Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe on Monday night reportedly postponed an appearance before the House Intelligence Committee that was scheduled for Tuesday.
The abrupt cancellation occurred following a report by Fox News that raised new questions about connections between the Justice Department and Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the infamous Trump dossier.
Fox News reported that McCabe’s interview will be rescheduled for next week. The Justice Department told the network that the cancellation was due to a “routine scheduling error.”
A Congressional source told The Daily Caller that the excuse is “very hard to believe.”
A source also told Fox News that it was believed that the interview was postponed because “McCabe has an Ohr problem.”
That’s a reference to Bruce and Nellie Ohr, the husband and wife who have recently been revealed to have connections to Fusion GPS.
Fox reported on Monday that Nellie Ohr worked last year for Fusion GPS, which commissioned the dossier. The company investigated Donald Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC. (RELATED: Wife Of Demoted DOJ Official Worked For Fusion GPS)
Bruce Ohr, a high-ranking Justice Department official, also has connections to both Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, the former British spy hired by Fusion to conduct the investigation of Trump.
Ohr met prior to the election with Steele. He met several weeks after Trump’s victory with Simpson. It remains unclear what Ohr discussed during those meetings. But Ohr was stripped of his position as associate deputy attorney general last Wednesday. He still serves as director of the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.
McCabe was likely to be grilled by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee about the Ohrs during his scheduled appearance on Tuesday. He was also likely to face questions about the dossier and Peter Strzok, the FBI counterintelligence official who oversaw the FBI’s Trump investigation when it began in July 2016. Strzok was kicked off of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation over the summer because he sent anti-Trump texts to his mistress, an FBI lawyer named Lisa Page.
Strzok also played a prominent role in Hillary Clinton email investigation. He interviewed Clinton as well as several of her top aides.
Republicans on the committee have struggled to obtain meetings with FBI and DOJ officials — including McCabe and Strzok — to discuss the dossier. Republicans want to know how much the FBI relied on the salacious document to form the basis of the collusion investigation and whether the unverified report was used to obtain surveillance warrants against members of the Trump campaign.
