Justice Department official Bruce Ohr delivered roughly 8 hours of closed-door testimony to House lawmakers on Tuesday that conflicted with some of the past statements they’ve heard from others as they investigate how the government decided to investigate President Trump’s campaign, according to Republican lawmakers.
“It became very clear that there are a number of factual conflicts,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., told reporters. “Either Bruce Ohr’s lying or Glenn Simpson’s lying.”
Simpson is the cofounder of Fusion GPS, which put together the questionable dossier on Trump that was eventually used as a basis for surveilling former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. They also said his testimony conflicted with that of former FBI attorney Lisa Page.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., also said there “some conflicts in terms of who met with whom at what time, based on sworn testimonies.”
Republicans charge that Ohr’s close contact with Fusion GPS is a sign that the Justice Department helped gin up the dossier, and then used it to go after Trump. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, was contracted to work for the company that was commissioned by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee to compile the dossier.
Republicans say Ohr is the one who gave the dossier to the FBI. At the time, Ohr was serving as associate deputy attorney general and would have no role in acting as a conduit of information.
Gaetz and Meadows said they were worried about how much of the information about the origin of the dossier was used — or withheld — by the FBI in its application for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to conduct surveillance against Carter Page.
“It was not only confirmed once, but multiple times that information that should have been in the FISA application was not, or it appears that it is not based on the footnotes that we have read. I have not seen the actual FISA application,” Meadows said. “If indeed the information we heard about today was not given to those four FISA judges, there’s real problems.”
Last month, the FBI released a FISA warrant application for Page, which was first approved in October 2016. It was then subsequently renewed three times, and it stated that the FBI “believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.”
“Until today, we were not certain that the FBI knew all of the things at the time that they were making initial FISA application and subsequent renewals. What we’ve learned today is that the FBI was absolutely in possession of material facts that they withheld from the FISA courts,” Gaetz explained.
Trump and Republicans have zeroed in on the Steele dossier, alleging that in addition to spurning surveillance on the campaign, it is why the FBI launched its investigation into Russian election interference — even though FBI official Peter Strzok told lawmakers in July that it was not what launched the probe. The GOP says the origin of the investigation shows it’s tainted with bias.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told reporters that Ohr had multiple “handlers” that he passed on the dossier to at the FBI, but declined to name them.
“There’s quite a list of names,” he said.
At least seven GOP lawmakers — members of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees — attended Tuesday’s interview, along with Republican and Democratic staff: Meadows, Gaetz, Issa, Jim Jordan, Trey Gowdy, John Ratcliffe, and Andy Biggs.
Ohr, who has since been demoted within the Justice Department, was joined by his four attorneys Tuesday. At no point did he answer any reporter questions.
