infamous Steele dossier — which Fusion GPS commissioned — that the Trump campaign had colluded with the Kremlin prior to the 2016 election. (RELATED: CNN’s Undisclosed Ties To Fusion GPS)
Simpson was unable to say that he had verified claims made in the dossier, which was authored by former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by the Clinton campaign and DNC.
Given that Simpson offered little information about the question of collusion, CNN and MSNBC focused heavily on his claims about Trump’s financial relationship with Russians. (RELATED: Revelations From Glenn Simpson’s House Testimony)
But Mudd questioned Simpson’s information as well as his motives.
“His organization has been under a lot of pressure,” said Mudd.
“You have one individual who’s talking about allegations and they’re not even fact-based. There are things that he says he supposes. He thinks the Kremlin must have involved. I don’t care what he thinks. I care what documents he saw, who he spoke to, who he emailed, who he texted. I’m not interested in his suppositions.”
Mudd also criticized California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff called for the release of Simpson’s transcript earlier this week, and Republicans quickly held a vote supporting its release.
“One guy in public making an allegation that Adam Schiff throws out there, because he wants to try this in the court of public opinion doesn’t mean a lot to me, Wolf,” Mudd said.
“I wouldn’t trust him.”
Blitzer added that Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, had also voiced skepticism of Simpson’s claims about money laundering.
Himes told Blitzer that Simpson offered no evidence “to back up allegations of money laundering by the Trump administration and by Russians.”
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