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Reality Check

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

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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.

Election, Government Accountability, Politics, US

Poll Finds Majority of Americans Believe Obama Administration “Improperly Surveilled” Trump Campaign

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Washington, D.C. – A new poll reveals that the majority of the American public believes the Obama administration’s national security apparatus “improperly surveilled” then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign staff, according to the latest Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP poll.

The public survey showed that more than half of those surveyed would also like to see a second special prosecutor appointed to investigate potential impropriety on the part of the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI in relation to spying on the Trump team.

The poll suggests that some Americans don’t necessarily believe the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, and instead, perceive Obama’s law enforcement and intelligence bureaucracy as potentially complicit in engaging in political espionage.

Respondents of the IBD/TIPP public opinion poll were asked:

“How closely are you following news stories about the role played by the FBI and the Department of Justice during the 2016 presidential election?”

Responses were only considered from the 72% of individuals that noted they were either “very closely” (39%) or “somewhat closely” (33%).

Of those respondents, 55% said they thought it was “likely” that the Obama administration “improperly surveilled the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.” There was clearly a partisan divide in the responses, with 87% of Republicans, but only 31% of Democrats, believing improper surveillance occurred— but interestingly, some 55% of independents believed the political spying allegations.

When asked whether it was necessary to appoint a second special counsel to “investigate whether the FBI and the Department of Justice improperly surveilled the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election,” a majority of respondents (54%) answered “yes,” – with 44% responding “no.” This time, 74% of Republicans, 50% of independents, and surprisingly, even 44% of Democrats thought appointing a second special counsel was necessary.

Public bipartisan agreement on appointing a second special counsel for a full investigation of Obama-era political espionage could potentially spell trouble for many high-ranking security officials, especially if the special counsel is afforded similar latitude to investigate as seen in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian collusion investigation.

The survey also asked whether individuals believed that “some senior career civil servants at the FBI and Department of Justice knowingly coordinated to frame the president with allegations of Russian collusion in order to cast a cloud over his presidency.”

The Investors Business Daily reports that 35% of respondents answered “yes” to this question – while 60% answered “no.” This question had the largest partisan divide – with 77% of Republicans saying yes, and only 11% of Democrats responding no.

Interestingly, only 30% of independents thought that elements within DOJ and FBI colluded to frame Trump for Russian collusion, which may be semi-surprising given the fact that 55 percent answered that it was “likely” that Obama-era officials “improperly surveilled the Trump campaign during the 2016 election” and 50 percent thought it necessary to appoint a second special counsel to “investigate whether the FBI and the Department of Justice improperly surveilled the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.

Of note, a recently-released Rasmussen poll revealed a full 50 percent of Americans “believe it’s at least somewhat likely senior federal law enforcement officials broke the law in an effort to prevent Donald Trump from winning the presidency,” while 40 percent disagreed.

The results of these polls indicate that a segment of the American public doesn’t believe the narrative that Trump colluded with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election, and would like a full investigation into whether or not political espionage was undertaken by elements of the Obama administration in an effort to handicap Trump’s presidential candidacy and presidency.