Ex-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith expected to plead guilty in Durham investigation
A former lawyer with the FBI plans to plead guilty Friday to falsifying a key document related to surveillance against a onetime Trump campaign associate as part of a deal with U.S. Attorney John Durham.
Kevin Clinesmith, who worked on both the Hillary Clinton emails investigation and the Trump-Russia inquiry, will admit that he falsified a document during the bureau’s targeting of Carter Page, according to multiple reports. Clinesmith, 38, claimed in early 2017 that Page was not a source for the CIA when he actually was — a falsehood used to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act renewal against Page.
Attorney General William Barr had hinted at a “development” in Durham’s investigation during a Fox News interview on Thursday night. Clinesmith’s lawyer did not immediately return the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
Clinesmith is not directly named in Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, but it is clear he is the “Office of General Counsel attorney” who had been acting in response to a question by an FBI agent who was part of the team investigating the Trump campaign.
More at the Washington Examiner
Just a small cog in the Clinton/DNC/Obama treason machine.
Unless this weasel has some evidence to turn on the rest of the seditionists involved in the coup, the penalties better be stiff. He lied to do specific harm to the government of the United States of America.
Every partisan liberal hack needs to be purged from the process of prosecuting this guy. There cannot be another Sullivan involved.
None of these types of cases should be tried in a D.C. Federal Court. Those cases, involving D.C. criminals should be tried in Federal Courts in fly-over country. D.C. courts are stacked with jurors who are Democrats. In fly-over country, the chances are greater of having regular citizens, both left and right, on the juries.
If I were Clinesmith, I would be singing like a canary.
@retire05: Very little he can sing that Durham already doesn’t know. He is the fall guy for the CIA involvement.
How can he plead guilty to something the dems claim is a conspiracy theory and for lying on warrants that Schitthead said were legit?
What Clinesmith is accused of doing didn’t actually make any difference one way or the other in the course of the Russia investigation. If that’s the worst Durham has come up with, the GOP’s investigate-the-investigators crowd is going to look even stupider than usual.
@Greg:
He lied about Page having worked FOR the FBI AGAINST Russian spying. Instead, he said he hadn’t so the FISA warrants would be approved. Sorry… that’s kind of a game changer.
Page would not be considered a Russian tool if he had been an informant AGAINST Russians.
But, consequential or not, why lie? Why did Schiff lie about having “evidence”? Why did Comey lie about Trump being the target? Why did Brennan lie about there being reason to believe Trump was working with the Russians? Why did Mueller lie about Gen. Flynn having lied? If there was any suspicion or case at all… why all the lying?
Because it was a coup, that’s why. Because there was no TRUTH. All they could do is lie. All you have and all you have ever had is lies. If you were intelligent, you could learn something productive from that.
Oh… and that ain’t the worst of it. The little White House conspiracy-a-thon with Obama, Biden, Comey, Rice and Yates is even worse. In the WHITE HOUSE. Sedition IN THE WHITE HOUSE. Obama left a stain that cannot be readily cleansed.
Clinesmith was charged with and has pleaded guilty to altering a single email.
None of the conclusions of the subsequent investigation were based on Clinesmith’s alteration of the email, or anything else he said or did.
@Deplorable Me:
You noticed, I’m sure, that there have been no leaks from Durham’s investigation. And no Democrats shouting to the roof tops what a “loyal” Republican Durham is.
Of course, Comrade Greggie will search the www for anything he thinks he can post that will remove the stink and taint from the Obama administration in Spygate.
Grab the popcorn. This plea by Clinesmith is just the beginning of an investigation conducted by a man who the Democrats can’t buy off.
“Documents released in recent months have called into question the reliability of information the FBI relied on, particularly from a dossier of Democratic-funded research, as the agency applied for applications to surveil Page.”
Well, at least Comrade Greggie’s link admits that the dossier of Steele was funded by the Democrats. I’ll give the left wing press that much that when the truth smacks them in the face they finally admit what was true all along.
@Greg: From that article:
“What they see as wrongdoing…”
Hehe…what bias?
Wobbly reelection prospects? I’ve never heard of a probably 49-state Trump landslide victory described as such, but…Democrats are even more desperate than they were in 2016.
@Greg: Little known fact… did you know that it is against the law to invade someone’s privacy? If you do some research, you’d find there’s actually a Constitutional Amendment covering that.
So, to spy on someone, the government needs a reason. They have to prove that reason. It is a violation of the law to LIE in order to spy on someone.
Yeah… actually against the law to just spy on and persecute a person for mere political purposes. Who’d a thunk it?
But, you know what else? Clinesmith didn’t act alone. He wasn’t the only person in the federal government that wanted to nail Trump via Page. As we’ve seen by Strzok’s notes and Yates’ testimony, there was a conspiracy IN THE WHITE HOUSE to concoct accusations against people in Trump’s team and use “investigations”
@Nathan Blue: Poor greggie the rock. He does not see the walls come tumbling down. This is the first journeyman stepping up to get his life back. He will give up everyone to save himself and his family. Now the boot is on the other foot and it is getting buckled tighter every day!
@Randy: Oh, he sees what’s coming. But, remember… he can call Obama’s dismal economy a “recovery”. He can call Obama accepting Iran’s terms, and PAYING them to do it, as a “deal”. He can accept it when his pathetic party just decides to forget “BelieveHer” ever existed. In other words, he has no principles, no morals, no standards.
“He” is the Democrat party.
@Randy:
Clinesmith doesn’t really have much of a story to tell. He’s a minor figure.
Cohen is stepping up, and he’s already been charged, tried, convicted, sentenced, fined, disbarred, served time in prison, and released. He might still find himself in a courtroom—as a witness for the prosecution.
Why Trump hung the guy who likely knows the most about his dirty laundry out to dry is a great mystery. There no way in the world anyone will now extract a non-disclosure agreement from him, and all bets are obviously off concerning attorney-client privilege. He has every reason to tell what he knows.
@Greg:
Right. The #2 lawyer at the FBI is just a minor figure. Got it.
What’s this fixation you have with Cohen? Oh, wait, I know. You support scumbags like Cohen and the Obamagate bunch.
All bets were off on attorney-client privileges when the FBI raided Cohen’s office, hotel room and home and took all his files. So is it your claim that the FBI, who had Cohen’s files, found info on Trump they didn’t use? Why didn’t the FBI share those salacious files with Mueller?
@retire05: Poor Greg only knows the MSLSD and pravda medias version of events, told that all the rest was conspiracy theory or Trump lies. Thing is it was not Trump, it was investigative reporters, Levin blew their cover first putting together all the anti Trump articles written by legacy media and saying there had to be a FISA warrant, and there was a coup attempt in process.
The media went crazy calling a former Chief of staff for Attorney General Edwin Meese a conspiracy guy.
It is fascinating how in the dark ol Greggie is after 4 years.
Who told this FBI attorney to alter evidence in a request for a FISA warrant or was this just his normal practice to be an unethical criminal slug? Thing about slugs they always leave that trail of slime behind.
@retire05, #16:
You don’t get much of anything. Maybe you’ll begin to in November.
Because he knows what an duplicitous s.o.b. Donald Trump is, and is about to spill everything he knows a few weeks ahead of the election.
That didn’t stop Trump from interfering with the process in the cases of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, did it? “Just keep your mouth shut and we’ll fix things for you” isn’t available in Cohen’s case, because Cohen was abandoned and took the fall. He was already charged, tried, convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned, and—as if that wasn’t enough—thrown back into a high-risk COVID-19 situation in an effort to force him to keep quiet. That was what he got for having been willing to “take a bullet” for his boss.
Now Cohen is about to do a couple of things “the boss” really and truly understands. He’s going to exact his revenge, and likely make a lot of money in the process. By the time the miniseries runs, much of the country will be fixated on the story.
@Greg:
Yeah, minor. If he tells the truth in his memo, spying on Carter Page, which led to spying on Trump, would never have happened. Sure… “minor”. Nothing to see here. Just a coup.
Ha. No it isn’t. It is simple and clear. Cohen HAS NOTHING on Trump. Notice, Trump has not stepped up to protect ANYONE that has been persecuted; he has allowed the legal system (raped by the Democrat as it has been) to play out. Cohen committed his own crimes and cut his own throat.
Meanwhile, note how Obama never pushed prosecution of the IRS scandal criminals, anyone involved in Fast and Furious, no one that showed incompetence in allowing the Benghazi consulate to be sacked, none of the thieves that scammed the American taxpayer in the numerous “green energy” failures or any of his people who conducted spying operations on US citizens that had committed no crimes. This is because he was totally complicit and prosecutions would loosen tongues. Trump has nothing to fear, but Obama certainly does.
You never have the nerve to ask yourself the important questions. Sometimes, the answers are not as important as the reason for the lying. If Page legitimately needed to be spied on, WHY was it necessary to lie to get the warrants? If Trump is so guilty, why make up excuses to investigate and why do the investigations NEVER find crimes? You can’t contemplate those thoughts because they are painful; they expose your lies or your ignorance that has made you look like a complete fool.
When has he interfered in the process? Please elaborate.
@retire05:
It’s called “desperately grasping at straws” and that’s where liberals are today.
@kitt:
He’s not in the dark; he is in denial. Remember, he is one of those that say they regard the Obama economy as “booming” and Biden as an actual viable candidate for President. It’s called “delusion”.
@Greg: Cohen is bought and sold as a piece of disinformation. Nobody’s watching.
Hard evidence shows Democrats and the FBI interfered in a legally elected president taking office. They created a hoax seeding doubt about Trump’s legitimacy.
The current investigations that are following due process show this to be true.
The current Democratic platform involves abolishing police departments, segregation, and inhibiting the country from recovering after covid.
Anyone worth listening to any political and journalistic sphere are predicting a 49-state landslide victory for Trump. That is most likely going to happen.
It’s obvious that the Democrats have conceded defeat, and are throwing all their money into flipping the Senate.
Trump can’t be beaten but it can be contained, or so they think.
If the Democrats somehow miraculously keep the house and win the Senate, they will spend the next two years trying to illegally impeach Trump. The midterms in 2022 will be the reckoning, Trump will spend the last two years of his second term with complete control. The House and Senate will be Republican after the 2022 elections, if not before.
@Deplorable Me: greggie the rock continues to believe that what he says has truth and is coherent while the rest of us laugh at his ignorance.
@Deplorable Me: Whats terribly funny is Gregs latching on to the disbarred lawyer guy. Muellers team scraped that guys underwear looking for something on Trump and came up empty. Greggie thinks that was Trumps only attorney. Hell Biden is so stained he has 600 on retainer for his campaign alone thats where Gregs 25 dollar contribution went. Right into the pockets of the law firm We, Screw em &Howe.
Can children sign non disclosures?
@kitt: Yeah, the Dems can indict whoever they want, but when Reps do it, it’s all “lies”.
Uh huh.
Payback is a bitch.
@Nathan Blue: I never looked at it as payback nor revenge. Having evidence of a crime and taking proper legal action is all. This guy gets max 5 years in some minimum security holding area most likely that serves mess on china and has a tea time.
@Deplorable Me, #18:
The DoJ dropped charges against Flynn after the man had already pleaded guilty. From Flynn’s sudden reversal from a cooperating witness to the silence of a clam, you’d have to be thick as a brick not to realize he’d been told help was on the way. Only Trump could have been behind that.
Trump then commuted Roger Stone’s sentence with a stroke of his presidential marky pen, after Stone had been found guilty of seven felony counts by the unanimous decision of a federal jury. Stone’s lawyers advised him to drop his appeal—because they knew there was no way in hell he could ever be found innocent in a courtroom.
Cohen, on the other hand, Trump dropped like a dead fish, allowing him to bear the entire brunt of illegal acts he committed at Trump’s behest. Rather than being offered help in return for years of past loyalty, Cohen was left twisting in the wind. When he was released from prison after months of incarceration owing to COVID-19 concerns, he was summarily thrown back into the slammer because he refused to agree not to tell what he knows. (Multiple republicans had already had a go at that during Cohen’s testimony before Congress. Cohen put them on notice in no uncertain terms.) A judge had to rule that this was unlawful intimidation to get Cohen back out.
At some point, every crime boss makes a big mistake. Cohen might turn out to be Trump’s. I just hope he’s wearing a bullet-proof vest.
@Greg: Damn, Greg. Your imaginary Trump must be a real asshole. Everybody actually close to the real man seems to think the opposite.
@Greg: DoJ dropped charges because it was PROVEN Mueller’s team lied, withheld evidence and extorted Gen. Flynn, forcing him into a false guilty plea. DEMOCRATS interfered, not Trump.
Again, Stone was forbidden to speak in his own behalf publicly while the prosecution was allowed to propagandize their case. They had a biased, tainted jury. And, it is well within Trump’s powers to pardon.
Though you’ve been soundly thrashed in your first try, you feel free to keep trying.
@Deplorable Me: If you remember, Trump only commuted his sentence. That leaves Stone able to file a civil suit and collect damages. When these FBI, DOJ and CIA folks agree to a plea deal, then Stone can use all of the evidence generated by Dunham to make his civil case against them personally.
@DaNang67: When someone suffering from multiple psychiatric issues like greggie the rock, they usually see others as having the same issues. So, you are right about greggie’s Trump image.
News flash: Robert Trump, brother of our President was called home, thoughts and prayers to our President tonight who is in deep mourning for his baby brother.
RIP Robert.