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Posted on 08/16/2019 3:08:40 PM PDT by jazusamo
Judicial Watch Investigating Epstein Death
Documents Detail Effort to Smear Trump with “Dossier” through Bruce Ohr
Nellie Ohr Provided Russian Information to DOJ Top Official Lisa Holtyn
Court Orders Obstructionist Maryland to Turn Over Voter List Data
Judicial Watch Sues California over Its Gender Quota for Corporate Boards
Judicial Watch Investigating Epstein Death
We have repeatedly challenged the Department of Justice and the FBI over their fraudulent handling of “investigations” into Hillary Clinton’s illegal activities when she was secretary of state.
Now the very same Justice Department is sitting on another scandal in its role as manager of federal prisons. The conspiracy theories about how Jeffrey Epstein died are well founded, and Justice has a lot to answer for. We’ve already sent out Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, as I note in this interview . At this point the Justice Department can’t be trusted to fully investigate itself. (The latest report is that the medical examiner concluded he committed suicide.)
In his Investigative Bulletin, our chief investigative reporter, Micah Morrison, provides some of the questions we’ll be asking:
The death of financier and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in a high-security federal jail cell in Manhattan has lit up social media with conspiracy theories. Was it murder? Suicide? The wealthy Epstein for decades cultivated the rich and powerful: heads of state, barons of commerce, royalty. He skated on earlier Florida sex charges, a controversy that eventually brought down Labor Secretary Alex Acosta. According to conspiracy theories cresting on the Internet, Epstein’s recent federal indictment on sex trafficking charges threatened too many prominent people—so somebody, somehow, bumped him off.
There’s no evidence that Epstein was murdered in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Officials at the lockup say he was alone Saturday morning and hanged himself. But it’s fair to say that at present there’s not much evidence, aside from a few official statements, that Epstein committed suicide. Huge challenges and high stakes loom in the Epstein case and the window on some key opportunities is closing fast.
Here are the questions that will decide the fate of the case:
Is the unit where Epstein died a crime scene? Preservation of evidence is critical. Fingerprints, hair samples, body fluids, location of body, method of death. Many investigations have been ruined at the outset from a failure to preserve the scene. Sound an alarm bell if the Epstein death location was not processed as a crime scene.
Are records preserved? A source at the Bureau of Prisons tells us there would be a “huge paper trail” on Epstein—documents, logs, interviews with prison psychologists and others related to an alleged July 23 suicide attempt, recordings of phone calls, text messages. Some of us with long memories remember the suicide of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster. The Foster case dragged on for years and gave birth to numerous conspiracy theories in part because the crime scene was mishandled and documents disappeared from his White House office.
Can the money be followed? Epstein’s finances were carefully concealed, but he was known for spreading money around to ease his problems. Prosecutors alleged he tried to buy off witnesses . And serving time at a Palm Beach county jail in 2008 and 2009 on a Florida prostitution charge—negotiated to keep him out of federal prison—Epstein managed to steer $128,000 to officials running the jail. Investigators should search for similar arrangements in New York.
Are Bureau of Prison insiders corrupt? Most Bureau of Prisons employees are honest, but the organization has been repeatedly buffeted by corruption cases . Investigators will take a close look at everyone connected to Epstein at the facility.
Are the Epstein lawyers complicit? How far can a lawyer go for a client? Did any of Epstein’s lawyers facilitate illegal acts? Getting information from Epstein’s lawyers is central to the case. Epstein met repeatedly with his legal team while in jail. The New York Times reports that two lawyers closely involved in Epstein’s finances have hired lawyers of their own—criminal defense specialists. The Times elsewhere reports that Epstein’s lawyers brought in their own pathologist—famed forensic examiner Michael Baden—to observe the Epstein autopsy. According to the Wall Street Journal, Epstein was taken off suicide watch, after the July 23 incident, “at the request of his attorneys.” Expect a big legal battle if investigators move on Epstein’s lawyers.
Is the Department of Justice incompetent? The Epstein case is a major challenge for Attorney General William Barr. He says both the FBI and the Justice Department inspector general will open investigations into the Epstein death, but that may not be enough. Years of controversy and mismanagement related to the Clinton emails, the Clinton foundation and other matters morphed into turmoil over the 2016 election, FBI leadership, the Russia case and President Trump. The Justice Department is now an institution in crisis.
Judicial Watch has launched its own investigation into the Epstein case. We’ve been hearing from sources connected to the incident and we’ve brought a series of Freedom of Information actions to make sure key documents don’t get buried. But that’s no substitute for a properly functioning Justice Department.
Documents Detail Effort to Smear Trump with “Dossier” through Bruce Ohr
If you can get the Department of Justice to attack the person who beat you in a presidential race, you are fairly clever. Or maybe not – as nefarious characters in the DOJ were more than willing to help Hillary Clinton.
Here’s the latest.
We justreleased 330 pages of Justice Department documents showing Bruce Ohr, who was demoted from his position as U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General in December 2017, discussing information obtained through his wife Nellie Ohr. This information included anti-Trump dossier materials, including a spreadsheet that tries to link President Trump to dozens of Russians.
Remember: Nellie Ohr worked for Hillary Clinton through Fusion GPS.
On December 5, 2016, Bruce Ohr emailed himself an Excel spreadsheet, seemingly from his wife Nellie Ohr, titled “ WhosWho19Sept2016 .” The spreadsheet purports to show relationship descriptions and “linkages” between Donald Trump, his family and criminal figures, many of whom were Russians. This list of individuals allegedly “linked to Trump” include: a Russian involved in a “gangland killing;” an Uzbek mafia don; a former KGB officer suspected in the murder of Paul Tatum; a Russian who reportedly “buys up banks and pumps them dry”; a Russian money launderer for Sergei Magnitsky; a Turk accused of shipping oil for ISIS; a couple who lent their name to the Trump Institute, promoting its “get-rich-quick schemes”; a man who poured him a drink; and others.
On December 5, 2016, Bruce Ohr emailed himself a document titled “ Manafort Chronology ,” another Nellie Ohr-Fusion GPS document, which details Paul Manafort’s travel and interactions with Russians and other officials.
FBI interview reports from December 5 and December 12, and December 20, 2017, show that Bruce Ohr “voluntarily” gave these anti-Trump and Manafort materials, created for the Clinton campaign by Fusion GPS, to the FBI. (The FBI interview notes were just declassified and released to us last week.)
On January 25, 2017, Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, forwarded text messages to him that she’d sent to her “colleagues,” where she refers to the Steele dossier as the “yellow rain dossier” and the “yellow showers dossier.”
In the same set of forwarded texts , Nellie speculates that Department K of the Russian intelligence service FSB “would be a pretty good candidate for listening in on Hillary.”
On February 14, 2017, former-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, Kathleen Kavalec, forwarded Ohr a Huffington Post article touting the Steele Dossier’s claim that an alleged deal between Russian oil company Rosneft and Trump supporter Steve Schwarzman constituted a “high crime of treason worthy of impeachment.” Ohr forwarded the article to the FBI’s Washington Field Office the same day.
Four months prior to this exchange, Kavalec had found Christopher Steele not credible because of factual inaccuracies that he had relayed to her in October 2016, as uncovered by Judicial Watch .
On May 23, 2016, DOJ prosecutor Lisa Holtyn emails Bruce Ohr to see if he could connect her as well as prosecutors Joe Wheatley and Ivana Nizich with his wife, Nellie Ohr, as she could be a “great resource” for them. He replies, “I’m sure Nellie would be delighted to speak with them. I’m pretty sure there is no conflict of interest since they aren’t paying her or anything like that.” Congressman Mark Meadows suggested this email shows that Nellie Ohr “knowingly provided false testimony ” to Congress she had no role in DOJ investigations.
These documents show a crazed DOJ-FBI effort to use the Clinton spy ring at Fusion GPS, namely Nellie Ohr, to smear President Trump – even before he was sworn in as president. Clinton campaign operative Nellie Ohr may as well as have had a desk at the Justice Department.
We obtained the records through our August 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the Justice Department after it failed to respond to a May 29, 2018, FOIA request ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-01854)). Judicial Watch seeks:
Here is some recent history on our discoveries about the Ohrs.
In April, we received documents showing that Bruce Ohr in his January 2018 preparation to testify to the Senate and House intelligence committees wrote to a lawyer about “possible ethics concerns.” Bruce Ohr forwarded the email to Nellie Ohr, who had been hired by Fusion GPS, the Hillary Clinton campaign-Democratic National Committee vendor who compiled the anti-Trump dossier.
We also uncovered emails from Bruce Ohr showing that former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr remained in regular contact with former British spy and Fusion GPS contractor Christopher Steele after Steele was terminated by the FBI in November 2016 for revealing to the media his position as an FBI confidential informant.
In June, we uncovered that Ohr received a total of $42,520 in performance bonuses during the Trump/Russia investigation. Ohr’s bonus nearly doubled from $14,520 (received in November 2015) to $28,000 in November 2016.
We had previously uncovered an email revealing that Nellie Ohr informed Bruce that she was deleting emails sent from his DOJ email account.
As you can see, we’re still uncovering the sordid details of this attempted coup d’état.
Nellie Ohr Provided Russian Information to DOJ Top Official Lisa Holtyn
Off the Wall Ping!
Contact to be added.
It is great that JW works tirelessly until they get to the truth.
At this point we are just doing research which will make it into future books. There will be no indictments or sentences.
HOORAY Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch. Once upon a time we had a Justice Department, an FBI and other alphabet agencies in our republic. They are gone. Why should JW be the point on this corruption/treason?
NOBODY IN PRISON ALERT!
NO REPRESENTATION!
In a just world, they would all be going to prison.
In a sane world, the media would be the impartial watchdog of both parties they are supposed to be and every adult in the USA would know the truth behind this devastating political scandal.
Kudos to Judicial Watch! Watch the Watch!
You're right about that.
We're witnessing the continuation of the Wash DC non-stop Kabuki theater.
Me, I wonder if she was sent to give him verbal instructions on how to hang yourself quick and easy.....
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“”It is great that JW works tirelessly until they get to the truth.””
I supported JW in the early days with Klayman at the helm but saw few results. Fitton has done a marvelous job - he seems to be as tireless as our president.
Fitton is a jewel
Honestly, I don’t know how Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch manage to do all this valuable work!
I stand in awe, amazement and untold appreciation.
I agree, he and the group do a yeoman’s job of getting to the truth while being fought by these different groups every step of the way.
Determination is their forte.
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