How a senior DOJ official helped Dem researchers on Trump-Russia case

Hundreds of pages of previously unreported emails and memos provide the clearest evidence yet that a research firm, hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to find dirt on and defeat Donald Trump, worked early and often with the FBI, a Department of Justice (DOJ) official and the intelligence community during the 2016 presidential election and the early days of Trump's presidency.

Fusion GPS's work and its involvement with several FBI officials have been well reported.

But a close review of these new documents shows just how closely Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, who reported to Obama-era Deputy AG Sally Yates, maintained contact with Fusion — and, in particular, its primary source, former British spy Christopher Steele — before, during and after the election.

Yates was fired by President Trump over an unrelated political dispute. Ohr was demoted recently.

Ohr’s own notes, emails and text messages show he communicated extensively with Steele and with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. Those documents have been turned over in recent weeks to investigative bodies in Congress and the DOJ, but not reviewed outside the investigative ranks until now.

They show Ohr had contact with Steele in the days just before the FBI opened its Trump-Russia probe in summer 2016, and then engaged Steele as a “confidential human source” (CHS) assisting in that probe.

They also confirm that Ohr later became a critical conduit of continuing information from Steele after the FBI ended the Brit's role as an informant.

“B, doubtless a sad and crazy day for you re- SY,” Steele texted Ohr on Jan. 31, 2017, referencing President Trump’s firing of Sally Yates for insubordination.

Steele's FBI relationship had been terminated about three months earlier. The bureau concluded on Nov. 1, 2016, that he leaked information to the news media and was “not suitable for use” as a confidential source, memos show.

The FBI specifically instructed Steele that he could no longer “operate to obtain any intelligence whatsoever on behalf of the FBI,” those memos show.

Yet, Steele asked Ohr in the Jan. 31 text exchange if he could continue to help feed information to the FBI: “Just want to check you are OK, still in the situ and able to help locally as discussed, along with your Bureau colleagues.”

“I’m still here and able to help as discussed,” Ohr texted back. “I’ll let you know if that changes.”

Steele replied, “If you end up out though, I really need another (bureau?) contact point/number who is briefed. We can’t allow our guy to be forced to go back home. It would be disastrous.” Investigators are trying to determine who Steele was referring to.

FBI officials now admit they continued to receive information from Steele through Ohr, identifying more than a half-dozen times its agents interviewed Ohr in late 2016 and 2017, to learn what Steele was saying.

That continued reliance on Steele after his termination is certain to raise interest in Congress about whether the FBI broke its own rules.

But the memos also raise questions about Ohr’s and the Justice Department’s roles in the origins of building a counterintelligence case against the Republican presidential nominee, based heavily on opposition research funded by his rival's campaign, the DNC, and the DNC’s main law firm, Perkins Coie.

Some of the more tantalizing Ohr contacts occurred in the days when Steele made his first contacts with the FBI in summer 2016 about the Russia matter.

“There is something separate I wanted to discuss with you informally and separately. It concerns our favourite (sic) business tycoon!” Steele wrote Ohr on July 1, 2016, in an apparent reference to Trump.

That overture came just four days before Steele walked into the FBI office in Rome with still-unproven allegations that Trump had an improper relationship with Russia, including possible efforts to hijack the presidential election.

Ohr scheduled a call with Steele over Skype a few days later. But then the two men met in Washington on July 30, 2016, at the Mayflower Hotel.

Ohr brought his wife, Nellie, who was working at Fusion GPS on the Trump-Russia research project.

“Great to see you and Nellie this morning Bruce,” Steele wrote shortly after their breakfast meeting. “Let’s keep in touch on the substantive issues/s (sic). Glenn is happy to speak to you on this if it would help.”

That meeting occurred exactly one day before FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok formally opened an investigation, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, into whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Moscow to steal the election.

At the time, the case was based mostly on an Australian diplomat’s tip that Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos appeared to know in advance that the Russians possessed information involving Hillary Clinton before hacked documents were released on WikiLeaks.

Soon, the case expanded to include allegations that another Trump adviser, Carter Page, might have ties to Russia — an uncorroborated allegation from Fusion GPS’s research now known as the “Steele dossier.”

Calendar notations and handwritten notes indicate Ohr followed up on Steele’s offer and met with Simpson on Aug. 22, 2016. Ohr’s notes indicate Simpson identified several “possible intermediaries” between the Trump campaign and Russia.

One was identified as a “longtime associate of Trump” who “put together several real estate deals for Russian investigators to purchase Trump properties.” Another was a Russian apparently tied to Carter Page, Ohr’s note of his Simpson contact indicated.

Steele offered Ohr many other theories over their contacts, including a now widely discredited one that the Russian Alfa Bank had a computer server “as a link” to the Trump campaign, Ohr’s notes show.

Though much of Steele’s information remained uncorroborated, the FBI nonetheless took the extraordinary step in October 2016 of seeking a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance warrant to monitor Carter Page during the final days of the election, based mostly on Steele’s dossier. The warrant was renewed at least three times, but Page was never charged.

Ohr’s connections to Steele are significant because at least one of the FISA warrants was approved by Ohr’s boss, Yates.

By early November 2016, Steele was terminated for unauthorized media contacts — and the FBI was turning to Ohr as a back channel to Steele.

Ohr’s notes suggest he met Nov. 21, 2016, with FBI officials that included Strzok, then-FBI attorney Lisa Page and another agent. Strzok and Page have become the poster children for Republicans who believe the FBI abused its authority by investigating Trump on flimsy evidence. FBI records confirm an interview with Ohr around that time.

Ohr’s notes from that meeting indicate that FBI officials told him they “may go back to Chris” — an apparent reference to Steele — just 20 days after dismissing him.

In all, Ohr’s notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence probes in American history.

Most importantly, the new memos make clear that Ohr, a man whose name was barely uttered during the first 18 months of the scandal, may have played a critical role in stitching together a Democratic opposition research project and the top echelons of the FBI and DOJ.

Solomon, as usual, writes a coherent narrative using fragments of information from Bruce Ohr’s documentation and text messages.

Who is Steele referring to when he says “it would be disastrous” if our guy is sent home?

And if we answer that we will know what country and/or cause the Obama plotters are working for. Having read many of the Strzrok/Page texts, I believe they saw themselves as anti-Putin/Russia Patriots of the USA. However, their definition of Patriotism is what we need to define. They sound like Welfare Statists who want a combination of freedom and socialism.

They are the worker bees, along with Hamlet Comey and his crowd. It's when we get up to the top of State and the White House that I'd like to know who they are working for? BHO must have been the most compromised President ever voted into office. But his co-President, ValJar, was raised on the mother's milk of Communism, mixed together with racial superiority politics.

Perhaps all we will learn is that Trump's absolutism, or early 20th Century American values, caused the above Democrats to fight not for anything but against something that frightened them and made them fight like the rats they were scurrying in tunnels underground in darkness, gnawing at the fiber-optic cables that hold our technologically based society together. Destroy is what they did and continue to do. Not create, produce, collaborate, converse.

But I lay the destruction these people are doing at the feet of their college philosophy professors, even ones they never took classes from. Philosophy is the guide of life. No one can escape that fact. And if the philosophy being taught for a century is based on anti-reason, then all the social sciences follow suit. Here we are.

“Steele replied, “If you end up out though, I really need another (bureau?) contact point/number who is briefed. We can’t allow our guy to be forced to go back home. It would be disastrous.” “

I think this may refer not to an outside contact or source, who might be forced to leave the USA.

Another reading would be that it refers to someone in the FBI who might be “forced to go back home” ie. forced to return to regular duties, rather than working a current secondment.

This is well before Mueller and the placing of “small group” loyalists on Mueller’s team.

Do we know what Strzok was doing in late january, 2017 ?

Ohr’s wife obtained a ham radio license after she began working on the Steele dossier for Fusion. I wonder what she was hiding by suddenly showing an interest in ham radio, which I understand cannot be intercepted.

I went through this on FR when the issue initially came up.

Here is Ohr's wife's ham radio license record (yes, it's public information):

You will note that it is a "technician" class license.

That gives very limited operating privileges, as shown in this chart:

(click on the chart for a full size rendition)

You will notice that below the 28 MHz (10M) band, Technician Class licensees are only authorized to transmit CW (morse code)...no voice, no data.

As far as amateur radio communications not being able to be intercepted, anybody who has a shortwave radio (for HF) or a scanner (for VHF/UHF) can tell you that this is simply not the case.

Further to the point, no amateur, regardless of the class of license held, may transmit encrypted communications. So anything is "in the clear" and would be easily recognizable.

Per 47 CFR §113:

§ 97.113 Prohibited transmissions.
(a) No amateur station shall transmit:
…
(4) Music using a phone emission except as specifically provided elsewhere in this section; communications intended to facilitate a criminal act; messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning, except as otherwise provided herein; obscene or indecent words or language; or false or deceptive messages, signals or identification.

The point being that she legally wouldn't be able to do any nefarious action using an amateur radio license (particularly with her class of license).

Note that it is very easily possible to use radio for covert communications (at least on a technical basis). But it is a violation of federal law to do so. So why get a license? Transmit your call sign on the air when doing so and it makes it very easy for the feds (or anybody else) to track you down...

Frankly, it's a whole lot easier and more secure to use the Internet. You can hide stuff in plain sight there...such as an HTML version of the Declaration of Independence that is embedded in one of the two images above using a technique called "steganography". (I'll give you a hint on how to figure it out: the passphrase needed to extract the Declaration is P@s$w0rd)

And by the way, there are stego apps for Windows, Linux, Android, and IOS to do this very, very easily. (Don't know if there is anything for MacOS, but I'd bet there is)

The point is using ham radio for this is nothing but sending people down a rabbit hole. It was back then and it still is now.

Strange stuff going on in January 2017 :

JANUARY 2017 : (IN THE WANING DAYS OF HIS AMINISTRATION, OBAMA INVITES GUSTAVO MACHIN, A KNOWN CUBAN SPY ASSOCIATED WITH CONVICTED SPY FOR CUBA ANNA BELEN MONTES, TO PARTICIPATE IN A US “BRAINSTORMING SESSION” INVOLVING SOCOM -— See SPIES, SPOOKS, COMMUNISM, CUBA) Well, back in January [2017] shortly before Obama vacated the White House, this very Gustavo Machin was invited by the Obama team to personally participate in a U.S. security brainstorming session involving the U.S. Southern Command, which serves as our nation’s “command center on the war on drugs.”
You see, amigos: In one of his closing acts as president, Obama ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to “share” information with the terror-sponsoring, drug-smuggling Castro regime. Here’s how the AP described the executive orders:
“The Obama administration and Cuba’s Interior Ministry (KGB and STASI-trained spy and secret police apparatus) have agreed to share information on international criminal activity such as terrorism, human trafficking and money laundering despite Republican objections to U.S. law-enforcement cooperation with President Raul Castro’s government.”
Here’s the official White House announcement:
“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) will support broader United States Government efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, with Intelligence Community elements working to find opportunities for engagement on areas of common interest through which we could exchange information on mutual threats with Cuban counterparts.”
I suppose there’s something to be said for “exchanging” intelligence on terrorism, drug-smuggling, etc. with the hemisphere’s top terror-sponsor and drug smuggler. “Better to have the skunk inside the tent p*ssing out,” LBJ described his partnership with J. Edgar Hoover, “than outside p*ssing in.” -— —— Remember When Obama Gifted Vital U.S. Intelligence to Cuban Spies?, Townhall.com ^ | May 20, 2017 | Humberto Fontova

Any radio broadcast can be intercepted, but the frequency has to be looked at by the NSA. It wasn't and they knew it!

FBI warned the DNC about alleged Russian hacking in the summer 2015. The DNC ignores the warning.

The reason they ignored the warning is because they knew they were not being hacked. The NSA tried to hack into the RNC server and then left obvious "traces" that it was supposedly the Russians. That's what started the whole Russia thing. It is possible that the only reason the FBI warned about the potential hacking is because this was being set up as early as 2015. That is why DOJ is stonewalling documents so hard now! They thought they had it in the bag and were cooking up a conspiracy to frame Trump post-election which would have worked if the beest won!.

My opinion is that the supposed DNC/RNC hacking was a false flag! It only worked if a Deep State operative covered it up by claiming the DNC server was hacked by the Russians. That's called plausible deniability unless a non-Deep State operative looked at the server. The first person notified of the alleged server hack was the DNC lawyer.

To me, use of the Ham radio indicated someone within NSA was in on this! The question is "Who"?

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