Bruce Genesoke Ohr is a former United States Department of Justice official. A former associate deputy attorney general and former director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), as of February 2018 Ohr was working in the Justice Department's Criminal Division. He is an expert on transnational organized crime and has spent most of his career overseeing gang and racketeering-related prosecutions, including Russian organized crime.
Ohr was little-known until 2018, when he became the subject of scrutiny when he was involved in the start of the Russian interference in the 2016 election probe. He was criticized by President Donald Trump, who accused Ohr of abusing his access to sensitive information. No evidence has emerged that Ohr was involved in the initiation of the Russia probe or that Ohr mishandled sensitive information. According to a comprehensive review by ABC News, Ohr "had little impact on the FBI’s growing probe into Trump and his associates." The Department of Justice Inspector General reported that Ohr had made "consequential errors in judgment" in failing to inform his supervisors about his role in the investigation.
On September 30, 2020, Ohr retired from his position at DOJ "after his counsel was informed that a final decision on a disciplinary review being conducted by Department senior career officials was imminent".
Early life and education
Bruce Ohr is of Korean heritage, being the child of Korean immigrants. He graduated from Harvard College in 1984 with a degree in physics and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1987.
Career
Ohr worked for a law firm in San Francisco before becoming a career civil servant at the U.S. Department of Justice, ultimately rising to the rank of associate deputy attorney general. He was an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1991 to 1999, and was head of the office's Violent Gangs Unit before joining the Justice Department's Washington headquarters as the head of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the Criminal Division, where Ohr managed teams investigating and prosecuting crime syndicates in Russia and eastern Europe. In 2006, Ohr was one of a number of U.S. government officials who made the decision to revoke the visa of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and Vladimir Putin ally.
In 2010, Ohr moved to a new position as counsel for international relations in DOJ's Transnational organized crime and international affairs section. In 2014 he became director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF).
In 2014–2016, Bruce Ohr was involved in a wide–ranging clandestine effort by the U.S. government to recruit Russia's richest men close to Vladimir Putin, such as Oleg Deripaska, as informants for the U.S. government. During this time, Ohr had contacts with the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, whom he had first met in 2007. Steele was also involved in this effort. Steele later authored the Steele dossier in 2016. The New York Times reported that this recruitment effort did not "appear to have scored any successes"; and in Deripaska's case, Deripaska is said to have even notified the Russian authorities about the American effort to recruit him.
Ohr later became associate deputy attorney general, but lost that position in late 2017, although he remained director of OCDETF for a time. Ohr was later demoted by the Department of Justice amid the Senate Intelligence Committee's discovery of his meetings with Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson.
Russia probe
Ohr had repeated contacts with FBI agents during the fall and winter of 2016–2017, where he shared information he had received from Steele's dossier research. During this time, Ohr failed to inform his supervisors in the Justice Department of his role, actions which were "shocking" to Rod Rosenstein when he learned of Ohr's role. Rosenstein stated that Ohr "appeared to be serving as an 'intermediary' with Steele". The dossier was prepared under a contract to the DNC and the Clinton campaign, by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. During the 2016 election, Bruce's wife, Nellie Ohr, a Russia specialist, worked for Fusion GPS as an independent contractor. Nellie Ohr, according to a Republican-led investigation, conducted "research and analysis" of Donald Trump for Fusion GPS. An ABC News report stated that Nellie Ohr "was not directly involved in the 'dossier' while she worked for Fusion GPS."