A former FBI lawyer has agreed to plead guilty to altering an email that helped justify surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser as part of the 2016 investigation into Russian interference in the election, according to his lawyer and a person familiar with the matter.
Kevin Clinesmith, who worked in the FBI general counsel’s office, is expected to admit he doctored an email so it said that former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was not a source for the CIA, even though Page previously had a relationship with the agency.
Relying on what Clinesmith had said, the FBI ultimately did not disclose Page’s relationship with the CIA as it applied to renew a warrant to monitor him as a possible agent of a foreign power.
The case is the first against someone involved in the Russia probe brought by U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was tapped by Attorney General William P. Barr to broadly look into how the FBI handled that matter.
Clinesmith is hardly a household name, and the allegations against him have been known since last year, when Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a report excoriating the bureau for its handling of the applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for permission to monitor Page.
Court documents filed in the Clinesmith case do not allege a broader political or anti-Trump conspiracy within the FBI or Justice Department, and a person familiar with the matter said Clinesmith does not intend to describe any such efforts when he enters his plea.
There is zero evidence that the FBI “spied” on Trump’s campaign or, as Donald Trump has alleged repeatedly over the last few years, that then-President Obama orchestrated some massive surveillance effort of his 2016 campaign.
According to the Justice Department’s Inspector General, that’s not right.
The IG report released in December 2019 made clear that there was no “documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced” that influenced the opening of the counterintelligence probe.
It also found that the “FBI did not try to recruit members of the Trump campaign as [Confidential Human Sources], did not send CHSs to collect information in Trump campaign headquarters or Trump campaign spaces, and did not ask CHSs to join the Trump campaign or otherwise attend campaign related events as part of the investigation.”
It was not immediately clear when Clinesmith would formally enter his plea.
Trump brought up the expected plea at the beginning of an afternoon news conference, calling Clinesmith “a very corrupt FBI attorney who falsified FISA warrants in James Comey’s very corrupt FBI” and suggesting Durham would uncover wider wrongdoing.
FISA is an acronym for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law under which the FBI was applying to monitor Page.
“That’s just the beginning, I would imagine, because what happened should never happen again,” Trump said.
Barr has stressed that Biden is not under investigation, nor is Obama.
A lawyer for Clinesmith said: “Kevin deeply regrets having altered the email. It was never his intent to mislead the court or his colleagues as he believed the information he relayed was accurate. But Kevin understands what he did was wrong and accepts responsibility.”
The Justice Department revealed in May 2019 that Barr had tapped Durham to review the Russia probe, which Trump has derided as a “witch hunt” designed to undermine his campaign and presidency.
Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, has been interviewing witnesses on a range of topics, and partisan fights about his work have intensified as the election approaches.
Republicans are hopeful Durham will condemn or charge former senior FBI officials, thereby validating their long-held skepticism of the Russia probe.
In recent weeks, conservatives have grown impatient with a lack of tangible results from Durham.
Democrats, meanwhile, say they fear Barr and Durham might be planning a late revelation of his findings in a way that might alter the presidential race.
To Democrats’ dismay, Barr has said he will not delay Durham’s probe because of the election.
Justice Department policies call for prosecutors to not take actions for the purpose of affecting an election, and by tradition, law enforcement generally avoids taking steps that could have that appearance.
But Barr has said the rules do not apply to Durham’s investigation because he is not investigating political candidates.
On Thursday, Trump seemed to take a veiled swipe at his attorney general, telling Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business, “Bill Barr has the chance to be the greatest of all time, but if he wants to be politically correct, he’ll be just another guy, because he knows all the answers, he knows what they have, and it goes right to Obama and it goes right to Biden.”
Barr appeared on Fox News on Thursday evening and seemed to try to placate Republican concern over the pace of Durham’s probe, telling host Sean Hannity there would be “significant developments before the election.”
Barr has previously said that Durham is mainly focused on uncovering criminal wrongdoing but that he expects “there will be public disclosure in some form of report.”
Durham’s investigation and other reviews of the Russia probe also have raised Trump’s ire toward FBI Director Christopher Wray, who the president suggested Thursday could be “more forthcoming.”
The FBI said in a statement Friday that the bureau “has been, and will continue to be, fully cooperative with Mr. Durham’s review,” including by assigning personnel to help him and by providing documents to his team.
The FBI noted that Clinesmith had resigned before an internal disciplinary process could be completed.
Horowitz, the inspector general, had first exposed Clinesmith’s alleged wrongdoing in a 2019 report in which he examined the applications to surveil Page and other aspects of the Russia probe.
He detailed a spate of troubling errors that showed officials repeatedly emphasized damaging information about Page while downplaying any material that suggested his innocence.
Among the failures was what the bureau told the court about Page’s relationship with another U.S. government agency, and what an FBI lawyer relayed internally about that relationship.
Horowitz’s report does not name the agency or the lawyer, but people familiar with the matter have said they are the CIA and Clinesmith.
The agency had told the FBI in August 2016 that it had a relationship with Page.
That was before the bureau applied to monitor him. In the spring of 2017, when Page was under surveillance, he asserted publicly that he had worked in the past with the CIA.
In June 2017, an FBI agent working on the application to renew the warrant to surveil Page decided he wanted a “definitive answer” on whether Page had been a CIA source.
If he had been, that might undercut the notion that he was working for a foreign power.
Clinesmith, according to Horowitz’s report and people familiar with the matter, got in touch with a CIA liaison, who indicated in an email that Page had a relationship with the agency of some sort.
According to the criminal information filed Friday detailing the allegations that led to Clinesmith’s planned plea, Clinesmith wrote to the FBI agent that the CIA liaison “confirmed explicitly” that Page was never a source of theirs.
When the agent asked if they had that in writing, Clinesmith said yes and forwarded him the liaison’s email indicating some type of relationship, but he added the phrase “not a source.”
Clinesmith had separately provided the unaltered email to a different Justice Department attorney.
Clinesmith “did willfully and knowingly make and use a false writing and document,” the information said.