While all legacy media and liberal eyes have been focused on Trump "fixer" Michael Cohen and Clintonista lawyer Lanny Davis's lies about Trump payoffs to old girlfriends, few have focused on the activities of Andrew Weissmann, special counsel Robert Mueller's chief deputy and investigator, who has a well deserved reputation as Mueller's "pit bull."

Weissmann, among his other jobs, was lead prosecutor in the trial of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.  Weissmann was also Mueller's attorney on the ground, who oversaw the pre-dawn raid on Manafort's home.  He was a key player in Mueller's team of angry Democrat lawyers and donors bent on bringing down the Trump presidency based on false charges of Trump collusion with Russians meddling in the 2016 presidential election.  The problem is, as former deputy assistant attorney general Bruce Ohr's closed-door testimony before Congress shows, Weissmann had full knowledge of the fake nature of the Steele dossier, which was a major predicate of the Russian witch-hunt that became the Mueller probe.  Weissman knew there was collusion with the Russians and that it was among the DNC; the Clinton campaign; British agent Christopher Steele; Fusion GPS; the DOJ; the FBI; and, yes, Russian sources interested in upending the Trump presidency.

In the parlance of the day, this would make Weissmann an unindicted co-conspirator in the Deep State plot to bring Trump down.  He could have pulled the plug on the Mueller witch-hunt, but didn't.  He could have pushed to go after Democrat collusion with Russia on the dossier, but didn't.

Bruce Ohr, the number-four official at the Justice Department as U.S. deputy associate attorney general and the highest ranking non-appointee, with an office a couple of doors down from Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein, kept Weissmann "in the loop" about the fake dossier and its journeys through the Deep State swamp.  Joining him were a myriad of other co-conspirators in a web of conspiracy and deceit so vast that Watergate trivia question Carl Bernstein may be right in a way he did not intend when he suggested that this whole matter may be bigger than Watergate.  It seems that only the DOJ janitor was not involved.

As Catherine Herridge of Fox News reports:

Embattled Justice Department official Bruce Ohr had contact in 2016 with then-colleague Andrew Weissmann, who is now a top Robert Mueller deputy, as well as other senior FBI officials about the controversial anti-Trump dossier and the individuals behind it, two sources close to the matter told Fox News.

The sources said Ohr's outreach about the dossier – as well as its author, ex-British spy Christopher Steele; the opposition research firm behind it, Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS; and his wife Nellie Ohr's work for Fusion – occurred before and after the FBI fired Steele as a source over his media contacts.  Ohr's network of contacts on the dossier included: former FBI agent Peter Strzok; former FBI lawyer Lisa Page; former deputy director Andrew McCabe; Weissmann and at least one other DOJ official; and a current FBI agent who worked with Strzok on the Russia case.

Weissmann was kept "in the loop" on the dossier, a source said, while he was chief of the criminal fraud division.  He is now assigned to Special Counsel Mueller's team.

Weissmann had to know that the dossier was fake and that its use in obtaining FISA warrants to conduct surveillance on Team Trump and provide a predicate for the Mueller witch-hunt was a fraud committed upon the FISA court.  If he knew, Robert Mueller should have known.  Their proceeding with their "investigation" into Team Trump based on the fraudulently obtained FISA warrants is more than an abuse of power.  It is a criminal act.  Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett notes that Ohr's testimony is damning in a criminal sense:

We learned today that James Comey's FBI was far more corrupt than we ever knew.  We already knew that he used a false document from a wire they fire (ph).  But today we learned that Bruce Ohr told Comey and his confederates that this is a guy, Christopher Steele, who had said he was desperate to stop Donald Trump.  He was vagrantly (ph) anti- Trump.  They should have stopped right there in their tracks and said goodbye to Steele, thrown his dossier in the garbage.  But they didn't care.  They moved ahead to launch this investigation of Trump to damage him and to spy on a Trump associate.

These people should be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, for perjury, abuse of power, and about three other felonies I can think of.  The law enforcers became the law breakers.  And where is the FISA court?  Why aren't these judges holding these in criminal contempt?  Why didn't they prosecute these people with indictments[?]

As Sean Hannity noted on his show Tuesday, Bruce Ohr was well aware of the fraudulent nature of the Steele dossier and the FISA applications based on them, a fact that he no doubt passed on when he was keeping everyone involved in this conspiracy "in the loop":

"We did learn from Bruce Ohr today that he understood the Steele dossier would never have been accepted in a court of law, 65 pages of notes and text of meetings between him and Steele... so much to cover, it might take the whole hour," Hannity said.  "There is no doubt that a conspiracy to commit fraud multiple times against FISA judges did take place."

"Everyone who signed off on this FISA request signed off on fraudulent documents, and they knew they were fraudulent," he said.

Christopher Steele himself could not confirm the dossier's claims.  Even the corrupt James Comey said that they were "salacious and unverified."  So if they could not be used in a court of law, why were they used in FISA applications to authorize surveillance of Team Trump?  Because it was a means to their desired end – the destruction of the Trump presidency, which also meant lying to the court about its sourcing and financing.  Andrew Weissman knew this, and no doubt Robert Mueller knows this, too.

When the FBI "fired" Steele for leaking to the press, a back channel through Ohr and his wife Nellie was created:

"It was obvious early on that Bruce Ohr was the backchannel for Steele," said a congressional source with direct knowledge of the testimony.  "The FBI was aware of potential bias of Nellie Ohr and they knew about Steele's bias early on but never included it in the FISA application.  It's astonishing the FBI kept the information from the court: the fact that there was a back channel after they terminated Christopher Steele and also Fusion GPS, knowing Ohr's wife was working there."

Not only was Bruce Ohr a conduit for the dossier information, but he and his wife also profited handsomely from their involvement in its production and dissemination:

Fusion GPS and its co-founder have not responded to Fox News' questions for this story, or previous reports.  While Fusion GPS financial records were the subject of a lawsuit, and are not public, sources told Fox News that Nellie Ohr received "multiple payments" in 2016 from Fusion GPS, and the amounts were "not small change."

This is corruption of the highest order at the highest level.  Nellie Ohr worked for Fusion GPS and was paid by Fusion GPS as her high-ranking DOJ husband was colluding with a British agent and Russian sources to bring down Trump.

Also working with, if not for, Fusion GPS was one Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump, Jr. at Trump Tower.  Manafort's home, hotel, and office were raided at the behest of Mueller, whose team admitted in a court filing that the Veselnitskaya meeting was a motive for the Manafort raid, managed by Andrew Weissmann.

Never interviewed by Mueller's team, Veselnitskaya did meet with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson before and after the Trump Tower meeting, suggesting it was a setup to entrap Team Trump as part of the Deep State coup against Trump:

[H]ours before the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, Fusion co-founder and ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson was with Veselnitskaya in a Manhattan federal courtroom, a confidential source told Fox News.  Court records reviewed by Fox News, email correspondence and published reports corroborate the pair's presence together.  The source told Fox News they also were together after the Trump Tower meeting.

Weissmann is a partisan hack and Mueller thug who sent an email to acting attorney general Sally Yates, one of those who signed the fraudulent FISA applications, congratulating her on her for refusing to defend in court President Trump's travel ban:

A senior member of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigative team said he was in "awe" of former acting Attorney General Sally Yates the day she was fired for refusing to defend President Trump's controversial travel ban, according to emails obtained by a conservative watchdog group.

Andrew Weissmann, a veteran Justice Department prosecutor who is one of Mueller's top lieutenants on the special counsel probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, sent a Jan. 30 email to Yates that appeared to laud her for standing up to Trump.

"I am so proud and in awe," Weissmann wrote, according to emails obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act request.  "Thank you so much."

He also attended Hillary Clinton's 2016 almost victory party, probably shedding a tear over her loss and fueling his desire to overturn Trump's surprising victory.

Weissmann knew all about the Deep State coup starting with but not stopping with the fake Fusion GPS dossier.  As he sits with Robert Mueller, looking to see if Trump paid any Russian's unpaid parking tickets, it is obvious that the Mueller witch-hunt is just that.  It is an enterprise interested not in true Russian collusion and meddling, but in a conspiracy to bring down the Trump presidency.

Bruce Ohr's closed-door testimony is enough to justify shutting it down.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.