Stunner: Obama Dems were 'trying to work with' Russians to 'take down' Trump
Bruce Ohr's response said to be 'shocking'
By WND StaffPublished January 13, 2020 at 1:00pm
Democrats in the Obama administration were "trying to work with" a Russian oligarch in their efforts to "take down" President-elect Donald Trump, concludes a startling new report from the Federalist.
It cites a "previously unnoticed passage in Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report on federal surveillance abuse" where it suggests then-Department of Justice employee Bruce Ohr held a multi-departmental meeting to discuss the concept of working with aluminum oligarch Oleg Deripaska to undermine Trump.
"The implications are startling: Ohr, in his apparent capacity as director of [the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force], called a meeting of agency members to discuss 'working with' a Russian oligarch because of his belief, premised on the unverified Steele dossier, that President-elect Trump was corrupt," the report said.
Democrats ran wild with the claim that the Trump campaign in 2016 had colluded with Russia to win the election, but a two-year-plus investigation by FBI special counsel Robert Mueller poured ice water all over that claim.
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The Federalist explains, "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.'"
After that meeting, the IG reported, "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.
The Federalist said Ohr's response was nothing short of "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,'" the Federalist reported.
The report ties the loose ends together:
It has been known for some time that Steele spoke with Ohr about Deripaska. But while the Steele-friendly press portrayed those discussions as FBI attempts to flip Deripaska, the IG reached a different conclusion. He found "Steele performed work for Russian Oligarch 1's attorney on Russian Oligarch 1's litigation matters, and, as described later in Chapter Nine, passed information to Department attorney Bruce Ohr advocating on behalf of one of Russian Oligarch 1's companies regarding U.S. sanctions." The IG further found that Ohr and Steele's communications concerning Deripaska occurred "in 2016 during the time period before and after Steele was terminated as a [Confidential Human Source]."These findings, coupled with previous reports that Steele worked for one of Deripaska's lawyers, London-based Paul Hauser, and appeared to lobby on behalf of Deripaska through a D.C.-based attorney, Adam Waldman, renew questions concerning whether Steele violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). Likewise, the IG report's notes that "Ohr said that he understood Steele was 'angling' for Ohr to assist him with his clients’ issues," and that "Ohr stated that Steele was hoping that Ohr would intercede on his behalf with the Department attorney handling a matter involving a European company," suggest the need for a FARA investigation into Steele's work," the report said.
Steele is the hired agent who was paid by Democrats and Hillary Clinton's campaign to assemble a list of wildly salacious and unverified accusations against then-candidate Trump, a document apparently used by the Obama administration to launch federal intel agency investigations into his campaign.
The dossier Steele created ended up being submitted to a secret federal court although the Obama administration did not verify its claims, and was used as the foundation for the Democrats' claims of collusion.
The Federalist documented that the passage "revealed several key points:
(1) that Ohr had 'convened,'
(2) the 'interagency' meeting,
(3) after Americans elected Trump . We also know that
(4) one of Ohr's Department of Justice junior colleagues attended the meeting, at which
(5) there was a discussion of 'trying to work with' Deripaska."
"We can surmise that Ohr called the December 7, 2016, meeting in his capacity as then-director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), for three reasons.
First, OCDETF is a multi-agency task force, comprised of members from the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Treasury Department, U.S. Postal Service, and Department of Labor.
Second, Ohr testified before Congress that, as director of OCDETF, his duties included 'coordinate drug and organized crime investigations within the Department,' and that 'organized crime investigations' including transnational investigations of Russian organized crime and Russian oligarchs," the report said.
The report wondered, "Did the Steele 'intel' prompt Ohr to push for the United States to work with Deripaska in Ohr's role as director of OCDETF?"
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