In a shocking twist to the investigation into alleged Trump campaign collusion with Russia, it has come to light that senior officials at the Department of Justice and FBI were warned that the infamous Steele dossier was linked to the Clinton campaign and was likely biased. The dossier, which was produced by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence operative, alleged a conspiracy between employees of Trump’s campaign and Russian officials to benefit Trump and harm Clinton.
Bruce Ohr, who at the time was the associate deputy attorney general, briefed senior officials at DOJ and FBI about the dossier, warning them that the dossier was opposition research connected to the Clinton campaign and that it could potentially be biased. He further warned those same officials that his wife worked for Fusion GPS, the firm that produced the dossier. Despite those warnings, US officials used the dossier as the basis for obtaining a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, conveniently neglecting to mention to the court that fact that the dossier originated from Clinton campaign opposition research.
Among the DOJ and FBI officials Ohr reached out to are a who’s who of the figures central to the Trump-Russia investigation, included disgraced officials Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page. Other officials briefed by Ohr included Andrew Weissmann and Zainab Ahmad, who both went on to work on special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
That’s pretty damning evidence that the FBI (and current Mueller probe officials) knew that allegations of Trump’s collusion with Russia were coming from Clinton yet decided to act on them anyway. It likely won’t sway those in the court of public opinion who have adopted the mantra of “Orange Man Bad,” but if any of this drama ever makes it to a real court it would undoubtedly be yet another indicator that the FBI and DOJ probes are a witch hunt rather than a good faith effort to uncover criminal activity.