Former FBI assistant general counsel Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty earlier this week to making a false statement to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) — often called the FISA court after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that created it.
“According to the court documents, Clinesmith inserted the words ‘and not a source’ into an email from a CIA liaison that described the relationship between Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page and the CIA,” reported The Epoch Times. “As a result, an FBI special agent relied on the altered email to submit a warrant application to the FISC, which described Page as a Russian asset without disclosing that he was an approved operational contact for the CIA who reported on his interactions with Russian intelligence officers.”
While one intelligence agency, the FBI, was declaring to a FISA judge that Carter Page was not a source for the intelligence community and, instead, was a likely Putin stooge, Page was briefing another intelligence agency, the CIA.
A big fib told to surveil him.
And by extension the Trump campaign.
“At the time, I believed that the information I was providing in the email was accurate,” Clinesmith told the court, “but I am agreeing that the information I entered into the email was not originally there and that I have inserted that information.”
Had the forgery been accurate, of course, it is still clearly wrong to surreptitiously alter documents being presented to a judge.
Whatever one thinks of President Trump — innocent victim of a 22-month special counsel witch hunt or Putin asset still at large — we can all agree that this is Trouble with a capital T and that . . . doesn’t stand for Trump.
It rhymes with D and that stands for Deep State.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)