the press frequently.
Q. And has Fusion GPS ever provided information to journalists in order to encourage them to publish articles or air stories that further your client's interests?
A. Yes.
Q. And has Fusion GPS provided information to journalists or editors in order to discourage them from publishing or airing stories that are contrary to your client's interests?
A. Well, what we—we're a research company. So generally what we do is provide people with factual information. Our specialty is public record information. So if we get an inquiry about a story and some of the information that a reporter's presuming is incorrect and we give them correct information, that may cause them to not write the story.
Q. Has Fusion GPS ever had arrangements with clients in which the amount of Fusion's compensation was dependent on getting articles published or stories aired?
A. Not that I can recall.
Q. Has Fusion GPS ever had arrangements with clients in which the amount of Fusion's compensation was dependent upon preventing articles from being published or stories from being aired?
A. No, I don't think so, not to my recollection.
Q. To the best of your knowledge, has anyone associated with Fusion GPS ever told clients or prospective clients that the company could find and distribute information or take other actions in order to encourage government agencies to initiate an investigation?
A. Could you restate that?
Q. To the best of your knowledge, has anyone associated with Fusion GPS ever told clients or prospective clients that the company could find and distribute information or take other actions in order to encourage government agencies to initiate an investigation?
MR. LEVY: Within the scope of this interview?
MR. DAVIS: In general. I'm not asking about any particular case.
MR. LEVY: Hold on. Let's—let me just talk to my client about that and get back to you on that. I just want to understand the facts so we can evaluate whether it's appropriate to discuss that here if such a predicate for the answer exists.
MR. FOSTER: Do you want to take a break?
MR. LEVY: Sure.
MR. FOSTER: Let's go off the record. It's 9:55.
(A short break was had.)
MR. DAVIS: We'll go back on the record. It's 10:02.
BY MR. DAVIS:
Q. After conferring with your counsel, are you able to answer the question?
A. Yes. Could you just state it one more time.
Q. Sure. To the best of your knowledge, has anyone associated with Fusion GPS ever told clients or prospective clients that the company could find and distribute information or take other actions in order to encourage government agencies to initiate an investigation?
A. The word "associated" is really vague. I'm not sure I know what you mean by that. I can speak to my own practices and the practices of the people who work at my company.
Generally speaking, when we do a research project for a new client and they ask us—you know, they explain, you know, what situation they're involved in, if it's a lawsuit, for example, or some other dispute, a lot of what we do is related to disputes, they say—you know, we say we will conduct an open-ended inquiry that's not goal directed and the results of the research will guide whatever decision you want to make about how to use it.
So the range of possibilities with, you know, research are you could file a lawsuit, you could put it in a court filing, you could take it to a government agency, you could give it to Congress, you could give it to the press, but you don't really prejudge, you know, how you're going to use information until you know what you've got.
So we generally don't let our clients dictate sort of the—you know, the end result of things because we don't think that's an intelligent way of trying to do research and, you know, a lot of what we do is decision support. Your clients are frequently trying to make a decision about how they want to proceed, whether they want to—you know, if someone thinks they've been defrauded, you can file a lawsuit, you can go to the police. You would decide that based on what you find out about the, you know, evidence of a fraud. So that's generally the way we do it.
Q. To the best of your knowledge, has Fusion GPS ever had an arrangement with a client in which the company was specifically tasked with getting government agencies to initiate an investigation?
A. I would—to the best of my recollection, we don't have any agreements like that we would put into writing generally for the reasons I stated in answer to the previous question. In the course of, you know, dealing with a client we might talk about whether, you know, something was worthy of a government investigation and talk about how that could be done. There's any number of scenarios there that might come under discussion, but, as I say, that's generally not how we frame a project.
Q. Has Fusion GPS ever had arrangements with clients in which the amount of Fusion's compensation was dependent on government agencies initiating an investigation?
A. We've been in business since 2010, so seven years is a fairly long time, but as I say, not to my recollection. I just can't be categorical because we've done a lot of work over the last seven years.
Q. So I'm going to move on now to some questions about Prevezon Holdings and the Magnitsky Act. I want to sort of generally make it clear when I refer to you or to Fusion, I mean not just you personally, but all employees and associates of Fusion GPS and its component LLC's and legal entities as well as any contractors or subcontractors. If it's not clear to you who I'm referring to in the question, please just ask and I'll clarify.
Similarly, I'm going to refer to Prevezon and Magnitsky, M-A-G-N-I-T-S-K-Y. When I refer to those together, I mean all matters related to the Justice Department's lawsuit against Prevezon Holdings Limited, as well as all matters related to efforts with the media, government officials, and campaigns to overturn the Magnitsky Act, prevent the passage of the global Magnitsky Act, remove the word Magnitsky from either law, the Russian ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian children, research on Mr. Magnitsky himself or Mr. Browder, Hermitage Capital Management and its affiliated companies. So I'm generally putting those under that umbrella. If you need me to clarify for any specific question, just ask.
MR. LEVY: You obviously said a lot there.
MR. DAVIS: I did.
MR. LEVY: And so on a question-by-question basis out of fairness to the witness, I just want to make sure that he has the ability to ask clarification, of course, as questions arise.
MR. DAVIS: Right. That's what I would be asking you to do.
MR. LEVY: Even now, quite frankly, I'm not sure I can recall everything that you baked into the term that you're going to use.
MR. DAVIS: Feel free to raise questions about any particular question we ask.
MR. LEVY: Okay.
BY MR. DAVIS:
Q. Mr. Simpson, what was Fusion GPS's role in the Justice Departments's litigation against Prevezon Holdings?
A. We were retained by Baker Hostetler in the spring of 2014 to do litigation support, and under the heading of litigation support was things related to discovery, locating witnesses, answer questions from the press, gathering documents, pretty much, you know, a conventional understanding of litigation support.
Q. And to whom did Fusion GPS report in the course of this work?
A. Baker Hostetler. The partner in charge was Mark Cymrot, C-Y-M-R-O-T, who's a partner in the Washington office and former Justice Department prosecutor.
Q. Did Mr. Cymrot provide instructions to Fusion GPS during the course of the work?
A. Mr. Cymrot regularly instructed