First Comes the Facts, Then Comes The Story

One portion of Glenn Simpson's Senate Judiciary Committee testimony of August 22, 2017 about the research performed on Trump/Russia in 2016 caught my eye:

"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."

As a former consultant, I can say that makes perfect sense. The skill set of Simpson, himself a former reporter, to research and uncover information, to understand and compose a sensible, meaningful narrative derived from the credible details differs dramatically from the skill set to take facts, cherry-pick the ones that can be twisted to serve your purpose, ignore the inconvenient facts, and compose a false and misleading narrative. The latter is not consulting. It's marketing - and, when it is all lies, distortions, and false accusations, a pretty dismal form of marketing at that.

What is astounding in the current environment is that:

-Republicans in Congress can get away with trashing Steele and his work without completely betraying their awful gamesmanship, or that

-Trump maintains support of any Republicans besides the newly engaged "deplorables" of the 2016 campaign, based on his long history of lies and distortions and composing false narratives.