August 14, 2020
Kevin Clinesmith, a former top attorney with the FBI, will plead guilty to federal charges, brought by U.S. Attorney John Durham. Durham was tasked by Attorney General William Barr, in May 2019, to determine if the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign was legally predicated, and to determine whether criminal charges are warranted against those who perpetuated acts of corruption.
Clinesmith was referred for prosecution by the Justice Department Inspector General, Michael Horowitz after an investigation discovered that he falsified evidence in a federal warrant to spy on former Trump campaign advisor, Carter Page. Clinesmith is to plead guilty to one count of making a false statement.
Page was surveilled by the FBI starting in October 2016 extending until late summer 2017. In December 2019 the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) lead by Horowitz released a scathing report finding that the FBI committed egregious errors in each of the four FISA applications submitted to the court to gain permission to spy on Page:
“We identified significant inaccuracies and omissions in each of the four applications -7 in the first FISA application and a total of 17 by the final renewal application…All of the applications also omitted information the FBI had obtained from another U.S. government agency detailing its prior relationship with Page, including that Page had been approved as an operational contact for the agency from 2008-2013, and that Page had provided information to the other agency concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers..”
This “other agency” was the CIA. For five-years Page worked with the CIA as an asset, providing them with information from his Russian contacts. His prior assistance should have destroyed the FBI’s case against Page -which accused him of working with Russia against the interests of the United States.
However, despite receiving information from the CIA, before obtaining the first warrant, an FBI case agent (not Clinesmith) downplayed Page’s CIA assistance and omitted this information.
In 2017, when seeking the third renewal, a supervisory FBI agent asked Clinesmith for a definitive answer on whether Page had worked with the CIA to investigate suspected Russian agents.
Clinesmith knew that Page was a former CIA asset because he received an email from the CIA confirming his prior work with the agency. Shockingly Clinesmith fabricated the CIA email to make it state that Page had never assisted the CIA in their investigative efforts of Russia.
Clinesmith “[o]mitted Page’s prior relationship with another U.S. governed agency, despite being reminded by the other agency in June 2017, before the filing of the final {FISA warrant} renewal application, about Page’s status with the agency.”
“Instead of including this information in the final renewal application,” according to the OIG report, Clinesmith “altered an email from the other agency so that the email stated that Page was “not a source’ for the other agency, which the FBI affiant relied upon in signing the final renewal application.”
In addition to working on the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign, dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane”, Clinesmith was part of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. He was also part of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which conducted an exhaustive almost three-year probe into the Trump campaign, finding no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Clinesmith was removed from the Mueller investigation after the OIG found messages he had sent expressing a political bias and animus against Trump.
Shortly after Trump’s election, Clinesmith texted an FBI attorney, Sally Moyer, that “the crazies won, finally. This is the tea party on steroids”.
When asked whether he intended to leave, ostensibly because he would now be working for the Trump administration, he replied,
“Hell no. Viva la resistance.”
Clinesmith continued, “I’m just devastated.” Seemingly upset that the Trump administration would discover his actions he added, “Plus, my God damned name is all over the legal documents investigating his staff.”
Hopefully, Clinesmith is just the beginning of holding the corrupt to account. What happened to Trump’s campaign aides, President Trump, and his administration should never be allowed to occur again.
