Supporters of President Donald Trump are seizing on newly released FBI reports to argue that the law enforcement agency had clear warnings within weeks after the election that the former British intelligence officer who authored a disputed dossier about Trump’s alleged ties to Russia was intent on preventing the real estate mogul from becoming president.
The FBI on Thursday released its notes — known as 302 reports — detailing a dozen interviews agents had with senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr as they investigated potential ties between the incoming president and Russia. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked for the private investigation firm Fusion GPS and relayed research the former British spy, Christopher Steele, was conducting for the company.
A codename for Steele appears to have been redacted from the earliest reports on Bruce Ohr’s meetings with FBI agents, but one from a November 22, 2016 interview says the unnamed source whose information Ohr was passing on “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not becoming the U.S. president.”
Ohr said in the same interview that the source of the dossier was hired by “a lawyer who does opposition research” and that the information about Trump and Russia was being relayed to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, a close aide to Secretary of State John Kerry and the FBI.
While many of Trump’s backers have expressed deep suspicion of Ohr and suggested he acted improperly by relaying his wife’s research to the FBI, after the 21 pages of new reports emerged Thursday, the president’s supporters said they show that Ohr’s candor about Steele’s motivations wasn’t adequately considered by the FBI or disclosed to judges who approved secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant for communications of a former Trump foreign policy adviser, Carter Page.
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However, the first interview with Ohr — at least in the files released Thursday — was more than a month after the FBI asked a judge to approve surveillance on Page on October 21, 2016.
That application makes clear that the FBI was already dealing with Steele directly and includes a cautionary footnote disclosing that “a U.S.-based law firm” hired Fusion’s owner Glenn Simpson to conduct research on Trump. (Neither Steele, Simpson or Trump were mentioned by name.)
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The FBI released its notes detailing a dozen interviews agents had with senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr as they investigated potential ties between the incoming president and Russia https://t.co/xb1quuFevj
— POLITICO (@politico) August 9, 2019
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