Bruce
G. Ohr was demoted at the DOJ for concealing his meetings with the men behind
the anti-Trump 'dossier.' (AP)
A senior Justice Department official demoted last week
for concealing his meetings with the men behind the anti-Trump “dossier” had
even closer ties to Fusion GPS, the firm responsible for the incendiary
document, than have been disclosed, Fox News has confirmed: The official’s wife
worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 election.
Contacted by Fox News, investigators for the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) confirmed that Nellie H.
Ohr, wife of the demoted official, Bruce G. Ohr, worked for the opposition
research firm last year. The precise nature of Mrs. Ohr’s duties – including
whether she worked on the dossier – remains unclear but a review of her
published works available online reveals Mrs. Ohr has written extensively on
Russia-related subjects. HPSCI staff confirmed to Fox News that she was paid by
Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016.
Fusion GPS has attracted scrutiny because Republican
lawmakers have spent the better part of this year investigating whether the
dossier, which was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic
National Committee, served as the basis for the Justice Department and the FBI
to obtain FISA surveillance last year on a Trump campaign adviser named Carter
Page.
“The House Intelligence Committee,” Chairman Devin Nunes,
R-Calif., told Fox News in a statement on Monday, “is looking into all facets
of the connections between the Department of Justice and Fusion GPS, including
Mr. Ohr.”
Until Dec. 6, when Fox News began making inquiries about
him, Bruce Ohr held two titles at DOJ. He was, and remains, director of the
Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force; but his other job was far more
senior. Mr. Ohr held the rank of associate deputy attorney general, a post that
gave him an office four doors down from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
The day before Fox News reported that Mr. Ohr held his secret meetings last
year with the founder of Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, and with Christopher
Steele, the former British spy who compiled the dossier, the Justice Department
stripped Ohr of his deputy title and ousted him from his fourth floor office at
the building that DOJ insiders call “Main Justice.”
The Department of Justice has provided no public
explanation for Ohr’s demotion. Officials inside the Department have told Fox
News his wearing of two hats was “unusual,” but also confirm Ohr had withheld
his contacts with the Fusion GPS men from colleagues at the DOJ.
Former FBI Director James Comey has described the dossier
as a compendium of “salacious and unverified” allegations about then-candidate
Donald Trump and his associates, including Page, a foreign policy adviser. The
dossier was provided to the FBI in July 2016, shortly before then-candidate
Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination. As Comey later
testified, it was in that same month that the FBI began a counterintelligence
probe of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian
government.
The disclosure by Fox News that Bruce Ohr met with
Simpson and Steele last year expanded the reach of the dossier’s creators from
the FBI into the top echelons of the Justice Department. Initial investigation
suggested that Steele, a longtime FBI informant whose contacts with Mr. Ohr are
said to date back a decade, might have played the central role in putting
Simpson together with the associate deputy attorney general. Now, the revelation
that Mrs. Ohr worked for Simpson calls that account into question.
A review of open source materials shows Mrs. Ohr was
described as a Russia expert at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank,
when she worked there, briefly, a decade ago. The Center’s website said her
project focused on the experiences of Russian farmers during Stalin’s
collectivization program and following the invasion of Russia by Nazi forces in
1941. She has also reviewed a number of books about twentieth century Russia, including
Reconstructing the State: Personal Networks and Elite Identity in Soviet Russia
(2000), by Gerald Easter, a political scientist at Boston College, and Bertrand
M. Patenaude’s The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to
Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921 (2002).
Contacted by Fox News late Monday, DOJ officials declined
to comment.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the
intelligence committee, declined to comment on the original disclosure about
Mr. Ohr’s secret meetings, and did not immediately respond to a request for
comment about Mrs. Ohr.
While Nunes has issued numerous subpoenas to DOJ and FBI
relating to the dossier, and has threatened contempt-of-Congress citations
against Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray for what congressional
Republicans have termed “stonewalling” by the two agencies, Schiff has mostly
objected to the demands for documents and witnesses, casting the entire dossier
probe as innately political. “I think there's a hope that if they can impeach
Christopher Steele, and they can impeach the FBI and DOJ, maybe they can
impeach the whole Russia investigation,” Schiff told MSNBC in September.
James
Rosen joined FOX News Channel (FNC) in 1999 and is the network’s chief
Washington correspondent.
Jake
Gibson is a producer working at the Fox News Washington bureau who covers
politics, law enforcement and intelligence issues.
_________________________
The Wall Street
Journal
Christopher Wray’s FBI Stonewall
The new director hides behind a phony excuse for refusing to answer
Congress’s questions.
By The Editorial Board
Christopher Wray was supposed to bring a new candor and
credibility to the FBI after the James Comey debacle, but the country is still
waiting. The director’s testimony Thursday to the House Judiciary Committee
suggests he has joined the Justice Department effort to stop the public from
learning about the bureau’s role in the 2016 election.
Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte invited Mr. Wray to
answer the multiplying questions about the bureau’s 2016 political
interference. This includes the role that the Steele dossier—opposition
research financed by the Clinton campaign—played in the FBI’s decision to investigate
the Trump presidential campaign. The committee also wants answers about reports
that special counsel Robert Mueller demoted Peter Strzok, a lead FBI
investigator in both the Trump and Hillary Clinton email investigations, after
Mr. Strzok exchanged anti-Trump texts with his mistress, who also works at the
FBI.
Mr. Wray spent five hours stonewalling. The
director ducked every question about the FBI’s behavior by noting that the
Justice Department Inspector General is investigating last year’s events.
Is Mr. Wray concerned that Mr. Strzok edited the FBI’s
judgment of Mrs. Clinton’s handling of her emails to “extremely careless” from
“grossly negligent” in a previous draft? The grossly negligent phrase might
have put Mrs. Clinton in legal jeopardy, but Mr. Wray said he couldn’t answer
because that is subject to the “outside, independent investigation.”
Is Mr. Wray taking steps to ensure his top ranks are free
of political “taint”? He couldn’t say because of the “outside, independent”
investigation.
Ohio Republican Jim Jordan noted that the only way for
Congress to know if the FBI used the Steele dossier to obtain a warrant to spy
on the Trump campaign is for the FBI to provide its application to the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court. “Is there anything prohibiting you from
showing this committee [that application]?” Mr. Jordan asked.
Mr. Wray’s answer was dismissive. “I do not believe that
I can legally and appropriately share a FISA court submission with this
committee,” said Mr. Wray. “When I sign FISA applications, which I have to do
almost every day of the week, they are all covered with a ‘classified
information’ cover.”
This is an excuse, not a serious reason. The IG is a
watchdog created by Congress to investigate executive misbehavior. It was never
intended to supplant congressional oversight, much less be an excuse for
executive officials to protect their decisions from scrutiny.
As for hiding behind “classified
information,” the House Intelligence Committee that is investigating Russian
campaign meddling has appropriate clearances. Mr. Goodlatte
reminded Mr. Wray that the Judiciary Committee also has primary jurisdiction
over the FISA court.
The FISA application is central to the issue
of Russian meddling and whether the FBI used disinformation to trigger a
counterintelligence investigation of a U.S. presidential candidate.
Congress and the U.S. need to know not only if Trump officials were colluding
with Russians but also if Russia and the Clinton campaign used false
information to dupe the FBI into intervening in a U.S. election. Yet the FBI
and Justice have been stonewalling House Intelligence for months.
The lack of cooperation has become more troubling amid
reports that senior career Justice officials have a partisan motivation.
Judicial Watch last week released
emails showing that Mr. Mueller’s top lieutenant, Andrew Weissmann, praised
Obama holdover and acting Attorney General Sally Yates in January for defying
Mr. Trump on his travel ban.
Justice also confirmed a Fox News report last
week that one of its top lawyers, Bruce Ohr, was in contact with Christopher
Steele (the dossier author) before the election, and after the
election with Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, the opposition-research
firm that hired Mr. Steele. Mr. Ohr was demoted, which suggests his contacts
were unauthorized.
By the way, the chief law enforcement officer of the
United States is the President. This means he has the legal authority through
his deputies at the White House and Justice to see the FISA application. AG
Jeff Sessions is recused from the Russia probe, which complicates his access
because we don’t know the extent of his recusal. But Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein
supervises the FBI when Mr. Sessions does not.
Mr. Rosenstein can and should order the FBI to meet
Congress’s document requests including the FISA application. If he refuses,
then Mr. Trump through White House counsel Donald McGahn can order him to do
so. Mr. Rosenstein could choose to resign rather than comply, but he will
not have the law on his side.
The easy way to solve this standoff is for executive
officials, including the FBI, to do their duty and cooperate with the duly
elected Members of Congress. If they don’t, sterner measures like a finding
of contempt of Congress will be needed.
