You do not have to wade far into the recently declassified Crossfire Hurricane documents to be shocked. I had only read three pages of the FBI’s December 19, 2016 interview with the DoJ’s Bruce Ohr before learning just how early in the game the FBI brass knew that the Steele dossier was worthless.
In the way of background, on July 31, 2016, the FBI launched its counterintelligence operation into the Trump campaign, codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane.” FBI agent Peter Strzok was assigned to head it up.
If the goal was to cripple Trump regardless of the evidence, Strzok was the man for the job. “Damn this feels momentous,” he texted his lover, FBI attorney Lisa Page, upon getting the assignment. Two weeks later he explained to Page his motives. “There’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” he texted her. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”
Ohr played a curious role in the whole affair. He served as unofficial DoJ contact with the notorious Christopher Steele, the author of the eponymous Steele dossier. According to Ohr, the two met for breakfast on the same day the FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane. Steele wanted to discuss some “serious stuff” involving low-level Trump adviser Carter Page.
More interesting than what Steele claimed to know about Page is what Ohr already knew about the funding of the Steele dossier. As Ohr told his FBI interviewer, Joe Pientka, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS “hired Steele to dig up Trump’s connection to Russia.” Complicating matters is that Ohr’s wife, Nelliie, worked for Simpson.
Protecting Nellie, a Russian interpreter, Ohr claimed she was “hired to conduct open source research.” He conceded, however, “Even though she did not know the goal of the project, she was able to surmise the purpose as the individuals were close to Trump.”
Ohr knew, too, that “Glenn Simpson was hired by a lawyer who does opposition research,” although he did not name the lawyer.
Steele, reported Ohr, “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President.” Ohr did not believe that Steele was “making up information.” That said, he had little confidence in Steele’s sources. Steele may have reported what he heard, but, said Ohr, “that doesn’t make that story true.” Explained Ohr, “There are always Russian conspiracy theories that come from the Kremlin.”
Steele and Ohr met again that September, close to the time reporter Michael Isikoff first broke the story of the Steele dossier. In this meeting, an increasingly worried Steele fed Ohr what would prove to be bogus information about Trump’s relationship to Alfa Bank. On September 23, 2016, Isikoff wrote a lengthy breakout article for Yahoo News based on a briefing by “multiple sources.” Ohr was unsure whether Isikoff had met with Simpson or Steele or both.
As Isikoff reported, intelligence officials were investigating Carter Page’s “private communications with senior Russian officials.” He reported, too, that Senate majority leader Harry Reid had briefed the FBI director James Comey on the “significant and disturbing ties” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Reid likely got this information from the Clinton campaign, apparently unaware that Comey had access to the same spurious intel.
In October 2016, a few weeks after the article’s publication, the DOJ and the FBI packaged the Isikoff article and the dossier in their application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), specifically to monitor Carter Page. As the 2019 inspector general report by Michael Horowitz made painfully clear, despite years of denial by various parties, the FBI relied heavily upon the Steele dossier to get FISA authorization on Page. Serving on the FISC at the time was Judge James Boasberg. Anti-Trump partisans tainted every step of the process.
