Thread by @JoanneDavis

1) Fusion GPS Could Have Been Trying To Buy Access To DOJ With Payments To Official’s Wife
dailycaller.com/2018/02/04/fus…

Fusion GPS, a firm paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, was paying the wife of a senior Department of Justice official as part of its efforts to gather opposition

2) research on Trump, and the official then brought that research to the FBI — raising the question of to what extent the firm may have been attempting to pay for heightened access to the criminal justice system, & whether they would have hired her absent her spousal connection.

3) A declassified memo said Bruce “Ohr’s wife was employed by Fusion GPS to ASSIST in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump. Ohr later provided the FBI w/ALL of his WIFE'S opposition research, paid for by the #DNC and #ClintonCampaign via Fusion GPS.

4) The Ohrs’ relationship w/Steele & #FusionGPS inexplicably CONCEALED from the” COURT when it was used to obtain surveillance warrant.

Bruce Ohr was deputy associate AG until December. House investigators determined that he met personally w/Glenn Simpson, #FusionGPS’ founder.

5) The #FBI has limited resources to deal w/a firehouse of information, so people seeking the FBI’s attention could potentially benefit from greasing the wheels in order to get info to the front of the queue and to a high level.

6) “The money sweetened the pot for the Ohrs, & it certainly made it easier for Fusion to get the dossier to be used before the court if they made that payment to Bruce Ohr’s wife,” former judge and Texas GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert told The Daily Caller News Foundation,

7) “Fusion had to have known that because of the relationship between Bruce Ohr & his wife, they were bringing Fusion, the #DOJ & the #DNC together under one roof to work for the same goal, which was to stop Donald Trump from becoming president,” he said.

8) Ohr’s wife, Nellie, is a RUSSIA EXPERT, but it is not known what her specific contribution to the dossier was.

“The financial arrangement between Mrs. Ohr & #FusionGPS gives the appearance of government-for-hire,” said Tom Anderson, an ethics expert

9) at the conservative-leaning watchdog group the National Legal & Policy Center. It “appears to be a SOPHISTICATED SCHEME to get ACCESS to the highest levels of our government … ENSURING the USE of GOVERNMENT RESOURCES IN an ATTEMPT to INFLUENCE an ELECTION.”
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10) Parties seeking to HIDE ETHICALLY QUESTIONABLE PAYMENTS often write the checks to a family member. Since spouses generally share assets, payments to one benefit the other, AND paying the spouse can make the payments less obvious or harder to trace.

11) Nellie did not return a message left on a number listed as her home phone number asking what contribution she made to the dossier.

Getting information into the hands of law enforcement through the family member of an official could have potentially also

12) LIMITED the PAPER TRAIL showing how it wound up in FBI hands, and fingerprints tying it back to Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign & the (#DNC) Democratic National Committee.

13) Gohmert, who is a member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, said he believes that Ohr AND other officials already harbored anti-Trump inclinations, but the money could have helped push him over the edge to take a leading role.

14) “It was a way to reward people that thought like them. They enriched themselves and their friends.”