WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th August, 2020) A former FBI lawyer plans to plead guilty to falsifying a document during former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into foreign election interference that allowed prosecutors to spy on a top aide in the Trump campaign, the New York Times reported on Friday.
The lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, 38, plans to admit that he altered an email from the CIA that investigators relied on to seek renewed court permission in 2017 for a secret wiretap on the former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, the report said.
At the time, Page was working with the CIA to spy on Russia, and not part of an alleged and unproven effort by the Trump campaign to obtain Russia's help in defeating Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, according to subsequent media reports.
FBI investigators first obtained court permission in October 2016 to wiretap Page. The court agreed to extend wiretap warrants, based in part on the altered email from Clinesmith.
A plea would mark the opening salvo in anticipated prosecutions by US Attorney John Durham, who is investigating the origins of the Russia investigation. Durham is reportedly preparing indictments of other officials involved in the Mueller probe, which relied on a bogus dossier from a former British spy that claimed Trump had sex with a Russian prostitute during a trip to Moscow years earlier.
Declassified documents released years later showed that the FBI continued to spy on Page long after the agency concluded that the entire dossier - funded by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee - was a complete fabrication.
The Mueller probe ended with a report that failed to document Democratic charges of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
