Chuck Ross on August 9, 2018
- Christopher Steele was working on the Trump dossier at the same time he was lobbying DOJ official Bruce Ohr on behalf of a Russian oligarch linked to Putin
- Newly revealed emails show Steele though the U.S. government should grant visas to Deripaska, who had been barred from traveling to the States
- Steele asked Ohr to “keep an eye” on Deripaska’s visa case
At the same time that Christopher Steele was compiling a dossier accusing the Trump campaign of colluding with the Russian government, the former British spy was lobbying Justice Department official Bruce Ohr on behalf of a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin.
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The connection between Steele and the oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, are laid out in emails that the Justice Department recently provided Congress.
The emails show that Steele, a former British spy, advocated for Deripaska in negotiations over his visa status with the U.S. government. Deripaska, an aluminum magnate, had been blocked from traveling to the U.S. in 2006 because of suspected ties to Russian mobsters. In 2009, Deripaska hired an American lawyer named Adam Waldman to lobby the U.S. government to obtain a visa for the billionaire.
The Washington Examiner detailed the exchanges, which show Steele discussing Deripaska with Ohr, the former No. 4 official at the Justice Department.
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Steele’s relationship with Deripaska has been one of the more bizarre aspects of the dossier saga, mainly because it raises the possibility that the Putin-connected businessman was a source for the salacious document. Steele’s unverified 35-page dossier relies heavily on information from anonymous Kremlin insiders who claimed that the Russian government was colluding with the Trump campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton.
“I heard from Adam WALDMAN [a Deripaska lawyer/lobbyist] yesterday that OD is applying for another official US visa ice [sic] APEC business at the end of February,” Steele wrote in a Jan. 12, 2016 email to Ohr, according to The Examiner.
Steele claimed that Deripaska had been “encouraged by the Agency guys who told Adam that the USG [United States Government] stance on [Deripaska] is softening.”
“A positive development it seems,” Steele added.
Steele emailed Ohr again on Feb. 8, 2016 to say that Deripaska had been granted a visa to travel to the U.S. later that month. He also made a request of Ohr in the email.
“As far as I’m concerned, this is good news all round although as before, it would be helpful if you could monitor it and let me know if any complications arise,” he wrote.
Ohr said that “to the extent I can I will keep an eye on the situation.”
In a Feb. 21, 2016 email Steele said that he was circulating reporting that he had done on Deripaska that suggested that the oligarch was not a “tool” of the Kremlin.
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“We reckon therefore that the forthcoming [Deripaska] contact represents a good opportunity for the [U.S. Government],” said Steele.
Links between the Steele and Deripaska began to emerge earlier this year after Republican lawmakers began inquiring about a possible relationship between the two.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has pressed Steele, Waldman, and a London-based lawyer named Paul Hauser, about Steele’s possible links to Deripaska.
FBI Director Christopher Wray was also asked about the relationship during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on Feb. 13.
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“Do you know if Christopher Steele worked for Oleg Deripaska?” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton asked Wray.
“That’s not something I can answer,” Wray replied, adding added that “there might be more” that he could say in a classified setting.
It is still not clear whether Steele was working for Deripaska or interested in his visa status for other reasons.
Steele’s support for Deripaska would seem to undercut one of Trump critics’ theories about possible collusion: that Deripaska conspired with Paul Manafort.
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Deripaska’s business ties to the longtime Republican political operative have come under intense scrutiny from Democrats and the media, leading to some speculation that Manafort and Deripaska may have colluded during the 2016 presidential campaign.
In one July 7, 2016 email, Manafort told a Ukraine-based associate that he would be willing to provide briefings about the campaign to Deripaska.
“If he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote to his associate, Konstantin Kilimnik.
At the time, Manafort and Deripaska were in a dispute over a failed business deal involving Ukrainian cable companies.
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Manafort is currently on trial in Virginia for tax evasion and money laundering related to his political work in Ukraine.
Steele and Ohr maintained contact throughout the presidential campaign and beyond, according to Ohr’s emails.
On July 1, 2016, Steele reached out to Ohr in hopes of discussing “our favourite business tycoon!” It is unclear if Steele was referring to Deripaska or Donald Trump. Steele met with Ohr and his wife, a Russia expert named Nellie Ohr, on July 30, 2016 at a Washington, D.C. hotel.
Nellie Ohr also happened to work at the time for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired Steele.
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Bruce Ohr and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson also appear to have had contact prior to the election. Simpson emailed Ohr on Aug. 22, 2016 asking to speak by phone.
It is not clear whether the two spoke, but Simpson did not disclose that contact when he discussed Ohr during a Nov. 14 deposition before the House Intelligence Committee.
During that interview, Simpson said that he met with Ohr for coffee after the election to discuss the Trump investigation. Simpson did not tell the House panel that Ohr’s wife worked for Fusion GPS.
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More Russian collusion.
More Russian collusion.
Yes GOP’ers did hire NOT Steel but GPS to vet Trump. They abandoned that tack very early on and the HRC campaign went full in with GPS and Steel to attack Trump.
Steel dealt with Russians connected to that gov’t and compelled the dossier out of whole cloth. It was totally a fantasy. The FBI opened an investigation on Trump based on nothing but false information that was NEVER vetted by any of the US intelligence agencies. It was information pushed into the political system by Trump haters that had NO bases in fact. Clinton operatives were involved and are known by name.
The DNC then pushed this fake information with their contacts in the MSM and created a false narrative about Trump collusion that NEVER happened. The MSM was all in on this story. Now when it is exposed that there was NEVER any collusion but an attempt by some corrupt officials in the DOJ and FBI to frame DJT and undermine his presidency the MSM is trying to cover their mistakes and stories. This was nothing but an attempted coup by officials high up in the DOJ, FBI and CIA to overturn a legal election. They failed and now it is time to cover their butts.
When the explosion comes many, many anti-Trumpers will have egg on their faces and many others will be headed for trial and jail. Liberals and Dems. will not admit they are wrong but some elected officials might be liable for their actions and meetings regarding this attempted coup. Stay tuned.
This goes to show that both parties were and are afraid of Trump and his ability to tear down the old boy network. He is draining the swamp and the continued attacks and contrived allegations will continue.
A few excerpts from the New Yorker January 2018:
The Steele dossier, including that it was commissioned by the Washington-based intelligence firm Fusion GPS, which received funding from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign. Some of the allegations in the dossier, including the one about the sex tape, haven’t been corroborated, and Trump has described it as a “Crooked Hillary pile of garbage.” (In publishing the dossier, BuzzFeed noted that the allegations it contained were unverified and that it contained errors.)
But in September or October of 2015—Simpson was vague about the exact date—a client hired Fusion GPS to investigate Donald Trump. (The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative Web site that has received funding from the hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer, has acknowledged hiring Fusion GPS to investigate candidates during the Republican Presidential primaries.) Simpson said the mandate was to carry out an “open-ended” examination of Trump’s business record, including his bankruptcies, and, he added, “it evolved somewhat quickly into issues of his relationship to organized-crime figures.”
Things changed in the spring of 2016, after Fusion GPS got a new client, which we now know to have been the Clinton campaign and the D.N.C. (This fact emerged in October, well after Simpson’s testimony, when lawyers from the Judiciary Committee demanded Fusion GPS’s bank records.) In “May or June of 2016,” Simpson recalled, he engaged Christopher Steele, an old associate of his, who was the former head of the Russia desk at the British foreign-intelligence agency, MI6. He and Steele, who was by then running his own intelligence consultancy in the U.K., shared an interest in the Russian kleptocracy and in organized-crime issues, Simpson said.
This goes to show that both parties were and are afraid of Trump and his ability to tear down the old boy network. He is draining the swamp and the continued attacks and contrived allegations will continue.
A few excerpts from the New Yorker January 2018:
The Steele dossier, including that it was commissioned by the Washington-based intelligence firm Fusion GPS, which received funding from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign. Some of the allegations in the dossier, including the one about the sex tape, haven’t been corroborated, and Trump has described it as a “Crooked Hillary pile of garbage.” (In publishing the dossier, BuzzFeed noted that the allegations it contained were unverified and that it contained errors.)
But in September or October of 2015—Simpson was vague about the exact date—a client hired Fusion GPS to investigate Donald Trump. (The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative Web site that has received funding from the hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer, has acknowledged hiring Fusion GPS to investigate candidates during the Republican Presidential primaries.) Simpson said the mandate was to carry out an “open-ended” examination of Trump’s business record, including his bankruptcies, and, he added, “it evolved somewhat quickly into issues of his relationship to organized-crime figures.”
Things changed in the spring of 2016, after Fusion GPS got a new client, which we now know to have been the Clinton campaign and the D.N.C. (This fact emerged in October, well after Simpson’s testimony, when lawyers from the Judiciary Committee demanded Fusion GPS’s bank records.) In “May or June of 2016,” Simpson recalled, he engaged Christopher Steele, an old associate of his, who was the former head of the Russia desk at the British foreign-intelligence agency, MI6. He and Steele, who was by then running his own intelligence consultancy in the U.K., shared an interest in the Russian kleptocracy and in organized-crime issues, Simpson said.
I think you have your timeline confused and may have omitted facts.
When Steele was compiling the Trump dossier, he was under pay of REPUBLICAN Never-Trumpers. After Trump got the nom, the dossier was of no use to them anymore, so Fusion flogged it to Hillary’s campaign. The pee dossier was a GOP project from the get-go and don’t you forget it!
More Russian collusion.
I think you have your timeline confused and may have omitted facts.
When Steele was compiling the Trump dossier, he was under pay of REPUBLICAN Never-Trumpers. After Trump got the nom, the dossier was of no use to them anymore, so Fusion flogged it to Hillary’s campaign. The pee dossier was a GOP project from the get-go and don’t you forget it!
This goes to show that both parties were and are afraid of Trump and his ability to tear down the old boy network. He is draining the swamp and the continued attacks and contrived allegations will continue.
A few excerpts from the New Yorker January 2018:
The Steele dossier, including that it was commissioned by the Washington-based intelligence firm Fusion GPS, which received funding from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign. Some of the allegations in the dossier, including the one about the sex tape, haven’t been corroborated, and Trump has described it as a “Crooked Hillary pile of garbage.” (In publishing the dossier, BuzzFeed noted that the allegations it contained were unverified and that it contained errors.)
But in September or October of 2015—Simpson was vague about the exact date—a client hired Fusion GPS to investigate Donald Trump. (The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative Web site that has received funding from the hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer, has acknowledged hiring Fusion GPS to investigate candidates during the Republican Presidential primaries.) Simpson said the mandate was to carry out an “open-ended” examination of Trump’s business record, including his bankruptcies, and, he added, “it evolved somewhat quickly into issues of his relationship to organized-crime figures.”
Things changed in the spring of 2016, after Fusion GPS got a new client, which we now know to have been the Clinton campaign and the D.N.C. (This fact emerged in October, well after Simpson’s testimony, when lawyers from the Judiciary Committee demanded Fusion GPS’s bank records.) In “May or June of 2016,” Simpson recalled, he engaged Christopher Steele, an old associate of his, who was the former head of the Russia desk at the British foreign-intelligence agency, MI6. He and Steele, who was by then running his own intelligence consultancy in the U.K., shared an interest in the Russian kleptocracy and in organized-crime issues, Simpson said.
Yes GOP’ers did hire NOT Steel but GPS to vet Trump. They abandoned that tack very early on and the HRC campaign went full in with GPS and Steel to attack Trump.
Steel dealt with Russians connected to that gov’t and compelled the dossier out of whole cloth. It was totally a fantasy. The FBI opened an investigation on Trump based on nothing but false information that was NEVER vetted by any of the US intelligence agencies. It was information pushed into the political system by Trump haters that had NO bases in fact. Clinton operatives were involved and are known by name.
The DNC then pushed this fake information with their contacts in the MSM and created a false narrative about Trump collusion that NEVER happened. The MSM was all in on this story. Now when it is exposed that there was NEVER any collusion but an attempt by some corrupt officials in the DOJ and FBI to frame DJT and undermine his presidency the MSM is trying to cover their mistakes and stories. This was nothing but an attempted coup by officials high up in the DOJ, FBI and CIA to overturn a legal election. They failed and now it is time to cover their butts.
When the explosion comes many, many anti-Trumpers will have egg on their faces and many others will be headed for trial and jail. Liberals and Dems. will not admit they are wrong but some elected officials might be liable for their actions and meetings regarding this attempted coup. Stay tuned.