On Friday Rep. Doug Collins released the transcript of Bruce Ohr’s testimony to the House Oversight Committee this past August. I have embedded the 268-page transcript below via Scribd. Ohr appeared before the committee voluntarily, not under subpoena, in connection with its investigation of bias within the Department of Justice and the FBI. He is a key participant in the Obama administration activities that, taken together, amount to one helluva political scandal.
NBC News covers the release of the transcript here. The Washington Examiner covers it here, with follow-up stories here and here. The Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross has a good piece here with a focus on the Glenn Simpson angle of particular interest to me.
Ohr revealed that Simpson provided him with what Chuck calls “a seemingly false lead about [Washington attorney Cleta] Mitchell that ended up in a news article published in 2018.” Ohr testified: “It was Glenn Simpson mentioned to me Cleta Mitchell became aware of money moving through the NRA or something like that from Russia.” Russia, Russia, Russia. Ohr passed it on to his friends at the FBI.
What news article was that? It is the one by Greg Gordon and Peter Stone that won our recognition as the fakiest news of 2018. We found the fingerprints of Glenn Simpson to be all over that story. It is good to have another excuse to name and shame Gordon and Stone. Simpson, of course, was at all relevant times working for the Clinton presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and then Democrat moneybags Daniel Jones.
My friend who has closely followed the investigation in its manifold aspects notes:
It came up several times in the transcript that Christopher — that’s “Chris” to his good buddy Bruce — was not only feeding opposition research to the FBI, he was being paid for it as an official source. Think of the gall. Steele is not only getting paid by HRC and the DNC to produce this crap, but he’s triple dipping by getting the FBI to pay for it too. It suggests that the FBI wasn’t very savvy. Do they pay anybody who comes along with “information”?
And then there is the crazy fact that the first person in DoJ land that Ohr took the Steele material to was McCabe, who brought in not just Strzok and Page, but Zainab Ahmad and Andrew Weissmann too (who would soon be on the Mueller team. Funny, but I checked McCabe’s book on Google Books and could find no reference to Bruce Ohr at all…Maybe I’m just not looking hard enough.
Is this all headed where elephants go to die?
UPDATE: Undercover Huber has a good Twitter thread including information extracted from Ohr’s testimony.
Ohr Interview Transcript 8.28.18 by Scott Johnson on Scribd
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