FBI Director Kash Patel followed through on his promise Wednesday, releasing a trove of previously unseen documents that expose just how far agents went to pursue the now-debunked Trump-Russia collusion narrative from the 2016 election.
The files, made public by Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA), include a series of aggressive inquiries by the FBI’s Washington Field Office directed at the Office of the Special Counsel. The focus: testimony from Nellie Ohr, a Russian analyst linked to the discredited Steele dossier.
In one standout memo dated September 18, 2019, the FBI — then under Director Christopher Wray — formally asked Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team for documents related to Ohr. The request aimed to assess whether a criminal probe should be opened against her. Ohr, the wife of high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr, is suspected of feeding information to Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm hired by a Clinton-aligned law firm to dig up dirt on Trump.
Earlier GOP-led investigations concluded that Nellie Ohr may have lied under oath about her work with Christopher Steele, the former British spy behind the explosive but unverified dossier.
The newly released documents also reveal that Mueller’s team initially refused to cooperate with the FBI’s request, a move that reportedly stalled potential prosecution efforts against Ohr.
“On May 31, 2019, D5-POST SCO TEAM advised that some but not all of the cases related to Trump/Russian-collusion had been migrated from Prohibited status to Restricted Access status so that investigators might have the opportunity to identify potentially relevant Restricted Access serials,” the Washington office wrote summarizing the interaction.
However, the overwhelming number of records the FBI needed to sift through — coupled with a shortage of available agents and zero cooperation from the Special Counsel’s Office — ultimately left the Bureau paralyzed and without the critical evidence required to move forward with a prosecution.
Agents “remain incapable of identifying potentially relevant serials in those cases that remained in ‘Prohibited Access’ status,” authors added.
In 2016, Nellie Ohr was on the payroll of Fusion GPS — the opposition research firm contracted by the Clinton campaign to dig up alleged ties between Donald Trump and Russia. Her marriage to Bruce Ohr, then a senior official in the Obama Justice Department, drew sharp scrutiny after Trump’s upset victory, raising red flags about potential conflicts of interest and partisan collusion inside the federal government.
Documents indicate that Nellie Ohr shared political research with her husband’s associates, contradicting her sworn testimony.
“Documents reviewed by our committees raise concerns Ms. Ohr not only had knowledge of an ongoing DOJ investigation, but that she shared information and research on Russian organized crime to assist DOJ, in direct contradiction with her testimony,” former North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, who ultimately became one of Trump’s chiefs of staff during his first term, previously said about the probe.
Together, the documents raise new questions about the extent to which the FBI under Wray pursued the prosecution of Nellie Ohr and how Mueller’s special counsel team may have hindered its criminal investigation.
