On Dec. 10, 2016, Bruce Ohr met with Simpson, who gave him a memory stick that Ohr believed contained a copy of the Steele dossier. Ohr also passed this second memory stick along to Pientka.
On Jan. 20, 2017, Ohr had one final communication with Simpson, a phone call that took place on the same day as Trump’s inauguration. Ohr testified that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson was concerned that one of Steele’s sources was about to be exposed through the pending publication of an article:
Mr. Ohr: “He says something along the lines of, I — there’s going to be some reporting in the next few days that’s going to — could expose the source, and the source could be in personal danger.”
Rep. Meadows: “And why was he concerned about that source being exposed?”
Mr. Ohr: “I think he was aware of some kind of article that was likely to come out in the next, you know, few days or something.”
Apparently, Simpson’s information was at least partly accurate. On Jan. 24, 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that Sergei Millian, a Belarusan-American businessman and onetime Russian government translator, was both “Source D” and “Source E” in the dossier. It remains unknown exactly how Simpson knew in advance that Millian would be outed as a source.
But there are some questions as to the accuracy of the Journal’s reporting. The dossier appears to conflict with the newspaper’s article in at least one aspect. According to the dossier, Source E was used as confirmation for Source D—meaning they can’t be the same person.
McCain, the Dossier, and a UK Connection
Simpson and Steele were carefully thorough in their dissemination efforts. The dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several different sources.
The use of personal relationships as a mechanism to transmit outside information to the FBI was actually noted by Baker, who said of Corn: “Even though he was my friend, I was also an FBI official. He knew that. And so he wanted to somehow get that into the hands of the FBI.”
Bruce Ohr’s FBI Handler
Christopher Steele was terminated as a source by the FBI on Nov. 1, 2016, for communicating with the media. Despite this, DOJ official Bruce Ohr and Steele communicated regularly for another full year, until November 2017.
On Nov. 21, 2016, Ohr had a meeting with FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and was introduced to FBI agent Joe Pientka, who became Ohr’s FBI handler. Pientka was also present with Strzok during the Jan. 24, 2017, interview of Trump’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
The next day, Nov. 22, 2016, Ohr met alone with Pientka. Ohr would continue to relay his communications with Steele to the FBI through Pientka, who then recorded them in FD-302 forms. What Ohr didn’t know was that Pientka was transmitting all the information directly to Strzok.
Ohr, in his testimony, detailed his interactions with Steele and Glenn Simpson, as well as his communications with officials at the FBI and DOJ. Notably, Ohr repeatedly stated that he never vetted any of the information provided by either Steele or Simpson. He simply turned it over or relayed it to the FBI—usually to Pientka—but Ohr also testified that “at least on two occasions I was handed onto a new agent.”
Sometime in late 2016, his wife, Nellie Ohr, provided him with a memory stick containing all of her research that she had compiled while employed at Fusion GPS. Bruce Ohr testified he gave the memory stick to Pientka. Nellie Ohr had left Fusion in September 2016. Through Pientka, Strzok now had all of Nellie Ohr’s Fusion research in his possession.