[The Hill] July and August 2016 one day may be remembered as the infamous summer of Steele and Ohr.That’s because new evidence shows former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr’s efforts to influence the FBI’s Russia probe ‐ on behalf of Donald Trump‐despising British spy Christopher Steele ‐ started much earlier than previously described.
For much of the past year, many in Congress have labored under the notion that Ohr, then the No. 4 Department of Justice (DOJ) official, began assisting the FBI’s probe into Russia election collusion only after Trump won the 2016 election.
Lawmakers’ belief was rooted in reports showing Ohr’s first documented interview with FBI agents occurred in November 2016, and in testimony from Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who mentioned Ohr’s involvement in the probe as starting after Thanksgiving 2016.
But now, based on Ohr’s own account in a closed-door congressional interview and other contemporaneous documents, congressional investigators have learned that Ohr made his first contact with the FBI about Trump-Russia collusion evidence in late July and early August 2016. And his approach was prompted by information he got from his friend, the former British intelligence agent Steele.