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Prosecutors have uncovered no evidence of the kind of widespread conspiracy against Trump among law enforcement forces that the president has long alleged.
By Adam Goldman
WASHINGTON – A former F.B.I. The lawyer intends to plead guilty after being charged with falsting a document as part of an agreement with prosecutors to conduct his own criminal investigation into the Russia investigation, according to his lawyer and court documents made public on Friday.
Lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, 38, who has been assigned to the Russia investigation, plans to admit that he replaced an E.M. email from the C.I.A. Investigators have relied on the renewal of the court’s authorization in 2017 for a covert telephone intervention by former crusader sawer Trump Carter Page, who had sometimes provided data to the spy agency. Mr Clinesmith’s lawyer stated that he had made a mistake in trying to explain the facts to a colleague.
President Trump immediately promoted the plea agreement as proof that the Russia investigation was illegitimate and politically motivated, opening a White House news conference by calling Mr. Clinesmith “corrupt” and the deal “just the beginning.” Mr. Trump has long been blunt about viewing the investigation by the prosecutor examining the earlier inquiry, John H. Durham, as political payback whose fruits he would like to see revealed in the weeks before the election.
Attorney General William P. Barr has portrayed Mr. Durham’s work as rectifying what he sees as injustices by officials who sought in 2016 to understand links between the Trump campaign and Russia’s covert operation to interfere in the election.
Clinesmith had written texts expressing his opposition to Trump. But prosecutors revealed no evidence in the indictment documents showing that Clinesmith’s movements were part of a broader plot to undermine Trump. And Justice Decomponentment’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, discovered that law enforcement officials had sufficient reason to open the Russia investigation, known within the F.B.I. like Crossfire Hurricane, and they found no evidence that they had acted with political prejudice.
In their efforts to deter prosecutors from indicting Mr. Clinesmith, his lawyers argued that his motives were benign and other evidence indicated that he had attempted to hide the C.I.A. email from colleagues,
“Kevin deeply regrets having replaced the email,” Clinesmith’s lawyer Justin Shur said in a statement. “It was never his goal to deceive the court or his colleagues because he believed the data he transmitted was accurate. But Kevin understands that what he did was and accepts responsibility.”
Clinesmith, who resigned because of the case last year, was scheduled to be charged in federal court in Washington with a bachelor’s charge for making a false statement. A Durham spokesman declined to comment.
Barr had anticipated the Fox News “Hannity” deal Thursday night, and said there would be a progression in the investigation On Friday. “This is not a provocative progression, but it is an indication that things are moving at the right pace, as the facts of this investigation dictate,” he said.
It is very rare for law enforcement officials to speak publicly about ongoing investigations, however, Barr has long made his displeasure transparent about the Russia investigation and his view that Durham would have a problem.
Although the extensive russia investigation, which was ultimately led by a special prosecutor, Robert S. Mueller III, exposed the Kremlin’s complex operation to overthrow the election and Trump’s campaign’s expectation that he would gain advantages from foreign participation, Republicans took advantage of a narrow side. of the investigation — the investigation into Mr. Page — in a long quest to undermine it.
Page, a power manager with contacts in Russia, came to advise Trump’s crusade in the spring of 2016 when the candidate strengthened his unforeseen lead in the number one race of Republicans and struggled to create a foreign policy team.
In the end, investigators suspected that Russian spies had tagged Mr. Page to recruit him. They first received permission from the Secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in October 2016 to pay attention to Mr. Page, who had then left the camp, and the court agreed to enlarge the order 3 times in months. Following.
After Republicans raised considerations about the data that investigators relied on to seek court approval to pay attention to Mr. Page, Horowitz initiated a comprehensive review of the process.
In a report released last year, Horowitz revealed that the claims were riddled with serious errors and omissions. Among other things, he had learned from a number of disturbing occasions in which Mr. Page’s agreement with the C.I.A. did not go to the Justice Department and eventually got rid of the judges who approved the surveillance orders.
Mr. Page had provided data to the C.I.A. for years. about his contacts with Russian officials. In C.I.A. Jargon, was known as an operational touch: someone who was to be informed through company staff but cannot be assigned to data collection.
This quotation may have given reasons to law enforcement to distrust him less. And the F.B.I. we talked about it: A C.I.A. The lawyer provided a list of documents in the August 2016 email at the center of the case opposite Mr. Clinesmith explaining that Page is dating the agency.
But an F.B.I. officer who learned of Mr. Page’s ties to the C.I.A. minimized them by preparing the first eavesdropping application, according to the inspector general’s report. At the time, Mr. Clinesmith did not bother to find out if Mr. Page a C.I.A. source, said other people close to the case.
But later in 2017, an F.B.I. the officer at the rate of the third and final request for renewal asked Mr Clinesmith for a definitive answer that Page had been a firm source, according to Mr Horowitz’s report.
Mr. Clinesmith incorrectly stated that Mr. Page was “never a source” and sent supervisor’C’s data. I.A.au. He amended the original email to say that Mr. Page had not been a source, a significant replacement of a document used in a federal investigation.
The officer relied on the amended email to file the application for judicial permission to pay attention to Mr. Page, the inspector general wrote. By converting the email and then transmitting it, Clinesmith distorted the original content of the document, which prosecutors described as a crime.
Mr. Clinesmith’s argued that he did not change the document in an attempt to cover up the F.B.I.’s mistake. His lawyers argued that he had made the change in good faith because he did not think that Mr. Page had been an actual source for the C.I.A.
Mr. Clinesmith’s lawyers also argued that their client did not try to hide the C.I.A. email from other law enforcement officials as they sought the final renewal of the Page wiretap. Mr. Clinesmith had provided the unchanged C.I.A. email to Crossfire Hurricane agents and the Justice Department lawyer drafting the original wiretap application.
Clinesmith also suggested investigators send any data about an informant meeting in October 2016 with Mr. Page, adding any exculpatory statements to the Justice Department attorney who drafted the request for wiretaps. Mr. Clinesmith said these “are probably the maximum vital data” that should be provided to the lawyer drafting the wiretap request.
Mr. Clinesmith was a member of the F.B.I. Officials whom Mueller withdrew from the Russia investigation after Horowitz uncovered messages they had exchanged expressing political animosity against Trump. Shortly after Trump’s election victory, Clinesmith texted another official: “Honestly, I feel there will also be many more gun-related disorders, the crazies have done it even though it all won. It’s the steroid sandwich. And the Republican Party.” will be lost.”
In the text, write, “live the resistance”.
Mr. Clinesmith told the inspector general that he was expressing his personal views but did not let them affect his work.
Clinesmith also opposed the prospect of hearing another former trump crusader, George Papadopoulos, who served two weeks in a felony for F.B.I. mendacity, according to the Horowitz report. The Inspector General stated that he had never tried to keep an eye on him.
Clinesmith processing is a facet of Durham’s extensive research. He also proved the intelligence community’s ultimate explosive conclusion on Russian interference in the 2016 election: President Vladimir V. Putin intervened in Trump’s favor.
Durham also took a close look at the FBI’s use of wiretapping programs from an infamous record compiled through a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele. “The FBI has been and will continue to be fully cooperative with Mr. Durham, ” said a local press representative in a statement. This includes offering documents and assigning staff to help your team.”
Durham, you’ve already investigated F.B.I. and C.I.A. did not recommend what he found, although Mr. Barr stated that some of the findings were “problematic.” Durham said uncommonly that he disagreed with some of Horowitz’s conclusions on how and why the F.B.I. opened the investigation in the summer of 2016.
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