Special Counsel John Durham's evidence suggests others in the FBI, including Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, had roles in the FISA deceptions admitted by Kevin Clinesmith, above. He is due to be sentenced this week.
By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations
New Evidence Implicates FBI Higher-Ups in Dishonesty of Anti-Trump Lawyer
For the past year, defenders of the FBI have consistently downplayed the significance of an FBI staff lawyer falsifying evidence in the government’s investigation into Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia. They argue Kevin Clinesmith’s crime of altering a CIA document to obscure the fact that former Trump campaign aide Carter Page worked for U.S., not Russian, intelligence was a rare lapse in judgment by an overworked bureaucrat. It was not, his apologists say, part of any broader conspiracy to conceal exculpatory information from surveillance court judges, who never learned of Page’s history with the CIA before approving FBI warrants to wiretap him as a suspected Russian agent.
But such explanations are challenged by new revelations from court papers filed in the case, which some civil libertarians call the most egregious violation and abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) since it was enacted more than 40 years ago.
The little-noticed documents, which include never-before-seen exhibits, were submitted by Special Counsel John Durham and lawyers for Page, who has been granted time to address the court as a victim when it sentences Clinesmith Jan. 29 as part of a plea agreement. Page and his attorneys argue that the FBI obtained his electronic communications, both written and oral, based on fraudulent warrants in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. He is suing Clinesmith and the FBI for $75 million in damages.
The court filings reveal, among other things, that Clinesmith knew much earlier than has been reported about Page’s cooperation with the U.S. government, and was not alone in knowing that he had provided information on the Russians to the CIA -- or in covering up that knowledge.
Several officials within his tightly compartmentalized chain-of-command — including former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, his counselor Lisa Page and counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok — learned of Page’s role with the CIA before they first sought to wiretap him during the 2016 presidential campaign. The CIA had confirmed his role two months earlier in an August 2016 memo it sent to the FBI. And Page’s status as a CIA contact had been documented in the FBI's own electronic files going back to 2009.
Yet they all withheld this critical information attesting to Page’s loyalty from the spy court.
Many of them shared a strong bias against Trump. A registered Democrat, Clinesmith sent a number of anti-Trump political messages over the FBI’s computer system after Trump won in 2016. He said he was “just devastated” and lamented "the systematic disassembly of the progress we made over the last 8 years. ACA [Affordable Care Act] is gone. Who knows if the rhetoric about deporting people, walls, and crap is true. I honestly feel like there is going to be a lot more gun issues, too, the crazies won finally. This is the tea party on steroids. … We have to fight this again. Also Pence is stupid.”
Weeks later, the Trump investigator added, “Viva le resistance,” signaling he planned to join the Left’s resistance movement against Trump.
Clinesmith's views were safe within his chain of command. As Trump gained in the polls in August 2016, Strzok promised a worried Page “we’ll stop” him from becoming president, according to their text messages. A week later, during a meeting in McCabe’s office, Strzok and Page discussed devising an “insurance policy” in the event Trump won. “OMG I am so depressed,” Strzok wrote to Page after Trump’s election victory. “I don’t know if I can eat. I am very nauseous,” Page replied.
Since last summer, when Clinesmith pleaded guilty, Durham has narrowed his investigation to focus on the activities of the so-called Crossfire Hurricane team, which included top FBI officials who worked closely with Clinesmith on the Page wiretaps, and on whether the FBI launched the entire investigation of the Trump campaign without legal predication, according to former Attorney General William Barr. As part of his plea deal, Clinesmith agreed to “be personally debriefed” about "FISA matters and any information he possesses.”
http://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/01/25/new_evidence_ties_fbi_higher-ups_to_dishonesty_of_anti-trump_lawyer_126807.html
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