For months and months, Republicans – led by President Donald Trump – have pointed to an ongoing probe into the origins of the FBI’s counterintelligence Russia meddling investigation as the smoking gun of the 2020 (and 2016) election.
Of John Durham, the Connecticut US Attorney tasked by Attorney General William Barr with overseeing the probe, Trump said Thursday: “I hope he’s doing a great job. And I hope they’re not going to be politically correct and I hope they do what – because the fact this was President Obama knew everything, Vice President Biden, as dumb as he may be, he knew everything and everybody else knew everything.”
Trump went on to call the alleged mishandling of the FBI investigation the “greatest political crime in the history of our country.”
On Friday, we got this first bit of news out of the Durham probe: former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith plans to plead guilty to one count of making a false statement – by changing an email sent to another official who, like Clinesmith, was involved in the surveillance warrant for former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Clinesmith altered the email to suggest that Page had never been a government source in the past, an error his lawyer insisted in a statement was a simple mistake with no malicious intent. (Clinesmith had also been critical of Trump during his time at the FBI.)
“Kevin deeply regrets having altered the email,” Clinesmith’s lawyer, Justin Shur, said in a statement Friday. “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.”
His expected plea comes after the FBI admitted in January that two of the four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants it presented to a court that approved (and re-approved) the surveillance of Page were invalid.
This is, in a word, bad. FISA warrants are a very big deal and need to be very carefully considered as they allow the government to surveil an American citizen. That there were errors in this process that have led to at least one guilty plea from someone involved in the warrant reflects poorly on the bureau. Period.
Informed of the news Friday, Trump said this at the White House:
“That’s just the beginning … what happened should never happen again. He is pleading guilty, terrible thing, terrible thing. The fact is they spied on my campaign and they got caught and you’ll be hearing more.”
Which, well, is part unknowable and part simply untrue.
Let’s take the untrue part first.
There is zero evidence that the FBI “spied” on Trump’s campaign or, as he has alleged repeatedly over the last few years, that then-President Barack 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.” (The IG report did find 17 “significant errors or omissions” in the way in which the FISA warrant application to suveill Page was submitted.)
Now to the unknowable part.
When Trump say that the Clinesmith plea is “just the beginning and “you’ll be hearing more,” he’s just saying stuff. He is convinced this was some sort of broad-based conspiracy against him (although, again, there is no evidence of that) and so he is faking it until he (hopes) he makes it.
He’s also trying to work the refs here, which is awkward because the refs are the Justice Department and its head: Barr.
“But I’ll tell you, Bill Barr and Durham have a chance to be – Bill Barr has a 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,” Trump told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo on Thursday, adding: “He knows what they have, and it goes right to Obama and it goes right to Biden. They had the meetings, and that was one meeting they caught him.”
Again, there’s no evidence to suggest that Obama directed some sort of spying operation. And no matter what Trump wants to be true, the plea of Clinesmith doesn’t prove it either.
What it does prove – especially when you consider the admitted errors by the FBI and the findings by the IG regarding the FISA applications – is that there were significant screw-ups in the way in which the FBI went about making the case that it needed to surveil Page for as long as it did. And that, in the case of Clinsemith, a crime was committed in regard to these FISA applications – whether or not he meant to.
What it doesn’t prove is that Trump’s wild claims that there is a “deep state” conspiracy that tried to keep him from being elected and has worked against him since he got into office actually exists. The facts just aren’t there.