Nellie Ohr — Justice Department official Bruce Ohr’s wife — met with Trump dossier author and former British spy Christopher Steele the day before the FBI launched its Trump-Russia investigation.
The meeting took place at the Mayflower Hotel, which was described by President Harry Truman as “Washington’s second-best address.” President John F. Kennedy once kept an apartment — and a mistress — there. In 2008, Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York used an assumed name to book room 871 and meet a prostitute.
A newly released congressional transcript reveals her research on connections between Russia and President Trump, the Trump family, and Trump associates while she worked at Fusion GPS. She declined to answer most questions about her husband, who served as an unofficial back channel between Steele and the FBI.
Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, went to the House floor to put the 137-page transcript from her October testimony in front of a joint session of the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees into the record.
“Thus far, I have released four transcripts of interviews related to apparent wrongdoing at the FBI and Justice Department. Today, I release the fifth. The American people deserve transparency. They deserve to know what transpired at the highest levels of the FBI and the origin of the probe into President Trump’s campaign,” Collins said.
The testimony focused heavily on her time with Fusion GPS and its relationship with the DOJ.
Nellie Ohr met with Steele three times, the last of which was on July 30, 2016, a day before the FBI initiated a counterintelligence investigation into links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. It is believed that Peter Strzok signed the order that launched the inquiry.
That meeting took place at the Mayflower. Nellie Ohr said her husband Bruce Ohr was in attendance along with an unknown associate for Steele, whom she said he had a British accent. Bruce Ohr was formerly the associate deputy attorney general and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. He was demoted after it came to light he met with Steele and Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson.
At this meeting, Nellie Ohr said she learned for the first time Steele also worked at Fusion GPS.
Ohr said she understood Steele was trying to convey to her husband his “concern” about his information regarding Trump, believed she saw at least one page of the so-called Trump dossier, and was hoping it would make its way to the FBI.
“My understanding was that Chris Steele was hoping that Bruce would put in a word with the FBI to follow-up on the information in some way,” she said when asked if words like “investigation” or “inquiry” was brought up during the discussion.
Fusion GPS is an opposition research firm, and in 2016 it had been hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm. Besides hiring Nellie Ohr, Fusion GPS had also hired Steele, whose unverified dossier would form a large basis the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications used to obtain surveillance warrants against Trump associate Carter Page. Its co-founder, Simpson, met extensively with Bruce Ohr, as well as numerous journalists to whom he provided Fusion GPS’s anti-Trump research.
When Ohr was hired by Fusion GPS, Simpson knew her husband was working at DOJ.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked Nellie Ohr: “Did he know at the time that he hired you that your husband worked for the Department of Justice?”
Ohr replied: “Yes.”
Ohr said that her work focused specifically on issues related to then-candidate Trump and alleged ties to Russia: “I worked on a project looking into the relationship of Donald Trump with organized crime. Russian organized crime … I would write occasional reports based on the open source research that I described about Donald Trump’s relationships with various people in Russia … Looking into the relationship of Donald Trump with Russian organized crime figures.”
Discussing her Trump-Russia research, Ohr said she “wrote it up in reports and emailed them to Fusion GPS.”
Ohr implied that Fusion GPS was leaking her research to the media. “Some of the material appeared in the press. I don’t know what their relationship is with the press,” she said.
Citing marital privilege during her interview with congressional investigators, she refused to answer most questions related to Bruce Ohr. “As I understand, any communications between my husband and myself are privileged,” she said at one point. She declined to answer what her husband knew about her work at Fusion GPS, what her husband’s ongoing relationship was with Simpson, and whether her husband provided any of her research to the DOJ. But she appeared to admit she provided him with a thumb drive of her Fusion GPS research.
Zach Somers, general counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, asked her: “Did you ever put information on a flash drive to give to someone other than Fusion GPS?”
Nellie Ohr replied: “Yes.”
Jordan followed up: “You said you — there was a flash drive or maybe flash drives prepared that you gave to someone other than Fusion. Who did you give them to?”
Sean Brebbia, a senior counsel for the House Oversight Committee, narrowed the question: “Other than Bruce — other than your husband?”
“No one,” Nellie Ohr answered.
These Nellie Ohr congressional transcripts are just the latest that have been made public in recent weeks. Congressional interviews of Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and George Papadopoulos have also been released.
The release of the Nellie Ohr transcript comes days after special counsel Robert Mueller concluded his nearly two-year-long Russia investigation and sent his final report to the Justice Department.
Attorney General William Barr shared a summary of Mueller’s report to Congress on Sunday that said Mueller’s team found no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Mueller also declined to determine whether Trump obstructed justice, and Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded there was insufficient evidence to show the president committed a crime.
