Nellie Ohr's Story--Puzzlements

Reading Nellie Ohr's testimony to the House (October 19, 2018) is a bit of a frustrating experience. In the first place there's a significant amount of recurring legal wrangling over the scope of the spousal privilege that Nellie is claiming with regard to her husband, Bruce Ohr, who testified to the House on August 28, 2018. Beyond that, however, Nellie is, when compared to any of the previous witnesses, tight lipped. She volunteers virtually nothing, constantly asks for questions to be rephrased, and generally professes ignorance on most matters that she's questioned on. Nevertheless, there are possibly significant points in her testimony, so let's take a closer look.

Probably the biggest surprise in her testimony is her confirmation that Ukrainian legislator Serhiy Leshchenko was a "source" for Fusion GPS. One point of interest in this is the entire line of questioning--as of October 19, 2018, I don't think Serhiy Leshchenko was on any researchers' radar screens, but he was definitely on the House GOP's radar screen. Nellie herself states that she was quite familiar with Leshchenko as an "anti-corruption" activist in Ukraine--a George Soros connected angle that we recently explored in The Soros, Ukraine, FBI Connection and Do All Roads In The Russia Hoax Lead To Ukraine? The exchange regarding Leshchenko between Nellie and the Committee is a bit ambiguous toward the end, but there's no doubt that the questioners believe that Leshchenko was providing information about the travels of Trump family members--and area of research that Nellie was engaged in. As I say, it's somewhat unclear whether Nellie actually confirms that, although the probability is that she does--but suggests that there may have been more to Leshchenko's source information than simply Trump family travel. You decide (pp. 113-115):

Do All Roads In The Russia Hoax Lead To Ukraine?

I've been mentioning the Ukraine angle to the Russia Hoax in comments and asides for several weeks. Yesterday evening, with a Zerohedge post (Real Collusion: Ukraine Launches Criminal Investigation Into Pro-Hillary Election Meddling) and several articles there the story may have achieved liftoff.

As with all aspects of the Russia Hoax this is complicated, so we'll need to work our way into it one step at a time.

Paul Manafort

A good place to start is with Paul Manafort. Recall that Manafort joined the Trump campaign in March, 2016--coincidentally or not, at the same time that Carter Page and George Papadopoulos were brought on board. Manafort was campaign manager for almost exactly two months (June 20 to August 19) before being abruptly fired. But the real point is that from 2003 right up to 2016 Manafort had been a "political consultant" in Ukraine.

How did Manafort's involvement in the Trump campaign actually come to pass? It turns out that that remains a bit of a mystery. As explained by Time magazine (How Donald Trump Hired and Fired Paul Manafort), the standard, Wikipedia endorsed theory, is that Manafort was recommended to Trump by a close Trump friend, Thomas Barrack, Jr. But, as Time notes,

... probe a little deeper and none of the sources familiar with the details can quite agree anymore how Trump came to decide hiring Manafort was a good idea. At least three differing and at-times-contradictory versions are offered by sources in Trump’s orbit.

There's the Barrack story, of course, but another account has it that Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, recommended Manafort to Papa Trump as someone who knew the ropes of political conventions and would be more "professional" than the upstart Corey Lewandowski, who had helped propel Trump through the primaries. And some claim that Roger Stone was the connection to Manafort.

All of these accounts--or a mix of them--are possible, of course. Nevertheless, they tend to leave one asking, Is it possible that some clever person or organization worked through these Trump associates to get Manafort a spot near the top of the Trump campaign. Consider--as Time suggests, that hiring Manafort was "a good idea" wasn't exactly self evident, in the circumstances, so how was persuading Papa Trump managed? And then that coincidence--or non-coincidence--that Manafort came on board at basically the same time that Carter Page and George Papadopoulos did seems a bit like lightening striking the same place three times. (For the view that Page and Papadopoulos may have been "lured" into the Trump campaign for the purpose of setting them up, cf. The Spy In The Trump Campaign.)