A senior Justice Department official who met with the British former intelligence officer who compiled the dossier of information on President Trump has relinquished a top agency role.
Bruce Ohr, who holds a top agency post, has given up his associate deputy attorney general position, while maintaining his other role directing organized crime and drug enforcement task forces.
He was stripped of the higher post as of Thursday, Fox News reported, following information gathered by House Intelligence Committee investigators that he had met with British former intelligence officer Christopher Steele during the 2016 campaign.
Steele wrote the ‘dirty dossier’ of compromising information on Trump, which included unverified salacious claims about his conduct in a Moscow hotel room as well as complex financial leverage that Russians were purported to hold over him.
Bruce Ohr gave up his associate deputy attorney general position in the Justice Department. House Intelligence panel investigators found he met with British former intelligence officer Christopher Steele during the 2016 campaign
Bruce Ohr, a senior Justice Department official, met with Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent, in 2016
The network reported that evidence collected by the committee showed Ohr and Steele met in 2016.
Soon after the election, Ohr also met with Glenn Simpson, the former Wall Street Journal reporter who founded political intelligence firm Fusion GPS, which initially brought on Steele to do opposition research, first for a Republican client and then for Democrats.
A Justice Department official would not confirm that Ohr was demoted because of the meetings, but told DailyMail.com: ‘It is unusual for anyone to wear two hats as he has done recently.’
Ohr met with Glenn R. Simpson, left, co-founder of the research firm Fusion GPS, around Thanksgiving, according to a report
CONSOLATION PRIZE: Ohr remains as director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces
‘This person is going to go back to a single focus—director of our organized crime and drug enforcement unit. As you know, combating transnational criminal organizations and drug trafficking is a top priority for the attorney general,’ said the official.
The Republican-led House Intelligence Committee has been probing the origins of the dossier and how the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign ended up funding the research.
News that the Justice Department official had lost a top assignment followed word that one of special counsel Robert Mueller’s lawyers has been reassigned after sending anti-Trump text messages
Congressional sources said it was Steele who put Ohr in contact with Simspon. Steele’s contact with Ohr date to 2006, according to the report.
Simpson testified before the House panel in November. Steele has been interviewed by Robert Mueller’s investigators.
The report of his reassignment comes amid signs of increasing pushback at special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team.
A top FBI lawyer, Peter Strzok, was dismissed from Mueller’s Russia probe and reassigned in August after he was revealed to have sent anti-Trump text messages to another FBI lawyer while having an affair, it was reported Saturday.
Strzok worked on the FBI’s Hillary Clinton probe, which did not result in charges being brought, and reportedly changed key language in Comey’s statement about the decision in the summer of 2016.
House Republican lawmakers are also putting Mueller and his team under the microscope.
The scrutiny on Mueller’s team follows the guilty free Friday by former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn. Flynn pleaded in federal court to lying to the FBI.
‘It is absolutely unacceptable for FBI employees to permit their own political predilections to contaminate any investigation,’ Goodlatte said. ‘Even the appearance of impropriety will devastate the FBI’s reputation,’ said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Robert Goodlatte at a hearing Thursday.