At this point, it’s well-established that President Donald Trump responds to the ongoing persistence of the Russia investigation as if he’s overwhelmingly guilty of something. Now, a new report from the Associated Press has some details about just why that might be the case.
The Justice Department’s Bruce Ohr — frequently targeted by the president — explained to members of Congress in a private interview this week that, in 2016, former British spy Christopher Steele told him Russian intelligence believed they had then-candidate Trump “over a barrel.” Steele was tasked during the 2016 U.S. election season with assembling opposition research on Trump; his efforts produced his infamous dossier that he sought to sound the alarm over throughout the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Part of his methods included a July 2016 breakfast meeting with Ohr, at which time Steele also asserted that former Trump adviser Carter Page had met with higher ranking Russian officials than he’d admitted to at the time. In his aforementioned dossier, Steele claims that Page met with longtime Putin confidante Igor Sechin and Kremlin official Igor Diveykin during a July 2016 visit to Moscow that was billed as for a speech.
According to Steele’s initial allegations, Sechin presented Page with an opportunity for a huge brokerage fee covering the sale of a portion of the Russian energy giant Rosneft should Trump take power and lift sanctions on Russia. In addition, Diveykin allegedly claimed to Page that the Russian government had a collection of damaging information on Trump’s then-electoral rival Hillary Clinton — and one on Donald Trump, too.
Page eventually admitted to meeting with Rosneft’s head of investor relations Andrey Baranov during his time in Russia. His Trump campaign approved trip overseas came just months after he’d emerged as a foreign policy adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump, who named him during an interview with The Washington Post. On the flip side of that, Steele’s meeting with Ohr at which he raised concerns about Page came just weeks after he’d filed a memo with Fusion GPS, the firm he was working for, outlining his findings.
In the time since, Trump has torn into Ohr time and time again for his interactions and relationship with Steele.
As recently as Thursday, he tweeted:
‘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! Bruce was a boss at the Department of Justice and is, unbelievably, still there!’
Nellie Ohr did not work on the investigation into Trump’s background associated with the 2016 U.S. elections, and Bruce, for what it’s worth, has been reassigned from his previous position. After having previously served as associate deputy attorney general, he lost that position and one as director of the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force as well. He told Congress Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein explained to him that the latter shift was to keep him out of interactions with the White House, which the position would entail.
Trump’s relentless attacks on Ohr figure in his broader continued assault on the Justice Department, which has at times targeted Sessions himself among a whole host of others.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
