Bruce Ohr, an associate attorney general with the U.S. Department of Justice, was demoted in December 2017 because of contacts he allegedly had with the controversial Fusion GPS firm that hired the former British spy who developed the infamous “Trump dossier” on Russia. His wife, Nellie Ohr, has now become part of the controversy because she worked for Fusion GPS.
Ohr’s name has now emerged in the just released FISA memo authored by House Republicans. The memo alleges that Ohr maintained contact with Steele both before and after the spy was terminated by the FBI as a source. It further alleges that the FBI and DOJ relied on the unverified Steele dossier to obtain a warrant to spy on a Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, without telling the court about the Ohr connections or about the fact that the dossier, commissioned by Fusion GPS, was ultimately being funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Fusion GPS, a firm of former journalists, has been embroiled in national controversy since it emerged that the opposition research company hired Christopher Steele, the former spy who produced the dossier of salacious and unverified allegations about President Donald Trump. Trump has denied the allegations in the dossier.
According to Fox News, it’s now been revealed that Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, “worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 election.” She has written on Russian-related subjects, according to Fox. The FISA memo released to the public on February 2, 2018 alleges that Nellie Ohr was assisting “in the cultivation of” opposition research against Trump that was ultimately being paid for by the DNC and Clinton’s campaign.
Special prosecutor Robert Mueller is now investigating former Trump campaign officials, and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. His investigation has been further challenged with claims of bias after an FBI agent, Peter Strzok, was removed from it after it was revealed that he allegedly exchanged anti-Trump and pro-Clinton messages with an FBI lawyer.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Ohr, Who worked on Drug Strategy, Lost His Main Title & the FISA Memo Says He Was a Steele Contact Within DOJ
FOX NEWS: DOJ official Bruce G. Ohr demoted amid investigation into his contacts with Fusion GPS
What’s being called the secret “FISA memo” was supposedly “worse than Watergate,” according to conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity and reveals KGB-like tactics, according to a GOP lawmaker. Democrats and the FBI have hotly contested its release.
President Donald Trump brought up the Ohrs on August 11, 2018, tweeting, “The big story that the Fake News Media refuses to report is lowlife Christopher Steele’s many meetings with Deputy A.G. Bruce Ohr and his beautiful wife, Nelly. It was Fusion GPS that hired Steele to write the phony & discredited Dossier, paid for by Crooked Hillary & the DNC…..Do you believe Nelly worked for Fusion and her husband STILL WORKS FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF “JUSTICE.” I have never seen anything so Rigged in my life. Our A.G. is scared stiff and Missing in Action. It is all starting to be revealed – not pretty. IG Report soon? Witch Hunt!”
The now released memo alleges that the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice omitted “material and relevant information” when applying to get the warrant. Front and center: The controversial dossier created by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, that thrust salacious and unproven allegations against Trump into the public debate.
“The ‘dossier’ compiled by Christopher Steele (Steele dossier) on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application,” the memo alleges. “Steele was a longtime FBI source who was paid over $160,000 by the DNC and Clinton campaign via the law firm Perkins Coie and research firm Fusion GPS, to obtain derogatory information on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.”
Before and after Steele was terminated as an FBI source, he “maintained contact with DOJ via then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, a senior DOJ official who worked closely with Deputy Attorneys General *Sally) Yates and later (Rod) Rosenstein. Shortly after the election, the FBI began interviewing Ohr, documenting his communications with Steele. For example in September 2016, Steele admitted to Ohr his feelings against then-candidate Trump when Steele said he ‘was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,'” the memo says, alleging that this evidence of Steele bias was not presented to the court granting the page warrant.
Complicating matters more, Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, was on the payroll of Fusion GPS. “During this same time period, Ohr’s wife (Nellie Ohr) was employed by Fusion FPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump,” the memo alleges. “Ohr later provided the FBI with all of his wife’s opposition research, paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign via Fusion GPS. The Ohrs’ relationship with Steele and Fusion FPS was inexplicably concealed from the FISC.”
According to Fox News, until the morning of December 6, 2017, Bruce G. Ohr “held two titles at DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, a post that placed him four doors down from his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein; and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), a program described by the department as ‘the centerpiece of the attorney general’s drug strategy.’”
Ohr “will retain his OCDETF title but has been stripped of his higher post and ousted from his office on the fourth floor,” reported Fox. In 2015, a story in Bisnow ran a photo of Bruce Ohr and reported, “DOJ Counselor for Transnational Organized Crime and International Affairs in the Criminal Division Bruce Ohr and Nellie Ohr enjoyed the office’s beautiful view.”
The Justice Department downplayed the demotion, according to the conservative site, Breitbart. “It is unusual for anyone to wear two hats as he has done recently. This person is going to go back to a single focus — director of our organized crime and drug enforcement unit. As you know, combating transnational criminal organizations and drug trafficking is a top priority for the attorney general,” DOJ said, according to the site.
You can read the FISA memo here:
2. Ohr Is Accused of Meeting with Glenn Simpson, the Founder of Fusion GPS
High ranked @TheJusticeDept official met with Trump dossier creator – Steele BEFORE the election and Fusion GPS founder … right after the election. That’s odd. Why would the Justice Department hold meetings with #FusionGPS? #FBICoverUp #DOJ #BruceOhr #OHR #RodRosenstein
The House Intelligence Committee features in the story; according to The Washington Times, it “plans to compel testimony from” Ohr, “a career Justice Department attorney who met during the election campaign with the writer of the infamous unverified Trump-Russia dossier.”
The committee, reported the Times, “has learned that Bruce Ohr, an associate attorney general, not only spoke with dossier writer Christopher Steele but also met after the election with Glenn Simpson, whose Fusion GPS hired Mr. Steele with Democratic Party money.”
“Pursuant to the House Intelligence Committee’s prior subpoenas and information requests, the Department of Justice should have provided the committee with information on contacts that DOJ official Bruce Ohr had with Fusion GPS representatives and Christopher Steele,” said committee chairman Devin Nunes of California, according to The Times. “The Committee will issue a subpoena to Bruce Ohr for information on this matter.”
The founders of Fusion GPS cut their research teeth in investigative journalism for prominent American and British publications. A Vanity Fair story on the Christopher Steele dossier reports that Fusion GPS was founded by Glenn Simpson, a former investigative reporter with The Wall Street Journal known for his “tenacity, meticulousness, cynicism…obsession with operational secrecy.”
The article reports that Simpson left journalism after nearly “14 years doing political and financial investigations” at the Journal and, in 2011, “along with two other former Journal reporters, launched Fusion GPS, in Washington, D.C.” Simpson also started a company called SNS Global with Journal colleague Sue Schmidt, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her Washington Post stories into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to The Hill.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley wrote a letter to the U.S. Justice Department in March 2017 that alleged that “Fusion GPS, which was also involved in the creation of the unsubstantiated dossier alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, was involved in the pro-Russia campaign to kill the Global Magnitsky Act around the same time.” Fusion GPS’ efforts to help defeat the act led one top Republican senator, Grassley, of Iowa, to accuse the firm of acting as an agent for Russia. Fusion GPS has denied the allegation.
3. Ohr Is Accused of Discussing Trump with Simpson Over Coffee
Facebook/Investigative Film Festival and SymposiumGlenn Simpson of Fusion GPS at the Investigative Film Festival and Symposium.
According to Fox News, citing Congressional sources, “Simpson and Ohr met sometime around Thanksgiving last year, when President-elect Trump was in the process of selecting his cabinet, and discussed over coffee the anti-Trump dossier, the Russia investigation and what Simpson considered the distressing development of Trump’s victory.”
Fox reported that it’s not clear how Simpson and Ohr first came into contact. “…initial evidence collected by the House intelligence committee suggests that the two were placed in touch by Steele, a former FBI informant whose contacts with Ohr are said by senior DOJ officials to date back to 2006,” reported Fox, which broke the story of Ohr’s demotion.
According to the schedule online, Ohr once was on a panel at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum with the topic being “Criminal Matters and Allegations of Crimes in International Arbitration.”
4. Ohr Graduated From Harvard Law School & Has a Degree in Physics
BREAKING: FBI Dep.Atty General Bruce Ohr (Whose Office Is 3 Doors Down From Rod Rosenstein) Met With Russian Dossier Author Michael Steele Before The Election. Bruce Ohr Then Met With FusionGPS’s Founder Glenn Simpson The Day After Trump’s Election. Bruce Ohr’s Boss: Sally Yates.
Bruce Ohr has had a long career in the U.S. Department of Justice. A biography for him from a speaking engagement described him as “an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice. He serves as the Director of the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Forces, as well as Director of the Attorney General’s Organized Crime Council.”
He started out in New York as a federal prosecutor. “Mr. Ohr was an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (1991-99), and was Chief of the Violent Gangs Unit in that office (1998-99). Mr. Ohr joined the Criminal Division in 1999 and served as Chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section until 2011, when he became Counselor for Transnational Organized Crime and International Affairs in the Criminal Division, serving in that position until November 2014,” the bio says.
He has two degrees from Harvard. “Prior to joining the department, Mr. Ohr was an associate at the San Francisco law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe (1988-91). He graduated from Harvard College in 1984 with a degree in physics and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1987,” says the biography. The event he spoke at was the National Prescription Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit. Ohr “clerked for Judge Spottswood Robinson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1987 to 1988,” according to another biography for him.
5. Clinton & the DNC Were Exposed as Fusion GPS Funders
GettyHillary Clinton.
In an exclusive report, The Washington Post reported that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee allegedly “helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier” that lobbed salacious allegations about President Donald Trump, Russia, and even so-called “golden showers” into the public debate. The firm behind the dossier, Fusion GPS, had steadfastly refused to release details of its funding sources.
Citing anonymous people familiar with the situation, The Post exclusive reported that “Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research. After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to the people. Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the firm in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC.”
However, the Post added that one source said that Clinton’s campaign and the DNC may not have been aware of the Fusion GPS role although the newspaper alleges that Elias received the Steele report. The newspaper added, “At no point, these people said, did the Clinton campaign or the DNC direct Steele’s activities. They described him as a Fusion GPS subcontractor.” Maggie Haberman, of the New York Times, shared the Post bombshell story and wrote on Twitter, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.” Republicans funded Fusion GPS until Trump won the primary (and before the dossier’s collection.)