Guilty Plea in Durham Investigation
Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 12:34 pm
Kevin Clinesmith, a former attorney for the FBI, will plead guilty to one count of willfully making a false document in connection with the FISA warrant obtained on Carter Page. Clinesmith had been identified last winter in the Inspector General's report (although his name wasn't widely mentioned), and I predicted then that he was going to take the fall. The way the information against him is worded and the fact that he's pleading guilty before any indictment is issued indicates that this plea is part of a plea bargain. Clinesmith was on record as making anti-Trump statements before leaving the FBI.
While I expect Trump to make a big deal out of this, I'm not sure how much of an effect it will have with the general public, especially considering the rather technical nature of the offense and Clinesmith's relatively low stature at the FBI. What his crime boils down to is that in the course of the last FISA application against Carter Page in June 2017 (months after Trump took office), Clinesmith altered a document having to deal with Page's relationship with the CIA. Prior to the last application, Page stated that he had "assisted the US government in the past." Clinesmith was asked to inquire if Page was an official source for the CIA, and, if so, what type of source he was. The original response Clinesmith got from the CIA referred to Page by some confusing acronym. Clinesmith inquired further and found out that Page was a "subsource" but not a "source" (whatever the difference is). Clinesmith then went back and altered the original email he got from the CIA that said "Page is an acronym" and added the words "and not a source."
So, as I said before, Clinesmith was guilty of sloppiness. Instead of asking his original contact to send a followup email explaining exactly what the confusing acronym was, he added the verbal explanation to the original email. I have a feeling from the original articles that came out that this sort of sloppiness may be fairly common at the FBI (and it is illegal), but it's not some massive criminal conspiracy against Trump. And it doesn't alter the overall picture that the warrants against Page were all based on substantial information, even though one piece of information about the last application was altered to clarify something that wasn't actually in the original document.
And by the way, the information about Clinesmith was in the original referral the Inspector General made to Bill Barr in November. In eight months of investigation since then, this is all they have come up with.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/14/politics ... index.html
While I expect Trump to make a big deal out of this, I'm not sure how much of an effect it will have with the general public, especially considering the rather technical nature of the offense and Clinesmith's relatively low stature at the FBI. What his crime boils down to is that in the course of the last FISA application against Carter Page in June 2017 (months after Trump took office), Clinesmith altered a document having to deal with Page's relationship with the CIA. Prior to the last application, Page stated that he had "assisted the US government in the past." Clinesmith was asked to inquire if Page was an official source for the CIA, and, if so, what type of source he was. The original response Clinesmith got from the CIA referred to Page by some confusing acronym. Clinesmith inquired further and found out that Page was a "subsource" but not a "source" (whatever the difference is). Clinesmith then went back and altered the original email he got from the CIA that said "Page is an acronym" and added the words "and not a source."
So, as I said before, Clinesmith was guilty of sloppiness. Instead of asking his original contact to send a followup email explaining exactly what the confusing acronym was, he added the verbal explanation to the original email. I have a feeling from the original articles that came out that this sort of sloppiness may be fairly common at the FBI (and it is illegal), but it's not some massive criminal conspiracy against Trump. And it doesn't alter the overall picture that the warrants against Page were all based on substantial information, even though one piece of information about the last application was altered to clarify something that wasn't actually in the original document.
And by the way, the information about Clinesmith was in the original referral the Inspector General made to Bill Barr in November. In eight months of investigation since then, this is all they have come up with.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/14/politics ... index.html