Trump said Nellie Ohr works for Fusion GPS, the research firm that did consulting work for the Democratic National Committee and hired Steele to compile the dossier.

“The big story that the fake news media refuses to report is lowlife Christopher Steele’s many meetings with deputy AG Bruce Ohr” and Ohr’s wife, Nellie, Trump tweeted on Saturday. Steele is a former British spy who wrote a dossier claiming that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 election.

WASHINGTON — President Trump stepped up his attacks on his own attorney general over the weekend, calling Jeff Sessions “scared stiff and missing in action” for not fighting alleged bias in the investigation on the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia.


“I have never seen anything so rigged in my life. Our AG is scared stiff and missing in action. It is all starting to be revealed — not pretty,” the president said. “Witch hunt!”

Trump has said repeatedly that Steele’s findings prompted the inquiry that led to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, but a congressional report found it began months earlier, after a tip about George Papadopoulos, one of Trump’s political advisers.

Saturday’s comments by Trump appeared to be responding to a statement by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which said it is suing the Justice Department for records of communications involving Ohr, his wife, Steele, and Fusion GPS.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Sessions, a former Republican senator from Alabama, who recused himself from Mueller’s inquiry into Russian meddling in the election.

“Sessions should stop this rigged witch hunt now,” Trump tweeted Aug. 1.

Earlier on Saturday, on a rainy day at his New Jersey golf course, Trump said he may intervene to force the Federal Bureau of Investigation to turn over to Judicial Watch text messages sent by former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.


“Why isn’t the FBI giving Andrew McCabe text messages to Judicial Watch or appropriate governmental authorities,” Trump tweeted. “FBI said they won’t give up even one. . . . What are they hiding?”

On Sunday, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway was asked on ABC’s “This Week” whether Sessions would still be in office by the end of the year. “How in the world would I know the answer?” she said.

Conway praised Sessions’s work on law enforcement issues, including gangs, but said, “The president is frustrated that the attorney general recused himself in early March of 2017 from anything having to do with the campaign.”

Washington-based Judicial Watch has also filed a lawsuit seeking text messages and e-mails of McCabe relating to his wife, a pediatric emergency physician who ran unsuccessfully for the Virginia state Senate in 2015.

Conservative critics, including the president, have argued that because Jill McCabe accepted a campaign contribution from then-Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee, McCabe should have recused himself from the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server. McAuliffe is a longtime friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

“McCabe’s wife took big campaign dollars from Hillary people,” Trump tweeted on Saturday. The president went on to ask if the FBI would “ever recover it’s once stellar reputation.”

“So many of the great men and women of the FBI have been hurt by these clowns and losers!” Trump said of McCabe, former FBI Director James Comey, and other former bureau officials.


The actions of the former deputy director have become a frequent topic for Trump, who has said he believes that the Justice Department’s decision not to prosecute Clinton — while continuing to investigate potential meddling between his campaign and Russia — is evidence of institutional bias.