Tag Archives: FBI Informant

Reality Check: The FBI Planted a Spy In the Trump Campaign?

The FBI planted a spy in the Trump campaign?

Turns out that claim is true. But the story is so much deeper than that.

Who that spy has turned out to be, is a man with CIA connections who has inserted himself into presidential campaigns before. And the fact that the DOJ has fought to keep his identity a secret is completely reshaping what we know about the investigation in Russian meddling.

This is a Reality Check you won’t get anywhere else.

The investigation into a possible connection between Russia and the Trump campaign just took a dramatic twist, with reports confirming the use of an FBI informant embedded within the Trump campaign in the run up to the 2016 election.

In a tweet Friday, President Trump wrote, “Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president. It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia hoax became a ‘hot’ Fake News story. If true – all time biggest political scandal!”

The Department of Justice and several spokespersons for the FBI did not deny that a spy had been embedded in the Trump campaign but they described the individual as an informant. Turns out he is much more than that.

Who was that informant exactly, and what makes the fact that he personally was embed in the trump campaign even more concerning?

His name is Stefan Halper. And according to The Intercept, “Halper was responsible for a long-forgotten spying scandal involving the 1980 election, in which the Reagan campaign – using CIA officials managed by Halper, reportedly under the direction of former CIA director and then-vice-presidential candidate George H.W. Bush – got caught running a spying operation from inside the Carter administration. The plot involved CIA operatives passing classified information about Carter’s foreign policy to Reagan campaign officials in order to ensure the Reagan campaign knew of any foreign policy decisions that Carter was considering.”

So while the DOJ has intentionally painted a picture of this informant as some sort of as a super secret high level, covert intelligence asset, he actually is not. He is an informant who has worked in Washington for years providing information to the CIA.

At this point we know that Halper met with three Trump campaign advisers in 2016.

George Papadopoulos, who Halper contacted, offering him $3,000 to write a policy paper on issues related to Turkey, Cyprus, Israel and the Leviathan natural gas field. Halper also offered to pay for Papadopoulos’s flight and a three-night stay in London.

Papadopoulos completed the project and was paid for it. But it was what happened while Papadopoulos was in London that is of interest.

From The Daily Caller, “According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Halper asked Papadopoulos: ‘George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?’Papadopoulos told halper he didn’t know anything about emails or Russian hacking…”

Halper also met with Trump aide, Carter Page, “at a July 2016 symposium held at Cambridge regarding the upcoming election, Page told The DCNF [Daily Caller News Foundation]. The pair remained in contact for several months.”

So a least three Trump aides were contacted by Halper… two of those aides have been under FBI investigation and one of those aides has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

If we look at Halper in the course of presidential politics and history, then we know that Halper was part of one of the largest attempts ever for the CIA to push their former director to become president. When George H.W. Bush ran for president, Halper was a foreign policy aide.

As The Intercept points out, “In 1980, the Washington Post published an article reporting on the extremely unusual and quite aggressive involvement of the CIA in the 1980 presidential campaign.”

The CIA had never before backed a presidential and then vice presidential candidate so openly as it did with George H.W. Bush. That is, not until 2016, when former CIA officials publicly and aggressively backed Hillary Clinton

Former acting CIA Director Michael Morell publicly endorsed Clinton in the New York Times. George W. Bush’s CIA and NSA Director Gen. Michael Hayden called Trump a “clear and present danger.”

Reality Check here: The secret informant the FBI used in 2016, is not some top secret asset whose identity needed to be protected. Instead, it is a well known CIA informant whose role in a clearly unethical and possible illegal spying effort during the 1980 election is very well known.

That’s Reality Check. Let’s talk about that, right now, on Facebook and Twitter.

Court Documents: Father of Pulse Nightclub Shooter Was FBI Informant

A shocking revelation emerged from court documents in the obstruction of justice and providing material support to terrorism trial of Noor Salman, the widow of Pulse nightclub gunman Omar Mateen. According to a motion filed in the case, the gunman’s father Seddique Mateen was an FBI informant in the years leading up to the shooting and his relationship with agents reportedly influenced their decision not to act after investigating threats made by his son prior to his June 12, 2016 attack on the Orlando, Fla. LGBT nightclub that left 49 dead and 58 wounded.

Seddique Mateen is also currently under investigation for money transfers to Pakistan and Turkey that were revealed after officers searched his residence while investigating Omar Mateen’s attack. The transfers took place between March 16, 2016 and June 5, 2016.

The motion notes that prosecutors sent an email on Saturday revealing that Seddique Mateen had been an informant for the FBI from 2005 through June 2016.

“Additionally, while the Government has disclosed that [Omar] Mateen was under FBI
investigation [in 2013] based on statements he made while at work, the Government has repeatedly failed to disclose that his father played a significant role in that investigation. The initial disclosure of an intelligence report indicated only that an unidentified undercover informant ‘was informed that the FBI was investigating allegations against Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, during which the [informant] became very upset,'” claimed the motion.

It continued, “In light of the Government’s Saturday disclosure, twelve days into trial, we can now infer—although the Government has, to this day, not disclosed that the [confidential informant] referenced in this report is Seddique Mateen—that Mateen’s father played a significant role in the FBI’s decision not to seek an indictment from the Justice Department for false statements to the FBI or obstruction of justice against Omar Mateen.”

According to Click Orlando, an email from prosecutors to Salman’s legal team said that “an anonymous tip indicated that Seddique Mateen was seeking to raise $50,000-$100,000 via a [2012] donation drive to contribute toward an attack against the government of Pakistan.”

Salman’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the case as a mistrial, claiming that the late revelation of this information violated their client’s due process rights as they would have taken a different strategy with the defense had they known about Seddique Mateen’s status with the FBI. The 1963 Supreme Court ruling Brady v Maryland requires that prosecutors provide defense attorneys any evidence they are aware of that might benefit their client’s defense.

Salman’s legal team told CNN that this information would have allowed them to argue with “strong support” that “Omar Mateen and his father, rather than Ms. Salman, conspired to support ISIS; or the FBI’s focus on Ms. Salman was based on its own motive to avoid responsibility for its failures with its own informant, Seddique Mateen, as well as his son.”

In the email disclosing this information to the defense, the prosecution stated, “If you should call S. Mateen to the stand, the government will not seek to elicit any of this information from him.”

WTVF-9 notes that Judge Paul Byron denied the motion on Monday, saying that the revelations do not “change the dynamic about this case involving Noor Salman.”

FBI Informant: Russia Directed Millions to US to Ensure “Affirmative Decisions” on Uranium One

Washington, D.C. — According to a written statement to three congressional committees, an FBI informant associated with the Uranium One deal alleged that the Russian government sent millions of dollars to the United States with the expectation the funds would bolster former president Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative, and that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would oversee a “reset” in the relationship between the U.S. and Russia.

The Hill reports that FBI informant Douglas Campbell told the committees that he had been informed by Russian nuclear executives that Russia had hired US lobbying firm APCO Worldwide due to their “position to influence the Obama administration, and more specifically Hillary Clinton.”

Campbell said in the statement, which was obtained by The Hill, that Russian nuclear officials “told me at various times that they expected APCO to apply a portion of the $3 million annual lobbying fee it was receiving from the Russians to provide in-kind support for the Clintons’ Global Initiative.”

“The contract called for four payments of $750,000 over twelve months. APCO was expected to give assistance free of charge to the Clinton Global Initiative as part of their effort to create a favorable environment to ensure the Obama administration made affirmative decisions on everything from Uranium One to the U.S.-Russia Civilian Nuclear Cooperation agreement.”

An APCO official denied that there was any connection between its work for Russia and the Clinton Global Initiative, claiming that any assertions of misconduct were “false and unfounded.”

“APCO Worldwide’s activities involving client work on behalf of Tenex and The Clinton Global Initiative were totally separate and unconnected in any way,” APCO told The Hill in a statement. “All actions on these two unconnected activities were appropriate, publicly documented from the outset and consistent with regulations and the law. Any assertion otherwise is false and unfounded.”

[RELATED: Senate Memo Claims Clinton Allies Were “Feeding” Info to State Dept., Christopher Steele]

Democrats have turned Campbell’s testimony into a partisan affair, calling the FBI informant’s credibility into question, despite the bureau paying him $50,000 for his work with the agency.

Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, dismissed Campbell’s testimony as a distraction from the special prosecutor’s “Russian collusion” investigation, which some have claimed began as a strategy formed by the Clinton campaign staff to explain Clinton’s stunning election loss to Trump.

“Just yesterday the committee made clear that this secret informant charade was just that, a charade. Along with the widely debunked text-message-gate and Nunes’ embarrassing memo episode, we have a trifecta of GOP-manufactured scandals designed to distract from their own President’s problems and the threat to democracy he poses,” Merrill said.

A Clinton campaign post-election tell-all, Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaignclaimed that Clinton blamed Russian interference for her election loss to Donald Trump “within twenty-four hours of her concession speech”:

“That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”

Despite attempts from Democrats to call Campbell’s credibility into question, Republicans are now looking at expanding the investigation into Russian corruption, in relation to the Obama administration and the Uranium One deal, based partially on Campbell’s testimony.

“My FBI handlers praised my work. They told me on various occasions that details from the undercover probe had been briefed directly to FBI top officials. On two occasions my handlers were particularly excited, claiming that my undercover work had been briefed to President Obama as part of his daily presidential briefing,” Campbell wrote.

According to reporting from The Hill:

“Campbell, whose work as an informant was first disclosed in a series of stories published last fall by The Hill, helped the FBI gather evidence as early as 2009 that the Russian nuclear industry was engaged in a kickback, bribery and racketeering scheme on U.S. soil. The criminal scheme, among other things, compromised the U.S. trucking firm that had the sensitive job of transporting uranium around America, Campbell testified.

Campbell says he provided the FBI the evidence of wrongdoing months before the Obama administration approved a series of favorable decisions that enriched Rosatom, including the CFIUS decision. 

The Hill’s stories last fall prompted the Justice Department to take the rare step of freeing Campbell from his nondisclosure agreement as an intelligence asset so he could testify to Congress about what he witnessed inside Russia’s nuclear industry.

Campbell gave the congressional committees documents he said he provided to his FBI handlers in 2010 showing that the Russian and American executives implicated in the Tenex bribery scheme specifically asked him to try to help get the Uranium One deal approved by the Obama administration.”

Campbell’s testimony is of interest to congressional Republicans focused on potential indiscretion in the Obama administration’s approval of the Uranium One deal. The agreement gave Russian mining giant Rosatom control of nearly 20 percent of America’s uranium mining capacity, despite the fact that the United States imports more than 90 percent of the uranium used in its nuclear reactors, according to U.S. government figures from 2016.

Texas Shooting Suspect Was Befriended By Informant, Monitored By FBI Since 2006

On Sunday, two men identified as Elton Simpson, 30, and Nadir Soofi, 34, were shot and killed after they opened fire on a security guard outside of a provocative Prophet Muhammad cartoon-drawing contest at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas.

The event was held by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, and awarded $10,000 for the best caricature of Prophet Muhammad. Simpson and Soofi allegedly drove up behind the indoor arena towards the end of the event and got out of their car, wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles. They opened fire on a nearby police car, and shot School District police Officer Bruce Joiner in the leg.

At a news conference on Monday, Officer Joe Harn, a spokesman for the Garland police, said that after Simpson and Soofi opened fire one police officer fired shots that initially subdued the gunmen, before nearby SWAT officers also opened fire and killed both men outside of their car.

Harn also said that security had been “ramped up for the controversial event,” and that the FBI had been aware of possible threats for months in advance.

The Associated Press reported that Simpson was first noticed by the FBI in 2006 because he had ties to Hassan Abu Jihaad, a former US Navy sailor who had been convicted of terrorism-related charges after he was “accused of leaking details about his ship’s movements to operators of a website in London that openly espoused violent jihad against the US.”

According to the AP’s report, the FBI then began monitoring Simpson in 2006 by having Dabla Deng, a Sudanese immigrant and FBI informant, befriend him on the grounds that Deng had recently converted and wanted to learn more about Islam.

Deng went on to secretly record his discussions with Simpson, and he gathered more than 1,500 hours of recorded conversation in four years. Their topics of discussion included fighting nonbelievers for Allah and planning a trip to South Africa to meet their “brothers” in Somalia, while using school as an excuse to travel overseas.

Simpson was arrested in 2010, just before he and Deng had planned to leave for South Africa. The Associated Press noted that although there were more than 1,500 hours of recorded conversations, only 17 minutes and 31 seconds were played in court during Simpson’s trial, and he was prosecuted on one minor change: lying to a federal agent.

According to the order from district judge Mary Murguia, on or about January 7, 2010, Simpson “falsely stated to special agents of the FBI that he had not discussed traveling to Somalia, when in fact he had discussed with others traveling to Somalia for the purpose of engaging in violent jihad.”

While the first reports of the shooting came out at 6:50 p.m. Central Time on Sunday, a Twitter account with the name “Shariah of Light” posted a Tweet at 6:35 p.m. and was the first to use “#TexasAttack” referencing the Garland shooting. The account’s bio photo featured Anwar Awlaki, an American-born cleric who was killed by a drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

The Gateway Pundit posted a photo of the tweet before the account was deleted:

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