The Justice Department watchdog harshly criticized DOJ official Bruce Ohr for concealing his discussions with British ex-spy Christopher Steele from his superiors during the Trump-Russia investigation.
The FBI officially dumped Steele as a confidential source in November 2016 after he admitted to the FBI he was consulted for an Oct. 31 Mother Jones article, “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump,” but he remained in contact with the bureau through Ohr.
“Despite having been closed for cause, the Crossfire Hurricane team continued to obtain information from Steele through Ohr, who met with the FBI on 13 occasions to pass along information he had been provided by Steele,” Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in a report released on Monday.
Horowitz said Ohr could not recall the FBI asking him to take any action regarding Steele but that “the general instruction was to let [the FBI] know … when I got information from Steele.”
DOJ leadership, including Ohr’s supervisors and those who reviewed and approved the Page FISA applications, was not made aware of Ohr’s meetings with the FBI, Steele, Fusion GPS, or members of the State Department “until after Congress requested information from the Department regarding Ohr’s activities in late November 2017.”
Horowitz said the late discovery of Ohr’s meetings with the FBI prompted DOJ’s National Security Division to notify the FISA court in July 2018, a year after the final FISA renewal order was issued, of information Ohr gave the FBI but that the bureau failed to show the court, including that Steele was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President.”
Ohr also took part in a series of meetings related to a DOJ and FBI money-laundering investigation into former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, which he similarly did not make his superiors aware of. Horowitz said he agreed with “concerns expressed to us” by then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and Criminal Division Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell that DOJ leaders “cannot fulfill their management responsibilities, and be held accountable for the DOJ’s actions, if subordinates intentionally withhold information from them in such circumstances.”
One of Horowitz’s nine major recommendations was aimed squarely at Ohr, noting that he made “consequential errors in judgment” by not telling his superiors what he’d been doing. Horowitz said Ohr showed “a lapse in judgment” by not availing himself of the DOJ’s ethics procedures when his wife worked as a Trump-Russia contractor for Fusion GPS.
“The Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility should review our findings related to the conduct of Department attorney Bruce Ohr for any action it deems appropriate,” Horowitz sad. “Ohr’s current supervisors in [the DOJ’s criminal division] should also review our findings related to Ohr’s performance for any action they deem appropriate.”
Steele’s research, which contained unverified allegations about President Trump’s ties to Russia, was used by the FBI to obtain warrants to wiretap former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Horowitz began his investigation in March 2018 after Republicans alleged the FBI and the Justice Department misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court about the dossier’s Democratic benefactors — Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee — and that the Steele dossier’s flaws and Steele’s anti-Trump bias were left out of the FISA applications. Democrats argued the Justice Department and the FBI met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis for probable cause.
Ohr, who worked with Steele for years and acted as a conduit between Steele and the bureau during the Trump-Russia investigation, was interviewed by the FBI in 2016 and 2017. One of them took place in November 2016, three in December 2016, three in January 2017, two in February 2017, and three in May 2017. Ohr was the fourth-ranking official at the DOJ until he was demoted after it came to light that he met with Steele and Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned Steele’s work. Ohr’s wife Nellie also worked for Fusion GPS in 2016.
Ohr testified last year to a joint task force of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees looking into alleged bias by the FBI and the DOJ about how he unilaterally decided not to inform his direct superior, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, of the unofficial back channel. He also told congressional investigators that Steele was desperate for Trump to lose in 2016.
Simpson met extensively with Ohr as well as numerous journalists to whom he provided Fusion GPS’s anti-Trump research in 2016. When Nellie Ohr was hired by Fusion GPS to conduct research, Simpson knew her husband was working at the DOJ. Both Ohrs met with Steele at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., on July 30, 2016 — one day before the FBI initiated its counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s campaign, dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane.”
Bruce Ohr provided information from his July 30 meeting to the FBI but not until a few days later.
Documents show Ohr was removed from his position as associate deputy attorney general in December 2017. In January 2018, he lost his position as director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force and shifted to be counselor for international affairs in the Criminal Division.
In his testimony to lawmakers last year, Ohr said it was a “regular practice” for him to make direct contact with the FBI with information about organized crime over the years and, while he wasn’t serving as an investigator or prosecutor for an FBI case, he felt that providing the bureau “source lead information” from Steele was “overall part of my job.” While the GOP investigators hounded Ohr for not notifying Yates, Democrats claimed that Ohr did not violate DOJ policy.
