I think it wound down in April, sometime in the spring. As the Republican primaries came to an end, it became obvious that that work was going to end.
MR. GOWDY: Did you rely on sources or subsources during your work for the Washington Free Beacon?
MR. SIMPSON: I don't specifically remember. We may have engaged someone. Typically speaking, we engage subcontractors to gather documents in far away places. And, you know, far away in this case may be even just being California or Illinois or something like that. So I assume we had some subcontractors, for instance, but I don't specifically remember.
MR. GOWDY: At some point, did the Washington Free Beacon stop paying you for the project into then-candidate Trump? Did the business relationship end?
MR. SIMPSON: I remember that we stopped doing the Trump work for the Beacon sometime in the spring of 2016.
MR. GOWDY: Did you pick up --
[Discussion off the record.]
MR. SIMPSON: He just reminded me, I don't know the exact date of when the payments, the last payment was. And so I can tell you, generally speaking, that I -- you know, in the division of labor in my company, I don't handle the invoicing and banking stuff. So I can tell you more substantively when it stopped, but I don't -- you know, the records are not something that I'm immersed in.
MR. GOWDY: Well, let's go with that. When did the work stop?
MR. SIMPSON: I think it was April or May.
MR. GOWDY: All right. And were you retained by a subsequent client to pick up on the work that you had begun?
UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
