Politicized Government Servants: Bruce Ohr and the Steele Dossier
For over two years America has been embroiled in wrangling over the Russia probe, a thread of which has been the Steele dossier
and its use to justify a series of FISA warrants against a campaign
staff member (Carter Page) of then-active presidential candidate Donald
J.Trump. This dubious dossier, named for its author (former MI6
intelligence officer Christopher Steele), might have been better named
after Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, without whom this
cloudy episode would not have occurred.
The recent DOJ Inspector General’s Report reveals clearly the extent to which Bruce Ohr was willing to avoid accountability and deliberately conceal important evidence in a criminal case against a candidate toward whom both he and his informants held open contempt. These facts about Ohr were previously asserted in the Nunes Report, which was roundly condemned by Nancy Pelosi and others as erroneous.
The following facts are not disputed: Fusion GPS was a consulting firm hired through counsel (Marc Elias) by the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee to research possible connections between Donald Trump and Russian operatives. Fusion GPS hired Steele (who was also paid in part by the FBI) to write the document, which was then provided by Ohr to the FBI and the Operation Crossfire Hurricane team to use against Page and the POTUS. Additionally, Ohr’s wife Nellie was an independent contractor for Fusion GPS, and she and its founder Glenn Simpson routinely conveyed material to her husband. Ohr deliberately avoided informing his superiors and the Department of these dealings.
Liberals have poo-pooed this partisan corruption as inconsequential. The BBC dismissed Ohr’s deceptions to his own Department, averring that the fact that Ohr recorded Steele's opinions "somewhat [undercuts] the accusation of rampant bias within the department, given that a truly compromised individual wouldn't jot that sort of thing down." Au contraire -- his very deliberate subterfuge and bias are evidenced by the fact that he “jotted that sort of thing down,” then surreptitiously delivered said jottings to other agencies, making himself a material witness in the process. That doesn’t “undercut” accusations of bias -- it proves it beyond any question.
Bruce Ohr was on a mission to tarnish President Trump, was the sole unauthorized conduit of the Steele dossier, hid the degree of Steele’s antipathy toward the President, and inappropriately couriered the information to numerous contacts. But also, he tried to use the same information (in the same unauthorized manner) to insinuate himself into the investigation of Paul Manafort. The DOJ Report recounts Ohr’s tandem secret initiatives wherein he ...participated in discussions about a money laundering investigation of Manafort that was then being led by prosecutors from the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS), which is located in the Criminal Division (CRM) at the Department's headquarters.
The DOJ Report concluded “...that Ohr committed consequential errors in judgment” in concealing his activities from superiors and compromising himself as a witness. But it specifically notes that
Presumably, a politically funded “paper” that incriminates one’s opponent without any corroborating evidence would be cautiously evaluated by a court of law. Scores of journalists had refused to report on Steele’s dossier despite zealous efforts by Fusion GPS to circulate it: Bob Woodward dismissed it as “garbage.” Presented with the imprimatur of a Deputy Attorney General, the Steele dossier instead became pivotal in securing government surveillance.
That hearsay procured by hire in order to undermine a political opponent would be created by those who admit they needed “to do what they could to keep Trump out of the White House” is unsurprising. That government agencies so unquestioningly employed such dubious materials reveals either that they never expected daylight to shine on their dealings, or they lacked ethical moorings. But this information was ultimately sourced from Russian contacts -- like the ones Donald Trump is condemned for cultivating. A recent New Yorker article about the dossier (Fusion GPS, Steele, et al tried to upstage the government’s report by issuing their rationalization just days earlier) explains:
The Ohr case is not premised on hearsay. It is much more than a smoking gun -- it is the bullet and the wound. But Ohr has walked away, like so many in the “government accountability walkaway movement.”
Meanwhile, Fusion GPs and its principles remain unprincipled:
The recent DOJ Inspector General’s Report reveals clearly the extent to which Bruce Ohr was willing to avoid accountability and deliberately conceal important evidence in a criminal case against a candidate toward whom both he and his informants held open contempt. These facts about Ohr were previously asserted in the Nunes Report, which was roundly condemned by Nancy Pelosi and others as erroneous.
The following facts are not disputed: Fusion GPS was a consulting firm hired through counsel (Marc Elias) by the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee to research possible connections between Donald Trump and Russian operatives. Fusion GPS hired Steele (who was also paid in part by the FBI) to write the document, which was then provided by Ohr to the FBI and the Operation Crossfire Hurricane team to use against Page and the POTUS. Additionally, Ohr’s wife Nellie was an independent contractor for Fusion GPS, and she and its founder Glenn Simpson routinely conveyed material to her husband. Ohr deliberately avoided informing his superiors and the Department of these dealings.
Liberals have poo-pooed this partisan corruption as inconsequential. The BBC dismissed Ohr’s deceptions to his own Department, averring that the fact that Ohr recorded Steele's opinions "somewhat [undercuts] the accusation of rampant bias within the department, given that a truly compromised individual wouldn't jot that sort of thing down." Au contraire -- his very deliberate subterfuge and bias are evidenced by the fact that he “jotted that sort of thing down,” then surreptitiously delivered said jottings to other agencies, making himself a material witness in the process. That doesn’t “undercut” accusations of bias -- it proves it beyond any question.
Bruce Ohr was on a mission to tarnish President Trump, was the sole unauthorized conduit of the Steele dossier, hid the degree of Steele’s antipathy toward the President, and inappropriately couriered the information to numerous contacts. But also, he tried to use the same information (in the same unauthorized manner) to insinuate himself into the investigation of Paul Manafort. The DOJ Report recounts Ohr’s tandem secret initiatives wherein he ...participated in discussions about a money laundering investigation of Manafort that was then being led by prosecutors from the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS), which is located in the Criminal Division (CRM) at the Department's headquarters.
The DOJ Report concluded “...that Ohr committed consequential errors in judgment” in concealing his activities from superiors and compromising himself as a witness. But it specifically notes that
As we describe in Chapter Eight, the late discovery of Ohr's meetings with the FBI prompted NSD to notify the FISC in July 2018, over a year after the final FISA renewal order was issued, of information that Ohr had provided to the FBI but that the FBI had failed to inform NSD and 01 about (and therefore was not included in the FISA applications), including that Steele was "desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President."This fully affirms the much-derided Nunes memo, which also stated that “...Deputy Director Andrew McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.” Bruce Ohr oversaw the creation of a file (commissioned by the DNC and Clinton campaign), hid the intensity of its author’s bias, clandestinely ushered it to any and all investigative entities that would listen, and thereby single-handedly caused a criminal investigation of a political candidate’s campaign.
Presumably, a politically funded “paper” that incriminates one’s opponent without any corroborating evidence would be cautiously evaluated by a court of law. Scores of journalists had refused to report on Steele’s dossier despite zealous efforts by Fusion GPS to circulate it: Bob Woodward dismissed it as “garbage.” Presented with the imprimatur of a Deputy Attorney General, the Steele dossier instead became pivotal in securing government surveillance.
That hearsay procured by hire in order to undermine a political opponent would be created by those who admit they needed “to do what they could to keep Trump out of the White House” is unsurprising. That government agencies so unquestioningly employed such dubious materials reveals either that they never expected daylight to shine on their dealings, or they lacked ethical moorings. But this information was ultimately sourced from Russian contacts -- like the ones Donald Trump is condemned for cultivating. A recent New Yorker article about the dossier (Fusion GPS, Steele, et al tried to upstage the government’s report by issuing their rationalization just days earlier) explains:
As I wrote in my Profile of Steele, he was working on behalf of the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Simpson and Fritsch fill out this picture further. Deripaska, a hugely rich associate of Putin with a clouded reputation, had hired an American law firm, which had, in turn, hired Steele, to help them track down millions of dollars that the oligarch believed had been stolen from him by Paul Manafort, a former business associate of Deripaska who was about to become the manager of Trump’s Presidential campaign.Steele hated Donald Trump openly and was trying to track down money from Paul Manafort for a Russian oligarch, and his work product was kid-gloved through an acting government attorney (Ohr) to obtain surveillance on United States political candidates. What was it again that Donald Trump was alleged (via hearsay) to have done? In judging questionable motives, Steele points out that the most critical criteria [sic] for judging disinformation is “whether there is a palpable motive for spreading it”....” The American Left has resisted application of that criterion to Steele’s earnest creation of his dossier.
The Ohr case is not premised on hearsay. It is much more than a smoking gun -- it is the bullet and the wound. But Ohr has walked away, like so many in the “government accountability walkaway movement.”
Meanwhile, Fusion GPs and its principles remain unprincipled:
Their role as purveyors of anti-Trump tips, they reveal, did not end with Trump’s election. By then, they were so deeply convinced of the danger they thought Trump and Russia posed to democracy at home and abroad that they kept their band together and formed an independent nonprofit group devoted to providing further research to the media on the threat.Is there no shame? The very phrase “independent nonprofit” is tortured in this context, along with the laughable “devoted to providing further research.” These people have not been discouraged from their inept devotion to fabricate and disseminate false evidence -- instead, they boast boldly. They are openly in the muckraker business, and as unaccountable as Bruce Ohr.
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