Declassified Memo: How Clinton Campaign Orchestrated Russia Hoax

A newly declassified FBI memo detailing the findings of its probe into Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr about the veracity of her testimony to Congress delivers new details about the Hillary Clinton campaign’s fingerprints on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. The New York Post reported that Ohr, the wife of a former Justice Department official, gave “demonstrably false” testimony to Congress about her involvement in drafting and disseminating the since-debunked dossiers.

The memo was released on Wednesday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and shows the bureau assessed that Nellie Ohr likely lied to Congress in her testimony about the genesis of the infamous Steele Dossier, her interactions with Justice Department officials, and knowledge of the Trump-Russia probe, known inside the government as "Crossfire Hurricane."

Ohr denied knowledge of DOJ probe under oath

Nellie Ohr was a researcher and analyst doing work for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign to conduct anti-Trump opposition research. That firm eventually hired disgraced British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who produced the infamous Steele Dossier and other fictional material that provided the ostensible basis for Biden's Justice Department to probe Trump.

Ohr originally told congressional investigators in October 2018, that she had no knowledge of the Justice Department’s investigations into the Trump-Russia connection, but several key facts uncovered by the FBI’s probe could spell trouble. The memo shows that she shared investigative materials from her Fusion GPS work with her husband, Bruce Ohr, who worked at the Justice Department; and that she acknowledged the investigation in her own emails.

The memo also pointed out the textual similarity between her Fusion GPS research and the official investigation, and disclosed a joint meeting with her DOJ-official husband and Christopher Steele.

Aside from Nellie Ohr’s work for Fusion GPS, which has long been the subject of congressional investigations and media attention, the declassified memo also shows more extensive Clinton campaign fingerprints on the origins of the collision investigation, with Fusion GPS being the coordinating hub of a multipronged effort to spread Russia collusion allegations to the FBI. Politico reported in 2017 that according to unnamed sources, The Democratic National Committee and Marc Elias, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton who represented the DNC and the Clinton campaign and hired Fusion GPS, helped bankroll research that led to the now-infamous dossier.

A second dossier gave Clinton media coverage to smear Trump

The memo details how a second Trump-Russia dossier — which became the focus of congressional scrutiny in 2018 — was authored by long-time Clinton associate Cody Shearer and ended up in FBI hands. The memo was passed to the FBI through Christopher Steele, who received it from a State Department official. The FBI investigator who drafted the declassified memo noted that this second dossier—which the bureau calls the “FSB Memo”—bore signs of close coordination between Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele.

This second memo was reported in the media as a potential source of corroborating evidence to vouch for the later-discredited Steele Dossier. The Guardian, for example, attempted to bolster the Steele Dossier's bona fides by asserting in 2018 that the Shearer memo “independently sets out some of the allegations made by ex-spy Christopher Steele.” At least one source told the UK-based outlet that the FBI was still assessing the details in the memo, suggesting the bureau took at least some of the claims seriously.

“It raises the possibility that parts of the Steele dossier, which has been derided by Trump’s supporters, may have been corroborated by Shearer’s research, or could still be,” journalists Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Nick Hopkins wrote.

However, the declassified FBI memo shows the bureau viewed that second memo as “obviously fictitious,” citing its wild claims and divergence from the usual characteristics of reports from confidential human sources.

FSB Report loaded with bait for investigators

“Unlike authentic intel/CHS reports, the FSB Report is full of smoking guns and derogatory information sufficient to predicate any investigative interest,” the agent wrote in the Nellie Ohr memo.

You can read the declassified FBI memo here.

Additionally, the FBI assessed that the second dossier, though purportedly independently produced, appeared to be coordinated by Fusion GPS. Though the FSB memo was not provided to the FBI by Bruce Ohr, the FBI investigators noted several concrete ties to Fusion GPS.

The FBI assessed that the version of the FSB memo that ended up in the Crossfire Hurricane file came from State Department official Jon Winer, with whom Steele met as early as September 2016. There were more links between the second, equally bogus report and Clinton's Fusion GPS. The FBI investigators also found a deleted copy of the FSB memo on a thumb drive owned by Glenn Simpson—the co-founder of Fusion GPS.

“By recovering the deleted FSB Report file from Glenn Simpson’s thumb drive, the FBI established that a thumb drive Glenn Simpson utilized was used to handle this report the day prior to its being passed to the FBI by Steele,” the memo reads.

“This appears to further establish that Christopher Steele was not running rogue, passing random Cody Shearer writings to the FBI but that this was a coordinated Fusion GPS effort,” it continues.

The investigator also notes the details in that second memo closely matched Nellie Ohr’s research areas while she was employed by Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump. The declassified memo shows the FBI believed it was likely that Ohr’s research served as a basis for many of the Trump-Russia documents that ended up in the FBI’s possession and formed the basis for the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

“It also demonstrates another example of subject matter researched by Nellie Ohr in furtherance of her Fusion GPS position being found in a Fusion GPS document provided to the FBI with the intent of predicating investigative activity,” the memo reads.

Grassley alleges Ohr violated federal law

The FBI investigators determined that Nellie Ohr likely lied to Congress in 2018 about her involvement in or knowledge of the Justice Department’s Russia collusion investigation. Despite claiming to have no knowledge of the probe, her husband, Bruce Ohr, acted as an unofficial backchannel between the FBI and Steele.

In Grassley's Wednesday statement, he said that "Ohr lied to Congress during sworn testimony and, as a result, obstructed ongoing congressional investigations, violating federal statutes 18 U.S.C. §1001 and 18 U.S.C. §1505."

18 U.S.C. § 1001 is directed at the making of false statements, while 18 U.S.C § 1505 criminalizes obstruction of justice. The Statute of Limitations for both crimes is five years, which ostensibly means that the time for her being indicted expired in 2023.

Ohr may not be out of the woods yet, because criminal law allows an exception to the Statute of Limitations called "The Discovery Rule," which postpones the start of the Statute of Limitations until the police, or prosecutors only later discovered the crime. It is not clear yet whether Attorney General Pam Bondi or FBI Director Kash Patel intend to pursue that line of legal attack. The crimes each carry a five-year jail term and are also subject to a maximum fine of $10,000. A DOJ spokesperson told news media that “Justice Department policy is generally to neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.”

Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller's two-year investigation into the Trump-Russia allegations “did not establish” any collusion. Additionally, Inspector General Michael Horowitz found flaws in the FBI’s investigation and criticized the “central and essential” role of the dossier in the FBI’s surveillance of Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.

A 2023 report by Justice Department Special Counsel John Durham into the saga concluded that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” That report also found the "FBI ignored the fact that at no time before, during, or after Crossfire Hurricane were investigators able to corroborate a single substantive allegation in the Steele dossier reporting.”