A top Justice official who President Donald Trump wants fired revealed to lawmakers that he learned during a 2016 breakfast meeting with an ex-British sky that Russian intelligence believed it had Trump 'over a barrel
'Bruce Ohr, who Trump railed against on Twitter this week, after previously saying he might yank his security clearances, revealed the information to lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee during closed testimony this week
During his interview, Ohr described a July 2016 breakfast he had with ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, during the heat of the campaign
Multiple people familiar with the encounter described it to the Associated Press
The Justice Department lawyer, Bruce Ohr, also says he learned that a Trump campaign aide, Carter Page, had met with higher-level Russian officials than the aide had acknowledged, the people said
Trump tweeted this week that Ohr should get fired and also went after his wife, Nelly, who did work for political intelligence firm Fusion GPS
The firm commissioned Steele to conduct the research that became the infamous Golden Showers dossier
After the meeting, Ohr didn't tell his boss, top DOJ official Sally Yates, who was later fired by Trump over her refusal to enforce the administration's travel ban at the start of Trump's term
Ohr was grilled for eight hours this week by seven Republican House Intelligence Committee members
No Democrats attended, although the minority had staff in the room.The previously unreported details of the July 30, 2016, breakfast with Christopher Steele, which Ohr described to lawmakers this week in a private interview, reveal an exchange of potentially explosive information about Trump between two men the president has relentlessly sought to discredit
They add to the public understanding of those pivotal summer months as the FBI and intelligence community scrambled to untangle possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia
And they reflect the concern of Steele, a longtime FBI informant whose Democratic-funded research into Trump ties to Russia was compiled into a dossier, that the Republican presidential candidate was possibly compromised and his urgent efforts to convey that anxiety to contacts at the FBI and Justice Department
The people who discussed Ohr's interview were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the closed session and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity
Among the things Ohr said he learned from Steele during the breakfast was that an unnamed former Russian intelligence official had said that Russian intelligence believed 'they had Trump over a barrel,' according to people familiar with the meeting
It was not clear from Ohr's interview whether Steele had been directly told that or had picked that up through his contacts, but the broader sentiment is echoed in Steele's research dossier
Steele and Ohr, at the time of the election a senior official in the deputy attorney general's office, had first met a decade earlier and bonded over a shared interest in international organized crime
They met several times during the presidential campaign, a relationship that exposed both men and federal law enforcement more generally to partisan criticism, including from Trump
Republicans contend the FBI relied excessively on the dossier during its investigation and to obtain a secret wiretap application on Trump campaign aide Carter Page
They also say Ohr went outside his job description and chain of command by meeting with Steele, including after his termination as a FBI source, and then relaying information to the FBI
Trump this month proposed stripping Ohr, who until this year had been largely anonymous during his decades-long Justice Department career, of his security clearance and has asked 'how the hell' he remains employed
Trump tweeted this week: 'How the hell is Bruce Ohr still employed at the Justice Department? Disgraceful? Witch Hunt!'He also went after his wife, Nellie
'Wow, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr's wife, is a Russia expert who is fluent in Russian. She worked for Fusion GPS where she was paid a lot
Collusion!' Trump has called the Russia investigation a 'witch hunt' and has denied any collusion between his campaign and Moscow
Share this article Share Trump and some of his supporters in Congress have also accused the FBI of launching the entire Russia counterintelligence investigation based on the dossier
But memos authored by Republicans and Democrats and declassified this year show the probe was triggered by information the U
S. government received earlier about the Russian contacts of then-Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos
The FBI's investigation was already under way by the time it received Steele's dossier, and Ohr was not the original source of information from it
One of the meetings described to House lawmakers Tuesday was a Washington breakfast attended by Steele, an associate of his and Ohr
Ohr's wife, Nellie, who worked for the political research firm, Fusion GPS, that hired Steele, attended at least part of the breakfast
Ohr also told Congress that Steele told him that Page, a Trump campaign aide who traveled to Moscow that same month and whose ties to Russia attracted FBI scrutiny, had met with more senior Russian officials than he had acknowledged meeting with
That breakfast took place amid ongoing FBI concerns about Russian election interference and possible communication with Trump associates
By that point, Russian hackers had penetrated Democratic email accounts, including that of the Clinton campaign chairman, and Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign associate, was said to have revealed that Russians had 'dirt' on Democrat Hillary Clinton in the form of emails, according to court papers
That revelation prompted the FBI to open the counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, one day after the breakfast but based on entirely different information
Ohr told lawmakers he could not vouch for the accuracy of Steele's information but has said he considered him a reliable FBI informant who delivered credible and actionable intelligence, including his investigation into corruption at FIFA, soccer's global governing body
In the interview, Ohr acknowledged that he had not told superiors in his office, including Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, about his meetings with Steele because he considered the information inflammatory raw source material
He also provided new details about the department's move to reassign him once his Steele ties were brought to light
Ohr said he met in late December 2017 with two senior Justice Department officials, Scott Schools and James Crowell, who told him they were unhappy he had not proactively disclosed his meetings with Steele
They said he was being stripped of his associate deputy attorney post as part of a planned internal reorganization, people familiar with Ohr's account say
He met again soon after with one of the officials, who told him Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein did not believe he could continue in his current position as director of a drug grant-distribution program - known as the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force
Sessions and Rosenstein, Ohr was told, did not want him in the post because it entailed White House meetings and interactions, the people said
Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores declined to comment.
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