President Trump said Friday that he may take away the security clearance of Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife worked for the firm that commissioned an opposition research dossier on then-candidate Trump.
“I think Bruce Ohr is a disgrace. I suspect I’ll be taking it away very quickly,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House.
Trump’s remarks follow his decision Wednesday to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan, a harsh critic of his presidency, claiming Brennan improperly politicized his former role.
Ohr’s wife Nellie previously worked with Fusion GPS, which hired former British spy Christopher Steele to compile the Trump dossier. The Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee funded Steele’s research, which relied on his extensive Russia contacts.
The Steele dossier included salacious and unverified claims about Trump, but also was used to underpin FBI surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Trump said Friday that he believed Steele’s links to Russians, and Ohr’s conduct, should be the subject of greater scrutiny.
“They should be looking at Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie for dealing with by the way indirectly with the Russians,” he said. “They should be looking at Steele. They should be looking at all these FBI guys who got fired and demoted. It’s not us, it’s a rigged witch hunt.”
[Also read: Former intelligence officials slam Trump for using security clearance as a ‘political tool’]
Ohr was acquainted with Steele, records provided to Congress by the Justice Department indicate. Ohr, his wife, and Steele met for breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington after Steele completed the dossier, emails indicate.
Ohr served as associate deputy attorney general until late last year, when his links to Steele were discovered. He continues to work at the department, but is not involved in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia.
“Bruce Ohr is a disgrace with his wife Nellie,” Trump said Friday. “For him to be in the Justice Department and be doing what he did, that is a disgrace. That is disqualifying for Mueller. And Mr. Mueller has a lot of conflicts also, directly himself. … Mr. Mueller is highly conflicted. In fact, Comey is like his best friend. I could go into conflict after conflict.”
Trump previously denounced Ohr, writing on Twitter last week: “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.”
Trump also defended his decision to revoke Brennan’s clearance, telling reporters Friday that rather than silence an opponent, he gave the ex-CIA director a bigger platform.
“Many people don’t even know who he is,” Trump said, adding: “I like taking on voices like that. I’ve never respected him.”
In a statement released earlier this week, Trump said in part, “Mr.Brennan’s lying and recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary, is wholly inconsistent with access to the Nation’s most closely held secrets and facilitates the very aim of our adversaries, which is to sow division and chaos.”
Brennan responded in a Thursday op-ed in the New York Times, claiming “Mr. Trump’s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash.”
