DOJ official Bruce Ohr called a meeting of several federal agencies to discuss ‘working with’ a Russian oligarch because of his belief, premised on the unverified Steele dossier, that Trump was corrupt
(Margo Cleveland – The Federalist) A previously unnoticed passage in Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on federal surveillance abuse suggests Bruce Ohr and his compatriots were willing to bargain with a Russian oligarch to take down Donald Trump.
Two-hundred-plus pages into the IG report, while discussing former Associate Deputy Attorney General Ohr’s continued contacts with Crossfire Hurricane dossier author Christopher Steele, Horowitz revealed a significant detail that to date has been overlooked: “On December 7, 2016, Ohr conveyed an interagency meeting (including representatives from the FBI) regarding strategy in dealing with Russian Oligarch 1.”
The IG report added that after the meeting “one of Ohr’s junior Department colleagues who attended the meeting” asked “Ohr about why the U.S. government would support trying to work with Russian Oligarch 1”—the moniker used in the IG report to refer to one of Vladimir Putin’s closest confidants, the aluminum oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
Ohr’s reported response is shocking: “Ohr told her that Steele provided information that the Trump campaign had been corrupted by the Russians,” and that the corruption went all the way to president-elect Trump. Ohr’s junior colleague told the IG that Ohr explained “this information was ‘the basis for the [Deripaska] discussion” in the interagency meeting they had just left.