Former Judge: Ohr, Comey Could Be Held In Contempt Of Court For Misrepresentations

by Luke Rosiak

A FISA court judge has grounds to hold Department of Justice officials including Bruce Ohr in contempt of court for making misrepresentations about the sources of information used to obtain a surveillance warrant against a Trump associate, a former judge and Republican congressman said.

“I think it’s important to know who the FISA judge was, and why with all the info he’s had for some time, he has not put anyone in jail for committing fraud on his court,” Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican who serves on the Committee on the Judiciary, told The Daily Caller News Foundation Friday.

Related: How the law applies to allegations of abuse of power in the FISA memo

“You shouldn’t be able to get quotes from Bruce Ohr or [former FBI Director Jim] Comey or [deputy director Andrew] McCabe because they ought to be sitting in jail for committing fraud upon the court,” he said.

A memo declassified Friday showed that the Department of Justice sought and a FISA court granted a warrant to spy on former Trump campaign official Carter Page based on a dossier that was funded by the Clinton 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee and orchestrated by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS.

Fusion paid the wife of then-deputy associate attorney general Bruce Ohr, and Ohr met with Fusion’s founder Glenn Simpson.

The memo said “Ohr’s wife was employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump. Ohr later provided the FBI with all of his wife’s opposition research, paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign via Fusion GPS. The Ohrs’ relationship with Steele and Fusion GPS was inexplicably concealed from the” court when it was used to obtain a surveillance warrant.

Gohmert said the judge should not be happy with that omission. “This was an action by the DNC and known collusion with top officials at the DOJ and FBI to commit a fraud upon the FISA court.”

He said the actions of the judge on the secret court need to be examined. “The judge has to have known for months now that he or she had a fraud committed against them and he or she has done nothing. Any judge worth any salt would have called them in for hearings, and he can even order anyone who committed fraud upon the court to go to jail. This judge is either worthless or is in cahoots with those who manipulated it.”

Attorneys can be sanctioned by the bar association for misrepresentations, but they can also be held by the judge for contempt of court, he said.

Gohmert said the underlying evidence upon which the memo is based should also be released. “The sources were high authorities in the FBI and the Justice Department as well as an uncorroborated hater of Donald Trump.”

“I’m totally in support of keeping methods and sources secret, unless it’s a case like this where the sources and methods are fraud, in which case everyone needs to be able to assess that,” he said.

He said beyond politics, the apparent approval of the warrant despite problems with evidence raises the question of whether others are unfairly subject to surveillance. “We need to find out if we need to stop the FISA process entirely.”

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org