“SERIOUS CRIMES”
by Sharon Rondeau
(Aug. 28, 2018) — Following Sean Hannity’s opening statement on his Tuesday night show, guests Rep. John Ratcliffe and journalist John Solomon reported that DOJ official Bruce Ohr, who earlier testified privately to members of the House Judiciary Committee, said that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has never contacted him in regard to the Trump-Russia probe.
For more than 15 months, Mueller has been investigating allegations of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
Ohr’s testimony is considered significant in shedding light on the role of several individuals in circulating the unverified dossier which attempted to paint Donald Trump in a poor light in the months leading up to the 2016 election. Text messages recently released by the DOJ to Congress and made public show that Ohr and dossier author Christopher Steele were in frequent communication both before and after the election, with Steele referring to a “firewall” he feared would be breached once then-FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress in early 2017.
Steele was fired by the FBI as a confidential human source (CHS) in November 2016 after the agency determined that Steele leaked information to the media.
Ratcliffe said that Ohr’s testimony Tuesday was “shocking, alarming and disappointing” and something which did not occur when he was a federal prosecutor.
The dossier was used to obtain surveillance warrants on Carter Page, who was a foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016.
Ratcliffe said that there is a confidentiality agreement in place with Ohr at present which limits the information he is able to divulge.
Later in the show, investigative journalist Sara A. Carter described Ohr’s testimony as having demonstrated that the conduct of the FBI and DOJ is considered “inexcusable,” particularly as it relates to the FISA surveillance applications.
“The law-enforcers became the law-breakers,” Fox News Legal Analyst Gregg Jarrett told Hannity, to which Carter added that “serious crimes” have been committed.