Government watchdog Judicial Watch has obtained hundreds of pages of redacted records from the Department of Justice showing that Bruce Ohr, a former associate deputy attorney general, regularly communicated with former British spy Christopher Steele and carried information from him to the DOJ.
Judicial Watch said this was after Steele, a Fusion GPS contractor who worked for the same company as Ohr’s wife, was dismissed by the FBI.
The 339 pages also show Ohr set up meetings with Steele, talked routinely on the phone and provided him various helps.
The records came through a March 2018 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed after the Justice Department failed to respond a December 2017 request for government records.
The documents also show that Nellie Ohr sent “numerous emails and reports to Bruce Ohr and other Justice Department officials on Russia issues,” Judicial Watch said.
“These smoking gun documents show that Christopher Steele, a Hillary Clinton operative and anti-Trump foreign national, secretly worked hand-in-glove with the Justice Department on its illicit targeting of President Trump,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
“These documents leave no doubt that for more than a year after the FBI fired Christopher Steele for leaking, and for some 10 months after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, Bruce Ohr continued to act as a go-between for Steele with the FBI and Justice Department. The anti-Trump Russia investigation, now run by Robert Mueller, has been thoroughly compromised by this insider corruption.”
Judicial Watch earlier released 412 pages of documents regarding FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrants targeting Carter Page, who had been a Trump campaign adviser. The documents seem to confirm the FBI and DOJ misled the courts in withholding the material information that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC were behind the “intelligence” used to persuade the courts to approve the FISA warrants that targeted the Trump team.
The watchdog group found that the Justice Department admitted in a court filing that the FISA court held no hearings on the spy warrant applications targeting Page.
Judicial Watch also uncovered documents showing that Steele was fired as a “Confidential Human Source” after he publicized his FBI work to a third party.
The information concerns the Mueller investigation into claims of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia. Evidence so far has shown that it was Clinton’s campaign that worked with Russian sources, through Steele, to create the largely manufactured opposition research claims in the unsubstantiated “dossier.”
The pages of emails have huge redactions, sometimes even including the dates, Judicial Watch said.
There were emails between the two setting up meetings, sometimes including Ohr’s wife, Nellie.
They also confirmed they wanted to “keep in touch on the substantive issue/s.”
“An exchange beginning December 11, 2016, between Bruce Ohr and [Fusion GPS chief Glenn] Simpson shows them discussing a Daily Beast and a Think Progress article and setting up a phone call between them,” the report said. “The documents obtained by Judicial Watch show a string of encrypted text messages from January to November 2017, well after the FBI had terminated Steele, discussing a possible new point of contact should Ohr leave the FBI; a series of appointments for phone calls; and assurance that Ohr shared information with his ‘colleagues.'”
After acting Attorney General Sally Yates was fired early in 2017, Steele said, “Just wanted to check you are OK, still in situ and able to help.”
They also discuss how to deal with developing questions from members of the Senate.
Steele, at one point, states: ” Hi Bruce, any news? The Senate Intel Committee is leaking like a sieve [Redacted] Hopefully speak soon. Best, Chris.”
Ohr responds: “Chris, no news on this end, aside from what I’m reading in the papers. Just amazing. [Redacted] Let me know if you would like to talk.”
WND reported last month Ohr forwarded information from Russia he obtained from his wife to the FBI to use in its investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign, according to investigative journalist John Solomon.
Solomon, writing in The Hill, reported Ohr has admitted carrying “politically tainted” claims against Trump to the FBI and was deeper into that activity than previously known.
Solomon reported information “that is still being kept secret from the public” reveals Ohr admitted he took “Russia” information to the FBI that his wife had on a thumb drive.
Nellie Ohr was working on the same project as Steele, but DOJ ethics rules forbid officials from working on cases in which a spouse has a financial interest.
Bruce Ohr told investigators his wife “provided me with a memory stick that included research she had done for Fusion GPS on various Russian figures.”
She was just another in a long list of Clinton connections flooding the FBI with anti-Trump claims, Solomon wrote.
“Steele’s dossier was the opening salvo. A document sent to the State Department by Clinton proteges Cody Shearer and Sidney Blumenthal was another. A thumb drive given by Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman to FBI general counsel James Baker was a third. Simpson’s thumb drive given to Bruce Ohr was a fourth. And Nellie Ohr’s thumb drive would be a fifth,” he said.
Ohr said he told the FBI about his wife’s employment with Fusion. And he told Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that he had taken information from his wife and had given it to the FBI.
“In a matter of weeks, in the shadows of a presidential election, Ohr took derogatory information about Trump from Steele (a contractor at Fusion GPS just like his wife), a thumb drive from Simpson (his wife’s boss) and then another thumb drive from his wife and delivered all of it to the FBI,” Solomon said.
Steele claimed Trump was under the influence of Russia, who had blackmail material on him.
