FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Muellergate Suspect Ohr Was First Before Congress This Week
Aug. 28, 2018 (EIRNS)—Today, Bruce Ohr, as former Associate Deputy Attorney General, then fourth ranking official in the Justice Department, appeared behind closed doors to answer questions from the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform Committees’ joint investigation into Robert Mueller’s witch hunt. He is the first of three top suspects who will be questioned this week.
The central subject addressed by Ohr was his role in handling British MI6 agent and FBI confidential informant Christopher Steele (or Steele’s handling of him). Steele is the primary author of the dirty dossier on Trump used to get authorization for FISA court surveillance of one-time Trump campaign official Carter Page, and the basis for the entire Russiagate scam. Ohr has been a long-term collaborator of Steele, while Ohr’s wife Nellie was employed by Fusion GPS, a private contractor working on Trump research for Hillary Clinton’s campaign that paid Christopher Steele to create the dossier. Although Ohr was not officially assigned to the Mueller witch-hunt, he served as one of Steele’s go-betweens with the FBI and continued to do that even after the FBI fired Steele for leaking information to the media.
Congressmen present for the questioning report that Ohr has presented material that answers some questions about how Steele’s dossier was used and raises many others.
Representatives Mark Meadows (R-NC) Chair of the House Freedom Caucus, Jim Jordan (R-OH) of the House Freedom Caucus, Trey Gowdy (R-SC), John Ratcliffe (R-TX), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ) attended.
Gaetz, Meadows and Issa reported that the FBI knew more, and withheld more about the Steele dossier than had previously been reported. Gaetz said, “What we’ve learned today is that the FBI was absolutely in possession of material facts that they withheld from the FISA courts.” Specifically, not only had the FBI made no attempt to verify the truth of the dossier, but they also had serious reasons to doubt the truth of much of it. It appears from the copies of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court application that have been released, that the FBI hid these doubts from the court in filing their request. Meadows said, “If the information we heard about today was not given to those four FISA judges, there’s real problems.”
Several Congressmen observed discrepancies between what Ohr told them about the operations of Fusion GPS and what its co-founder Glenn Simpson and FBI attorney Lisa Page told them. “Either Bruce Ohr’s lying or Glenn Simpson’s lying,” Gaetz reported, and stating that someone will be held for perjury.
Issa reported that Ohr had provided a long list of FBI officials who “handled” Steele and had information about the dossier, but Ohr had insisted that the names not be released.
Yesterday, Roll Call reported that Ohr will be followed by the other Muellergate suspects in House hearings: James Baker, removed as FBI General Counsel last May, will appear on Aug. 30, and Trisha Anderson, a legal advisor to the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel, will appear on Aug. 31.
Baker worked closely with James Comey, whom Trump fired as FBI Director, and had been investigated by the DOJ for possible leaks to the news media.
Anderson worked closely with DOJ lawyer Lisa Page of the Page/Strzok affair and was involved in preparing the case for the FISA court application to permit surveillance of the Trump campaign.
