A former lawyer with the FBI plans to plead guilty today for falsifying a key document related to the surveillance against a onetime Trump campaign associate as part of a deal with U.S. Attorney John Durham.
Kevin Clinesmith, who worked on both the Hillary Clinton emails investigation and the Trump-Russia inquiry, will admit that he falsified a document during the bureau’s targeting of Carter Page, according to multiple reports. Clinesmith, 38, claimed in early 2017 that Page was not a source for the CIA when he actually was — a falsehood used to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act renewal against Page.
...Clinesmith is not directly named in DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report, but it is clear he is the "Office of General Counsel attorney" who had been acting in response to a question by an FBI agent that was part of the team investigating the Trump campaign.
"Supervisory Special Agent 2," who swore to an affidavit for all three FISA renewals against Page in 2017, told Horowitz's investigators that on the third renewal he wanted "a definitive answer to whether Page had ever been a source for another U.S. government agency before he signed the final renewal application."
While in contact with what was reportedly the CIA's liaison, Clinesmith was reminded that in August 2016, predating the first Page warrant application in October 2016, the other agency informed the FBI that Page "did, in fact, have a prior relationship with that other agency."
An email from the other government agency's liaison was sent to Clinesmith, who then "altered the liaison's email by inserting the words 'not a source' into it, thus making it appear that the liaison had said that Page was 'not a source' for the other agency" and sent it to "Supervisory Special Agent 2," Horowitz found.
"Relying upon this altered email, SSA 2 signed the third renewal application that again failed to disclose Page's past relationship with the other agency," the inspector general wrote...MORE
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