The FBI had learned Carter Page was a CIA source months before the bureau began withholding that information from the secret court, according to The Federalist.
"Federal charging documents against Kevin Clinesmith, the top FBI attorney who was expected to plead guilty today to altering documents, show that the FBI withheld in three separate spying applications the fact that Page had served as an 'operational contact' who helped an agency believed to be the CIA investigate suspected Russian intelligence figures for five years. For the fourth application, the agency didn’t just hide that fact, but deliberately falsified evidence to claim he was not a source," Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway wrote.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz had already produced a 434-page report on FBI misconduct during the probe into the campaign for then-candidate Donald Trump. That report had already shown that Clinesmith falsified evidence, Hemingway said.
The charging document signed by U.S. Attorney John Durham showed the smoking gun against Clinesmith and highlights wider corruption of the process undertaken to illegally spy on Page, who worked with the Trump campaign.
The document shows that four applications seeking authorization to spy on Page made up statements about him.
"While the fourth application included outright falsified evidence regarding Page helping the CIA during the relevant time period, the other three withheld that information even though it was known to the Crossfire Hurricane team within days of opening an investigation on the Trump campaign and months before the first application to spy on Carter Page was granted," Hemingway wrote.
Hemingway added, "The Justice Department already admitted that two of the application renewals were illicit. Informed observers speculate the first application and first renewal to spy on the Trump ally may suffer the same fate. Durham’s charging document, along with the exhaustive IG report, show that Clinesmith’s deception was part of a broader conspiracy against Page."
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