MR. SIMPSON: I think it's a great question. The -- you know, I mean, essentially we ended up spending almost a year on this project. And, you know, it was a private -- because it's all private work in the sense of nongovernmental, without any legal process to compel production of information, we can only reach a certain point.
And at the time that we -- you know, that Chris decided to take this to the FBI, I wasn't convinced of the facts of anything in terms of -- I wasn't convinced that there was a specific crime that occurred.
I thought it was a possible crime of progress and that there was possibly very serious crimes, but, you know, I'm an ex-journalist, so I'm not really in a position to prove that anyone's engaged in a crime.
I mean, you know, sometimes you do find proof of criminal activity in an investigation, but more often than not you find things that are suggestive or raise questions. And --
MR. ROONEY: Right. That's exactly my point, is that if we knew that Donald Trump was working with the Russian mafia to fund Doonbeg in Ireland, then there's no way he would be President. So, I mean, that's why it's so fascinating.
And, again, it might have been, but when you also add the caveat "but we didn't" -- there wasn't actually Russian names on the ledger or whatever, like that final step. And so, you know, I'll equate that to the election as well with your opposition research and with the dossier and everything else.
Do you feel like, you know, we -- with what you found or what Mr. Steele found that we got to the point where we could conclusively say as fact that the Russian Government and the Trump campaign were colluding with each other to
UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
