Q I'm sorry. Chris Steele knows who?
A Bruce Ohr.
Q Okay.
A And I met Bruce too through organized crime conferences or something like that. And Chris said he had been -- Chris told me that he had been talking to Bruce, that he had told Bruce about what happened, and that Bruce wanted more information, and suggested that I speak with Bruce.
The context of this is that it was after the election. A very surprising thing had happened, which is that Donald Trump had won. There was -- we were -- by that time, we were enormously concerned about rapidly accumulating indications that the Russian Government had mounted a massive attack on the American election system and that, you know, Donald Trump or his associates might have been involved.
And there was a lot of alarming things happening, including Donald Trump saying things about Vladimir Putin that didn't really make any sense, weren't ordinary things for a Republican to say, and, you know -- anyway.
So we had also by this time given this information to the FBI, and they had, you know, told -- indicated to Chris that they were investigating it, and then told -- apparently told The New York Times they weren't.
And so it was not clear to us whether anyone at a high level of government was aware of the information that Chris had gathered and provided to the FBI. And, you know, so we were, frankly, you know, very scared for the country and for ourselves and felt that if we could give it to someone else, we should, higher up.
And so Chris suggested I give some information to Bruce, give him the background to all this. And we eventually met at a coffee shop, and I told him the
UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
