Paul Sperry: New Evidence Suggests That Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page Might Have Been Complicit In Kevin Clinesmith's Criminal Forgery of Documents to Frame Carter Page

Of course, none of this means anything any longer.

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.

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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.

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Former FBI officials say it's unlikely Clinesmith would have operated on his own without higher-ups knowing about his June 2017 misrepresentations about Page's prior work for the CIA.

I think we're in for another "Scandal-Free Administration" (TM), boys!

posted by Ace at 02:19 PM

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