Devin Nunes says ‘pay close attention’: Top Obama DOJ official Bruce Ohr will become ‘more and more important’
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said on Monday that Bruce Ohr, a former top official in the Justice Department, will become “more and more important” as GOP lawmakers look for evidence of power abuse and corruption at the highest levels of the Obama administration.
“I think people should pay close attention to it,” the California Republican said to Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
Nunes was referring to findings that suggest Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the Trump dossier on behalf of the Clinton campaign, kept supplying allegations to the FBI after the 2016 election, even though by that point he was terminated as a source by the bureau for giving confidential information to the media.
Congressional investigators have found that Ohr, who was the fourth-highest ranking official in the Justice Department, acted as an intermediary between Steele after he was terminated as a source and the FBI’s investigation into ties between the Russians and President Trump’s 2016 campaign. When Ohr gave the bureau information from Steele, agents made a record of it, and those records are in the form of so-called 302 reports, in which the FBI agents write up notes of interviews during an investigation.
Futhermore, Nellie Ohr, the wife of Bruce Ohr, was employed by Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the dossier in an effort that was funded in part by Democrats, to assist in the cultivation of research on then-candidate Trump.
There are a dozen 302 reports on post-election interviews about Ohr. In a a July letter, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told the FBI and Justice Department there is “no continuing justification for the FBI to keep the documents secret.”
The 302s and Ohr were listed as one of three subjects in which Nunes said he and other congressional investigators still need information from the Justice Department. Rounding out that list was again pressing President Trump to declassify the warrant used to gain the authority to spy on onetime Trump campaign aide Carter Page and “exculpatory evidence that we have seen of classified documents that need to be declassified.”
Nunes and fellow GOP chairmen Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., have pressed the DOJ for months for documents related to the Russia and Hillary Clinton emails investigations, with some success.
Though he complained that DOJ was dragging its feat, Nunes said, “as of tonight we are getting closer and closer to having the information that we need.”
“They are provided — they have allowed — all the issues that were in our subpoena they have now — either we’ve been able to review, our investigators have been able to review what they have been delivered to the committee in one form or fashion or another. Let’s put that aside, there is still more that has to be done and we are a month late,” he added.
Source: Washington Examiner
