WHO THE FUCK IS BRUCE OHR? A Wonksplainer Of Who The Fuck That Guy Is

You're going to be hearing his name a lot more.

On Tuesday, a guy named Bruce Ohr testified behind closed doors for the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, and immediately afterward, Republican congressmen rushed in front of reporters' cameras , probably kicking babies along the way, to tell them that Ohr's testimony was BAD and just more evidence of DEEP STATE WITCH HUNT against saintly Donald Trump. We're sure GOP Judiciary chairman Bob Goodlatte really made his son proud again.

If you are a normal person, you are probably asking WHO THE FUCK IS BRUCE OHR?

If you are a brain wizard Republican like Devin Nunes, you are pretty sure Bruce Ohr is part of the DEEP STATE HILLARY CONSPIRACY AGAINST TRUMP, and you literally just went to England to see if a bunch of British spies would be willing to give you dirt on Ohr's meetings with Christopher Steele, the spy author of THE DOSSIER. (Those spies told Devin Nunes to go fuck cows.)

If you are Louie Gohmert or Jim Jordan, you spend a LOT OF TIME SCREAMING BRUCE OHR'S NAME AT CLOUDS DURING CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE HEARINGS. (In Jordan's case, we imagine his screaming muffles the sounds of college wrestlers being molested by the team doc right next to him, allegedly.)

The general "allegation" against Ohr, if you can even call it that (only if you're a moron), is that he is a longtime DOJ official whose wife Nellie Ohr did some work for Fusion GPS (the American intel firm that contracted Steele to look into Trump's Russian connections), and who communicated with Steele even after the FBI "terminated" Steele as a source just before the 2016 election. This violates ... nothing. As Natasha Bertrand explains in  The Atlantic,  the FBI approved the briefings Ohr gave Steele, because it wasn't like Steele was persona non grata or anything. (Steele is one of the most respected Russia experts in the world, and was the head Russianist at MI6.) Steele quit working with the FBI officially as a source in October 2016 and decided to talk to selected members of the media because he was worried the FBI wasn't taking his intel seriously, as Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson testified multiple   times to Congress. We'd feel the same way, if we had just uncovered a Russo-Trumpian conspiracy to steal America and the FBI had its thumb up its ass worrying about Hillary Clinton's fucking emails!

Moron Republicans also believe Ohr was the one who originally gave the dossier to the FBI. That is not true. Moreover, Ohr has had no direct involvement with any of the Russia investigations. So ... yeah . Devin Nunes is standing below the wrong cow's bedroom window with a jambox blasting Peter Gabriel songs with this particular line of investigation. (AGAIN.)

But no matter! Now, Bruce Ohr is on Donald Trump's enemies list of people whose security clearances he wants revoked, which by extension means Ohr would lose his DOJ career. Why? Because Trump has heard shitwhistles like Devin Nunes screaming his name on Fox News, and for the president of the United States, that's even better than an intelligence briefing, because the president is the most insanely fucking stupid person in all of America.

But could there be some other thing about Bruce Ohr that might make Donald Trump want to eliminate him? We recently noted that many of the people on Trump's enemies list could be correctly described as witnesses in the investigation, both on the Trump-Russia stuff and the Trump obstruction of justice stuff. Another running theme is that several of them are absolute experts in areas that would make Trump feel particularly vulnerable.  

For example, Peter Strzok, who was fired from the FBI for consensual sexting, is a fucking badass who used to run the FBI's counterintelligence unit. Notably he was a big part of the investigation that took down The Illegals, that ring of Russian spies who infiltrated America and talked American and acted American, and whose story became the basis for this little show called "The Americans." And when the FBI started its investigation into the Trump campaign's illicit ties with Russia, Strzok was on that team. Goodbye, Peter Strzok, your services are no longer necessary in Putin's America!

Of course, Christopher Steele does not work for the American government, but Trump and the GOP are shitting on the reputation of one of the foremost Russia experts in the world not only because he knows Trump's Russia stuff, but he gets Trump's Russia stuff. He is thus poised to bring a lot of pain upon the Kremlin-compromised Trump administration.

So what about Ohr? Anything on his resume like that? Oh, nothing, Ohr just likes to take down the Russian mob in his spare time and he's real fuckin' good at it. He headed the organized crime and racketeering department at DOJ, he's spent decades investigating and prosecuting Russian organized crime, and oh yeah, Paul Manafort's Russian money man Oleg Deripaska, who is also known as Putin's favorite oligarch, probably just fuckin' hates the guy:

In 2006, Mr. Ohr was part of a group of government officials who revoked the visa of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire and aluminum magnate.

HUH. Wonder why Trump world would want to go after that guy!

Here, let Rachel Maddow tell you Bruce Ohr's life story:

As the New York Times explains, Ohr and Steele have known each other for more than 10 years. So it makes sense that after Steele quit working officially with the FBI, he would still brief his old friend Bruce Ohr on what kind of Russian dirt he was turning up. (That's why the FBI signed off on it!) Ohr and Steele are, after all, two of the world's most prominent figures working to investigate crime and espionage perpetrated by Russia.

BETTER FUCK HIM UP, TRUMP!

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[ New York Times ]