Department of Justice (DOJ) documents show that Bruce Ohr, the husband of Fusion GPS researcher Nellie Ohr and a conduit for infamous dossier author Christopher Steele, got a raise and a $28,000 bonus during the Russia probe.
Documents obtained from the department by Judicial Watch show that Ohr received a $28,000 bonus in November 2016, nearly double the $14,520 bonus he got a year prior.
The documents label the bonus as a performance award.
November 2016 was during a time when law enforcement was spying on members and former members of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign team, including Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
The documents also show that Ohr was removed from his position as associate deputy attorney general on Dec. 6, 2017; about a month later, he was reassigned to counselor for International Affairs in the DOJ Criminal Division, getting a $2,600 pay boost in the process to $189,000 a year.
“These documents will raise questions as to whether the conflicted Bruce Ohr, who the FBI used to launder information from Christopher Steele was rewarded for his role in the illicit targeting of President Trump,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.
Steele, the ex-British spy who compiled the dossier, which contains a slew of unsubstantiated allegations that were promoted by top officials and many media outlets despite the lack of evidence, was regularly in touch with Bruce Ohr before and after Trump was elected president.
The DOJ has not commented on the pay increase or bonuses.
More and more has been revealed about the Ohrs, who were, in different ways, at the heart of unsubstantiated allegations of collusion between Trump and Russia that were fed to law enforcement.
Judicial Watch recently obtained documents showing Nellie Ohr, the analyst for opposition research firm Fusion GPS, deleted messages about Russian influence operations from her husband’s government email account.
“Thanks! I’m deleting these emails now,” Nellie Ohr told her husband in an April 20, 2016, email at the end of a thread of exchanges between the Ohrs, Bruce Ohr’s DOJ assistant, Lisa Holtyn, and Stefen Bress, a first secretary at the German Embassy in Washington.
The subject line of the emails was “Analyst Russian Organized Crime – April 2016,” in which Bress offered to provide two Russia analysts for an “analytical exchange” discussion with Ohr, Holtyn, and other unnamed DOJ officials of multiple topics, including the “Impact of Russian influence operations in Europe (‘PsyOps/InfoWar’).”
During the email exchange, in addition to the hour-long meeting at the DOJ, Holtyn, on behalf of the Ohrs, invited Bress, his wife, and the analysts to the Ohr’s home for dinner.
Bress responded that his wife was unable to attend the dinner but said he “would be happy to eat her portion of food and drink her glass of wine.”
Nellie Ohr was copied on the exchange from her husband’s DOJ email account.
“This email is disturbing and suggests documents relevant to the improper targeting of President Trump were destroyed,” Fitton said in a statement on May 17.
Nellie Ohr was referred to the DOJ for criminal investigation on May 1.
Epoch Times reporter Mark Tapscott contributed to this report.
