“BARNETT and others joked about how the investigation into collusion could be made into a game, which they referred to as ‘Collusion Clue,'” the DOJ summary of Barnett’s interview read. The only sane, logical explanation why the Crossfire Hurricane team would doggedly perpetuate such an unfounded investigation is political bias,” Brock added.īrock’s comments echo the words of one of the lead FBI agents in the Russia case, William Barnett, who last year told the Justice Department in a lengthy interview that there was never any credible evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, and that the investigation only persisted because there was a “get Trump” attitude among investigators. citizens, so it looks instead like subterfuge to justify an open-ended inquiry. “If you look at the FBI’s ECs dispassionately, there is no clearly predicated basis for investigation for U.S. You just can’t open a full field investigation on conjecture. “But here what the ECs are saying is they don’t know who is involved and they are just conjecturing that someone in the Trump campaign might be in a position to receive help from Russia. citizen, it has specific facts justifying an investigation of that person,” explained Brock, who led the implementation of many of the bureau’s current rules for informants and intelligence gathering. “Normally when the FBI opens an investigation on a U.S. But the Halper documents reveal a large, unfocused FBI search with little substantiation of alleged wrongdoing, and significant evidence that undermined the core allegations, experts told Just the News.įormer FBI Assistant Director for Intelligence Kevin Brock said the information about Papadopoulos’ foreign lobbying that the bureau used to open the Russia collusion probe failed to meet the bureau’s own legal standards to justify the larger dragnet that encompassed Page and many other Trump officials. Ordinarily, FBI counterintelligence investigations that target Americans legally must be predicated on specific allegations that narrowly focus the bureau’s spy powers on limited targets to avoid unnecessary infringement of privacy and civil liberties. “The Crossfire Hurricane investigative team is attempting to determine if anyone in the Trump campaign is in a position to have received information either directly or indirectly from the Russian Federation regarding the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton,” one of the early FBI electronic communications (ECs) from Halper’s undercover work stated. While current FBI Director Chris Wray has insisted the bureau did not engage in spying on the Trump campaign, Halper’s taskings include many of the tradecraft tactics of espionage, including the creation of a fake cover story (he wanted a job at the Trump campaign), secret recordings, providing background on targets, suggested questions to ask and even contact information for potential targets.īut the memos’ most explosive revelations are the sheer breadth of the FBI’s insufficiently predicated dragnet targeting the Trump campaign, and the agents’ clearly stated purpose of thwarting any Trump campaign effort to get dirt from Russia that could hurt his Democratic rival.Halper provided significant exculpatory evidence to the FBI - including transcripts of conversations he recorded of targeted Trump advisers providing statements of innocence - that was never disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that approved a year of surveillance targeting the Trump campaign, and specifically Page.Almost immediately after the FBI opened a Russia collusion probe on Jnarrowly focused on the foreign lobbying of a single Trump campaign aide named George Papadopoulos, agents pressed Halper for information on more than a half dozen other figures, including future Attorney General Jeff Sessions, foreign policy adviser Sam Clovis, campaign chairman Paul Manafort, economic adviser Peter Navarro, future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and campaign adviser Carter Page.The now-declassified operational handling reports for FBI confidential human source Stefan Halper - codenamed “Mitch” - provide an unprecedented window both into the tactics used by the bureau to probe the Trump campaign and the wide dragnet that was cast to target numerous high-level officials inside the GOP campaign just weeks before Americans chose their next president in the November 2016 election.Īmong the revelations, the memos make clear that: Once-secret reports show the FBI effort to spy on the Trump campaign was far wider than previously disclosed, as agents directed an undercover informant to make secret recordings, pressed for intelligence on numerous GOP figures, and sought to find “anyone in the Trump campaign” with ties to Russia who could acquire dirt “damaging to Hillary Clinton.”
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