Crime in Progress summary

It didn’t take long for Simpson and Fritsch to realize just how much there was to investigate. For one thing, they were startled by the sheer number of lawsuits that Trump had been involved with over the years. Soon enough, they began to spot a pattern among all the records.

They discovered that Trump seemed to have a habit of grandly announcing a big development, like a new hotel, and accumulating huge investments. Later on, the project would fail, and the investors would sue him – only for Trump to claim that he was just a licensor, not the actual developer. The Trump SoHo project in Manhattan, for instance, was investigated for fraud in 2011. Trump eventually had to refund around $3 million to the project’s backers – money Trump and his children Don Jr. and Ivanka had accumulated by exaggerating sales figures in the project’s early stages.

On March 1, 2016 – “Super Tuesday” – Donald Trump won the nominations of enough states that his eventual victory in the Republican primaries became clear. But Fusion was determined to continue their work. Early that morning, Peter Fritsch sent an email to a Democratic Party contact, suggesting they could help them out with research. They eventually found a new willing client in the law firm Perkins Coie. Their contact there, Marc Elias, was one of the most powerful attorneys connected to the Democrats.

Elias was particularly struck by Fusion’s work on the Russia connection. There was now the possibility that the Russians had leverage over Paul Manafort – a political old hand recently appointed to Trump’s team as an advisor, who would later become campaign manager.

By the time Steele informed the FBI of his research, the curious relationship between Trump and Putin had already started to become explicit. The details of Steele’s report were still not widely known, but the two figures’ mutual admiration was publicly evident. On June 17, 2016, Putin said that he would welcome a Trump presidency. In return, Trump seemed to be steering Republican Party policy towards a more pro-Russia agenda: in July, he scotched a policy that supported the rebels fighting Russia in Ukraine.

Equally troubling were the leaks of Democratic Party emails, the first of which occurred on June 25, with the second following on July 22 – just three days before the Democratic convention. Russian fingerprints seemed to be all over both leaks. These emails caused particular embarrassment, as they showed senior party figures’ preference for Hillary Clinton over her rival Bernie Sanders; they swiftly led to the resignation of party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Like Steele, the Fusion partners were becoming seriously concerned about the prospect of a Trump presidency. So, they tried hard to force the story into the press.

In September 2016 – when things were really getting desperate – Fusion convinced Steele to make another trip to Washington, so that he could brief journalists in person. Steele agreed, despite concerns about the anonymity of both himself and his sources.

The Fusion team took Donald Trump’s victory in the November 8 election hard, but they also felt an increased sense of urgency about their work. Trump had been elected, but this wasn’t the end of their investigation. Because it was the end of their funding, though, they continued pro bono. But Simpson and Fritsch weren’t the only ones trying to make an impact.

Similarly astounded, Christopher Steele was also determined to apply pressure. He told his mentor Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Russia, about his concerns. Wood, in turn, had a discreet word with David Kramer at a security conference later in November. Kramer was an advisor to Senator John McCain, a senior Republican figure known for his adversarial attitude toward Russia: the perfect person to put some pressure on the FBI investigation. Sure enough, McCain fixed a meeting with James Comey to discuss the affair.

Steele went into hiding once the report came out and was particularly worried for one of his sources, who was a Russian living in the United States. On top of those worries, Fusion was having to face an unwanted barrage of attention; various Republicans in Congress were trying to uncover some sort of conspiracy lying behind the troublesome dossier. Even the new president got involved, repeatedly taking to Twitter to complain about a “witch hunt.”

Despite all this, Simpson and Fritsch resolved to continue with their work. They set up a new company called The Democracy Integrity Project, through which philanthropic donors could indirectly hire Fusion and Orbis to unearth more material on Trump and his associates. The funding they received – especially from concerned tech entrepreneurs on the West Coast – enabled them to carry on.

The press was finally going wild for stories about Trump and his links to Russia, with more and more revelations coming out. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, for instance, had suggested setting up a secret back channel between his team and the Kremlin. Even more scandalous was the news that Donald Trump Jr. had agreed to meet with some Russian state officials, in order to receive dirt on Clinton – the notorious rendezvous now known as the “Trump Tower meeting.”

These revelations didn’t come from Fusion, though, who were busy fighting fires on all fronts. Two congressmen were making life particularly hard for them: Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. Both quizzed Fusion relentlessly on their investigative role and attempted to cast doubts on the firm’s integrity. They even insinuated that it was Fusion, not the Trump campaign, that had been played by the Russians.

The first person to read Robert Mueller’s report – filed on March 22, 2019 – was William Barr, Trump’s newly appointed attorney general. His gloss was that it didn’t find Trump guilty of colluding with the Russians or obstructing justice. But was that what the report really said?

Barr successfully managed to smother the impact of the report with his bland conclusions – but in fact, Mueller’s report did not exonerate the president at all. Rather, it confirmed a lot of what had been reported by the press, including that Russia did indeed try to influence the election result in Trump’s favor. While the report did not let Trump off the hook, it was far from the cathartic conclusion many had been hoping for.