The transcript from a private interview with Bruce Ohr, the Justice Department official who acted as an unofficial back channel between the FBI and the author of the so-called Trump dossier, released in surprise fashion on Friday.
Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, took to the House floor and asked that the unredacted transcript from August 2018 be put on the record.
“Mr. Speaker, last Congress, the Judiciary Committee interviewed multiple DOJ and FBI officials about their actions regarding the 2016 elections,” Collins said.
“People anticipate the Mueller report soon. Will he find any so-called ‘collusion’? Or was the only ‘collusion’ among agency personnel who hated the president and started this investigation?” he added. “Our interview transcripts were pertinent to a congressional investigation, but the 115th Congress ended, the investigation was closed, and copies were shared with certain members of Congress.”
Excerpts of Ohr’s testimony before a joint task force of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees have already been leaked to the media. After the roughly eight-hour interview, Republican lawmakers said Ohr’s testimony conflicted with some of the past statements they’ve heard from others as they investigate how the government decided to investigate President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Ohr, who previously worked as the associate deputy attorney general and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, told investigators about his communications with dossier author Christopher Steele, and passed along Steele’s research to the FBI even after Steele was dropped as an FBI source for providing confidential information to the media.
Ohr was demoted when it was revealed he met with Steele and Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of the opposition research firm, Fusion GPS, which commissioned Steele’s work. Ohr also told lawmakers his wife Nellie Ohr was employed by Fusion GPS and shared a thumb drive with him to hand over to the FBI.
The dossier, which contained unverified claims about Trump’s ties to Russia, has been a subject of concern for GOP lawmakers, particularly for how it was used by the FBI to in FISA warrant applications to gain the authority to spy on onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Collins noted Friday how he and his colleagues have lost patience with the Justice Department in how slowly the agency has handled document requests, including the process of reviewing them for information that would endanger national security, and said he intends to release more transcripts from interviews with Justice Department and FBI officials.
“I intend to make other transcripts public soon,” Collins said on the House floor. “I’m willing to consider any reasonable redactions DOJ makes in a timely manner, but won’t allow these transcripts to remain shrouded in secrecy.”
Read the testimony below:
