Posted on by Doug Santo

DOJ official Bruce Ohr called a meeting of several federal agencies to discuss ‘working with’ a Russian oligarch because of his belief, premised on the unverified Steele dossier, that Trump was corrupt.

Margot Cleveland:

A previously unnoticed passage in Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on federal surveillance abuse suggests Bruce Ohr and his compatriots were willing to bargain with a Russian oligarch to take down Donald Trump.

Two-hundred-plus pages into the IG report, while discussing former Associate Deputy Attorney General Ohr’s continued contacts with Crossfire Hurricane dossier author Christopher Steele, Horowitz revealed a significant detail that to date has been overlooked: “On December 7, 2016, Ohr conveyed an interagency meeting (including representatives from the FBI) regarding strategy in dealing with Russian Oligarch 1.”

The IG report added that after the meeting “one of Ohr’s junior Department colleagues who attended the meeting” asked “Ohr about why the U.S. government would support trying to work with Russian Oligarch 1”—the moniker used in the IG report to refer to one of Vladimir Putin’s closest confidants, the aluminum oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Ohr’s reported response is shocking: “Ohr told her that Steele provided information that the Trump campaign had been corrupted by the Russians,” and that the corruption went all the way to president-elect Trump. Ohr’s junior colleague told the IG that Ohr explained “this information was ‘the basis for the [Deripaska] discussion” in the interagency meeting they had just left.

It has been known for some time that Steele spoke with Ohr about Deripaska. But while the Steele-friendly press portrayed those discussions as FBI attempts to flip Deripaska, the IG reached a different conclusion. He found “Steele performed work for Russian Oligarch 1’s attorney on Russian Oligarch 1’s litigation matters, and, as described later in Chapter Nine, passed information to Department attorney Bruce Ohr advocating on behalf of one of Russian Oligarch 1’s companies regarding U.S. sanctions.” The IG further found that Ohr and Steele’s communications concerning Deripaska occurred “in 2016 during the time period before and after Steele was terminated as a [Confidential Human Source].”

These findings, coupled with previous reports that Steele worked for one of Deripaska’s lawyers, London-based Paul Hauser, and appeared to lobby on behalf of Deripaska through a D.C.-based  attorney, Adam Waldman, renew questions concerning whether Steele violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). Likewise, the IG report’s notes that “Ohr said that he understood Steele was ‘angling’ for Ohr to assist him with his clients’ issues,” and that “Ohr stated that Steele was hoping that Ohr would intercede on his behalf with the Department attorney handling a matter involving a European company,” suggest the need for a FARA investigation into Steele’s work…” 

Original

Doug Santo