PJ Media’s Roger Simon wrote that when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer met President-elect Donald Trump for the first time, he warned him that “intel officials have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Truer words were never spoken.
Remember Stefan Halper, the London professor who moonlighted as a human informant for the Obama FBI? Halper earned over $1 million working for the Obama FBI, approximately $400,000 of which was received in 2016. He was tasked with infiltrating the Trump campaign by initiating contact with two of their junior foreign policy advisors, Carter Page and George Papadopoulos as well as the campaign’s co-chairman, Sam Clovis.
On August 29, 2016, Sam Clovis received an email from Halper, who had already contacted and met with Carter Page once (prior to the official opening of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Trump/Russia collusion codenamed Crossfire Hurricane). Halper wrote:
I am a professor at Cambridge University lecturing on US politics and foreign policy. I am what is called a ‘scholar practitioner,’ having served in the White House and four presidential campaigns — two as policy director. Over the past month I have been in conversation with Carter Page who attended our conference in Cambridge on US elections. Carter mentioned in Cambridge, and when visiting here in Virginia, that you and I should meet. I have enjoyed your comments and appearances in the media; you hit the sweet spot focusing Trump’s appeal to working America. May I suggest that we set a time to meet when you are next in Washington. Meanwhile, all the best, Stefan Halper.
Halper used his previous contact with Page as an entree to gain access to Clovis.
Clovis agreed to meet with Halper several days later. He spoke to the Washington Examiner’s Byron York about the meeting, which Clovis thought “inconsequential” at the time, last May, after news of Halper’s infiltration of the Trump campaign had broken. Clovis said:
It was about China, It had nothing to do with emails. No mention of Russia. No mention of Hillary Clinton. No mention of her campaign. Only a mention in passing that he had met with Carter Page. Other than that, it was a discussion of his research and what he thought about China.
It was like two guys sitting in the faculty lounge talking. It was so innocuous I never reported it back to headquarters. It did not raise any antennas or red flags or something we needed to be on guard against.
…
He said he was willing to share the research if it would be useful to our foreign policy effort.
York points out “that soft offer to help was apparently consistent with what Halper did earlier with Page…Page has tweeted a line from an email he says he sent to the campaign on July 16, 2016, regarding Halper. Halper “offered a range of possibilities regarding how he and the University might be able to help.”
The Washington Post reported that Halper had offered his “foreign-policy expertise” to the Trump team during his meeting with Clovis.
Then, several days later, Halper used his meetings with both Page and Clovis in his approach to Papadopoulos. During their meeting, Halper invited Papadopoulos to “London to work on a research project.”
Simon believes all of this looks like entrapment. I agree. Simon wrote:
Considering the timing, it’s pretty obvious they were being set up (i. e. entrapped) on some level well back during the Obama administration.
Who ordered it is the obvious question, but I’m not going to leave it there. I suggest that an attempt was being made to implant Halper in the Trump campaign, one way or another, not just for spying purposes but actually to help create this collusion of the campaign with Russia–that is, to help manufacture it.
Next, we turn to the timing of Halper’s first meeting with Carter Page on July 16, 2016, two weeks before the official FBI investigation began. The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland provides some interesting analysis gleaned from the recently released transcripts of FBI lawyer Lisa Page’s Congressional testimony last summer.
Lisa Page explained to lawmakers that “there are three basic types of investigations: an assessment, a preliminary investigation, and a full investigation. Because there are multiple types of assessments, without the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG)” in front of her, she was “hesitant to explain the various investigations in detail. When a preliminary or full investigation is opened, agents may use more investigative tools than those available at the assessment stage.”
Cleveland references a Washington Post article about Carter Page’s July 16th meeting with Halper which said: “The FBI commonly uses sources and informants to gather evidence and its regulations allow for use of informants even before a formal investigation has been opened. In many law enforcement investigations, the use of sources and informants precedes more invasive techniques such as electronic surveillance.”
Cleveland turned to the DIOG and found that:
An assessment is a formal FBI investigation. It is just a different category of investigation. As a formal investigation, FBI employees must comply with the provisions in the DIOG, which includes ensuring the assessment serves “an authorized purpose” and has a “clearly defined objective.” The DIOG also mandates that “all assessments be documented in the appropriate form,” and states that “the effective date of the Assessment is the date the final approval authority approves,” the appropriate form.
So, if Crossfire Hurricane was the only investigation launched by FBI headquarters, who initiated the earlier investigation? There must have been one if the FBI used Halper as confidential human source to obtain information in mid-July from Carter Page, because that reach-out occurred before the launch of Crossfire Hurricane. The guide only allows limited pre-assessment activities, such as: accessing public information, records or information, online services or resources; conducting a voluntary clarifying interview; or accepting information already known from an existing confidential human source.
In her testimony, Page said that Christopher Steele handed his memos to his handler. (From Bruce Ohr’s testimony, Steele’s handler is thought to have been Mike Gaeta, an FBI agent out of the New York field office, then stationed in Rome.)
Being a handler is one thing. Directing a confidential human source to meet with an individual connected to the Trump campaign is another. And under the DIOG, Gaeta (or another FBI agent) could not direct Halper to approach Page as a confidential human source absent the official opening of an investigation, whether it be at the assessment or preliminary investigation stage.
No mention, though, has been made of an earlier investigation initiated by Gaeta or another FBI agent stationed outside of the FBI’s D.C. headquarters. Why not? And if the FBI wasn’t running Halper, who was?
To further complicate matters, it was reported that Halper was only one of five or six human informants used to spy on the Trump campaign. One thing is for sure, the tentacles of the Deep State conspiracy to remove Trump from office reached way beyond what was originally thought. And two, a special counsel needs to be appointed to go through each piece of it thoroughly. We can’t move on until each participant is exposed and held responsible.
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