Ex-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates is poised to become the next top Justice Department official of the Obama administration scrutinized by GOP lawmakers for evidence of a biased campaign by the DOJ and FBI to undermine President Trump’s 2016 election effort.
Key to reaching that next phase in the inquiry will be demoted DOJ official Bruce Ohr, who has ties to ex-British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the Trump dossier, and Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the dossier.
“The real question that we need to find out from Mr. Ohr: Was he just a rogue employee acting improperly on his own or did he have some authority from within the Department of Justice and was Sally Yates aware of what he was doing?” Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, said Sunday on Fox News, alluding to Ohr’s forthcoming testimony before the Oversight and Judiciary Committees behind closed doors on Aug. 28.
Ohr, formerly the associate deputy attorney general, was demoted after it came to light he met with Steele and Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson. He still has a role in the DOJ working in the Organized Crime Task Force.
GOP lawmakers are eager to learn more about the government’s reliance on the Trump dossier, which contains a number of salacious claims about the president’s ties to Russia. That dossier was used by the FBI in their Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant applications to secure the authority to spy on onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. They are also interested in reports of Ohr feeding the FBI information from Steele even after he was cut as a source for providing confidential information to the media and his connection to Fusion GPS, which retained and paid his wife, Nellie Ohr, to investigate Trump.
Of particular concern to Republican lawmakers is a recently revealed text Ohr sent to Steele, saying, “very concerned (abt) about [former FBI Director James] Comey’s firing — afraid they will be exposed.”
President Trump himself seized on this text, saying it helps make his case that special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is a “witch hunt.”
“Very concerned about Comey’s firing, afraid they will be exposed,” said Bruce Ohr. DOJ’s Emails & Notes show Bruce Ohr’s connection to (phony & discredited) Trump Dossier. A creep thinking he would get caught in a dishonest act. Rigged Witch Hunt!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2018
Ratcliffe, who will lead the line of questioning against Ohr, said there are other “equally troubling” texts that “relate to the firing of Sally Yates and the impact that that may have and that leads to some questions.”
.@RepRatcliffe: “After we work through current @TheJusticeDept employees like Bruce Ohr, we’ll get to those folks like Sally Yates, and Jim Comey, and Loretta Lynch that are no longer at the Dept. of Justice or the FBI and we’ll be requesting that they appear.” pic.twitter.com/MOEfAEi5HP
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 19, 2018
Yates was fired by Trump while serving as acting attorney general in late January of last year after she refused to defend his initial travel ban, but not before she signed off on at least one of the FISA warrant applications to spy on Page.
Ratcliffe noted that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who succeeded Yates and is overseeing Mueller’s investigation, testified under oath that he had no knowledge that Ohr was involved in the Russia investigation. “So it begs the question whether or not Sally Yates, who held that position before Rod Rosenstein, was aware of that fact,” Ratcliffe said.
After Ohr’s testimony, Ratcliffe said lawmakers will turn their attention to Yates, as well as Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, to find out whether a possible bias campaign against Trump leads even further up the power chain in the Obama administration.
He couldn’t say whether Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte are ready to ask Yates and the other ex-officials to appear again before Congress, but he acknowledged that “those conversations are taking place,” which could amount to subpoenas if they don’t voluntarily testify.
Both Yates and Ohr are among those officials under review by the Trump administration regarding whether they should keep their security clearances. Last week the White House announced Trump had stripped former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance, a move which critics say was politically motivated because Brennan has repeatedly spoken out against Trump on social media on and MSNBC where he is a contributor.
Yates has also been critical of Trump. Earlier this month she warned that the rule of law in the U.S. could dissipate after Trump called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to put an immediate end to the federal Russia investigation. “Today our president called on his (recused) AG to shut down the investigation of his own campaign,” Yates wrote on Twitter. “As shocking as that is, what’s even more dangerous is that we’ve gotten used to it. The rule of law won’t evaporate overnight, but it can slip away—if we let it.”
The Ohr interview, which will happen amid an August recess, comes a month after now-ex FBI agent Peter Strzok testified before lawmakers in a public setting. Strzok, who was fired by the FBI, has come under fire for text messages he exchanged with a fellow FBI employee with whom he was having an affair that were critical of Trump.
Since it will take place in private, Gowdy said last week that the Ohr interview will not be a “public circus” and will be devoid of time limits.
“I’m going to come back to Washington,” Gowdy said on Fox News. “I will leave my beloved South Carolina and I will go back and I’m sure others will too. We are going to be back and we are going to interview Bruce Ohr, not in a public circus setting, but in a deposition with no time limits. And we are going to get to the bottom of what he did, why he did it, who he did it in concert with, whether he had the permission of the supervisors at the Department of Justice.”
