Trump target in Russia probe questioned by Republicans

WASHINGTON — A longtime government lawyer who has become a central figure in President Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine the Russia investigation underwent more than seven hours of questioning Tuesday by Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Bruce Ohr was grilled behind closed doors by two GOP-led House committees that are looking into decisions made by the Justice Department ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

The lawmakers are interested in Ohr — he has also been the subject of Trump’s angry tweets — because of his relationship with Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose opposition research on Trump’s Russia ties was compiled into a dossier and turned over to the FBI before the presidential election.

Trump and his allies question the origins of the FBI’s investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, which was taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller in May 2017. Trump and some House Republicans say the dossier created a politically tainted pretext for the investigation, even though the probe began weeks before the bureau received the documents.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of the Republicans who attended Tuesday’s interview, said that, so far, Ohr’s interview and others have shown an “excessive reliance” on the dossier.

“And if the dossier truly is the rotten foundation upon which the Mueller church is built, I think that’s an important revelation,” Gaetz said.

Democrats say the entire GOP investigation is an attempt to undermine Mueller. They have criticized the Republicans’ focus on Ohr as overblown and misleading.