Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, who served as an unofficial conduit between the FBI and the author of the so-called Trump dossier, never looked at the information his wife Nellie Ohr gave him to hand over to the bureau.
According to Bruce Ohr’s testimony in August 2018 before a joint task force of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, he didn’t open a thumb drive before sharing the device with the FBI because he didn’t want to plug it into his work computer.
“No. I didn’t want to plug it into my machine at work,” Ohr said. “I just gave it to the FBI.”
“I don’t plug any stick that anyone gives me, even my wife, into a work computer,” he added.
Nellie Ohr was employed by Fusion GPS, the firm that was hired to conduct opposition research by a lawyer who represented the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Her husband, who was demoted after it was revealed he met with dossier author Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, told lawmakers he believed the thumb drive included information she had unearthed on behalf of Fusion GPS.
Then-chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., pressed Ohr to discuss the nature of the information his wife was instructed to dig up related to Russia and whether she was looking for “good or bad” information.
“It wasn’t limited to favorable or unfavorable,” Ohr said. “It was just whatever she could find.”
When Nellie Ohr testified before two congressional panels in October, she exercised spousal privilege and refrained from disclosing discussions she had with Bruce Ohr about the dossier, which contained salacious and unverified claims about President Trump’s ties to Russia that could be used to influence him.
Bruce Ohr told investigators he remained in contact with Steele and shared Steele’s research with the FBI — even after the FBI severed ties with him as an FBI source due to his disclosures of confidential information to the media.
Ohr also testified he passed along another thumb drive to the bureau from Simpson, which he assumed was the dossier.
The full transcript of Bruce Ohr’s testimony was released Friday by House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga.
