True to his word, FBI Director Kash Patel on Wednesday released a bombshell series of documents detailing, for the first time, many of the lengths to which agents went to investigate baseless collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian officials to influence the election.

The batch, released by Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Wednesday, contains exhaustive requests by the FBI’s Washington office sent to the Office of the Special Counsel for information about testimony by Nellie Ohr, a Russian specialist who is believed to have played a formative role in creating the false Steele dossier.

Dated Sep. 18, 2019, the office headed by former Director Christopher Wray wrote Special Counsel Robert Mueller asking for materials to determine whether to open a criminal investigation into Ohr, the wife of former Justice Department official Bruce Ohr who President Donald Trump has long accused of disseminating information to the political firm which created the Steele dossier.

Previous Republican-led investigations into Nellie Ohr concluded that she may have provided false testimony while describing her work with Christopher Steele, a former British spy who was hired by a Clinton campaign sub-vendor named Fusion GPS.

The new documents state that members of the FBI were initially rebuffed by Mueller’s special counsel office, hindering their ability to prosecute Nellie Ohr at the time.

“On May 31, 2019, D5-POST SCO TEAM advised that some but not all of the cases related to Trump/Russian-collusion had been migrated from Prohibited status to Restricted Access status so that investigators might have the opportunity to identify potentially relevant Restricted Access serials,” the Washington office wrote summarizing the interaction.

However, the sheer volume of searches needed to complete the investigation, combined with the lack of FBI manpower or help from the Special Counsel’s Office, left the FBI in a lurch and without evidence to carry on a prosecution.

Agents “remain incapable of identifying potentially relevant serials in those cases that remained in ‘Prohibited Access’ status,” authors added.

Ohr in 2016 was employed by Fusion GPS, which was hired by the Clinton campaign to explore connections between candidate Trump and Russia. Her marriage to Bruce Ohr, who was currently serving in the Obama Justice Department at the time, became the subject of scrutiny following Trump’s successful election.

Wray, a Trump appointee, later fell out of favor after the president accused him of doing too little to bring charges in the Russiagate case. He resigned shortly before President Trump took office again in 2025.

Evidence in the documents reportedly show that Nellie Ohr shared some of her political research with associates of her husband, contradicting her sworn testimony.

“Documents reviewed by our committees raise concerns Ms. Ohr not only had knowledge of an ongoing DOJ investigation, but that she shared information and research on Russian organized crime to assist DOJ, in direct contradiction with her testimony,” former Congressman Mark Meadows previously said about the probe.

Taken together, the documents raise new questions about to what extent the FBI under Wray went to prosecute Nellie Ohr and to what degree Mueller’s special counsel team may have stymied its criminal investigation.