The chairman of the Judiciary Committee on Monday demanded Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr sit for an interview with Senate investigators to explain what role he played to “funnel” information from anti-Trump investigator Christopher Steele to the FBI.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, told the Justice Department to make Mr. Ohr available for a transcribed interview and also demanded all of his emails, phone logs and text messages that could shed light on what steps he took to get anti-Trump information in front of FBI agents during the 2016 campaign.
Mr. Steele had been contracted by the FBI to provide information but was terminated as a source after he went to the press, in defiance of the FBI’s terms. Mr. Grassley said there are still outstanding questions about whether Mr. Ohr then became a conduit for Mr. Steele to peddle salacious and as-yet largely unverified information about Mr. Trump to investigators.
The request comes as the FBI is reeling from reports it arranged for a university professor to make outreach to the Trump campaign to try to get inside information, in what the bureau called “Operation Crossfire Hurricane.” Mr. Grassley also demanded to be kept abreast of information relating to that operation, which House investigators are probing.
Mr. Ohr was reportedly demoted after the department discovered he was meeting with Mr. Steele, the former British spy who wrote the salacious Steele Dossier that Republicans say was used to launch secret surveillance of a Trump campaign figure in 2016. Mr. Ohr’s wife worked for Fusion GPS, the company that hired Mr. Steele to compile the dossier.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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