The Justice Department has halted work on Freedom of Information disputes because of the Chinese coronavirus.
Judicial Watch, the government watchdog that routinely files such requests, said it discovered the policy change when the DOJ halted its search for records about top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and his wife, Nellie Ohr, regarding the anti-Trump dossier created by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.
“Those responsible for Spygate get a breather while the people’s right to transparency is put on hold,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “When it came to spying on President Trump and innocent Americans, the FBI spared no expense, but coming up with a plan to fulfill their legal obligation to transparency can be put off indefinitely?”
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Judicial Watch said the Justice Department claims it is currently unable to continue searching for documents because the employees who would conduct the search in the FBI Records/Information Dissemination Section are “non-mission critical” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The employees were ordered to stay at home beginning March 17.
Michael Seidel, the assistant section chief of the department, said confirmed no FOIA processing has taken place since then. Staff is scheduled to return March 30, but “the situation remains fluid and will be regularly re-assessed as circumstances change.”
Judicial Watch said the DOJ has failed to respond to a request originally made in 2017 for information about the Ohrs and their communications with Steele.
Judicial Watch previously discovered Ohr was used by the FBI as a conduit regarding the Hillary Clinton-funded dossier between the Justice Department and the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS.
Nellie Ohr, who worked for Fusion GPS, passed dossier information to the FBI through her husband and later deleted emails received from him.
Last year, Judicial Watch found government documents revealing Bruce Ohr knew he had “possible ethics concerns.” He eventually told Congress he got Clinton-dossier information from his wife, who provided him with a memory stick he then gave to the FBI.
Judicial Watch also found that Bruce Ohr received a total of $42,520 in performance bonuses during the Trump-Russia investigation, nearly double his previous bonuses.
