Two court filings from the last month suggest U.S. and British intelligence agencies used the Russian-born Svetlana Lokhova and a complicit press to peddle the Russia-collusion narrative and to destroy Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn. But the masterminds behind Spygate made a fatal mistake in casting Lokhova as a Russian operative with designs on Flynn, as her recently filed amended complaint proves.
Lokhova, who left Russia as a teen and became a British citizen in 2002, made headlines in May 2019, when she sued outed informant and “ratf-cker” Stefan Halper. Lokhova’s original complaint claimed Halper, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and MSNBC defamed her.
The defendants “embroiled an innocent woman in a conspiracy to undo the 2016 Presidential election and topple the President of the United States of America,” Lokhova alleged. She continued: “Halper manufactured and published numerous false and defamatory statements,” including that she was “‘a Russian spy’ and a traitor to her country and that Plaintiff had an affair with General Flynn on the orders of Russian intelligence.”
Her initial complaint laid out the details of the alleged conspiracy between Halper and the media outlets. But it was the amended complaint Lokhova filed at the end of August that connected Halper, British intelligence, and the press with former CIA Director John Brennan and a concerted effort to destroy Flynn — which explains why the motion to compel under seal in the Flynn criminal case earlier this month included a demand by defense counsel Sidney Powell for prosecutors to turn over the following:
All payments, notes, memos, correspondence, and instructions by and between the FBI, CIA, or DOD with Stefan Halper—going back as far as 2014—regarding Michael Flynn, Svetlana Lokhova, Mr. Richard Dearlove (of MI6), and Professor Christopher Andrew (connected with MI5) and Halper’s compensation through the DOD Office of Net Assessment as evidenced by the whistleblower complaint of Adam Lovinger, addressed in our brief.
If the year 2014 seems antiquated compared to the Russia-collusion narrative that didn’t hit its stride until mid-to-late 2016, that’s exactly what Lokhova thought too.
Lokhova told The Federalist that after several news organizations contacted her around the same time in March 2017 about a dinner in honor of Flynn that she had attended as a graduate student at Cambridge more than three years prior, she wondered why. “What prompted all of these different journalists to quiz me about this innocuous academic dinner gathering held in February of 2014?” Lokhova asked herself.
As a graduate student at Cambridge, Lokhova often received appeals to attend academic gatherings. Such was the case when, “in January 2014, while working to complete her Ph.D. at Cambridge University, her mentor Professor Christopher M. Andrew (‘Andrew’), and Sir Richard Dearlove (‘Dearlove’), invited Lokhova to attend a group dinner with Flynn,” who then served as President Barack Obama’s director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
According to her complaint, the dinner served to promote the Cambridge Security Initiative (CSI), “a group chaired by Dearlove,” which sought “to advance education in international security and intelligence issues and to help support graduate students, such as Lokhova, while they were studying at Cambridge.” About 20 people attended that Feb. 28, 2014, academic event, and during the evening, Lokhova was introduced to Flynn and spoke with him briefly.
Svetlana Lokhova Learns of Claims That She Is a Spy
Fast forward three years.
“I had just given birth to my first child, when the calls and emails came, followed by these ridiculous claims that I was a Russian spy and had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a man I had only briefly met during a university function.” Lokhova explained.
Later, she would seek out answers. “I approached the question of ‘why’ and ‘why now,’ as a historian,” Lokhova, the author of the upcoming book, “The Spy Who Changed History: The Untold Story of How the Soviet Union Stole America’s Top Secrets,” told The Federalist. Through researching newspaper archives, eyewitness accounts, and public records, she pieced together an apparent coordinated effort that connected Halper, Brennan, British intelligence, and media outlets in an effort to paint her as a Russian spy and thereby take down Flynn — and in turn, create a scandal for President Trump.
“I had known Halper at Cambridge,” Lokhova said, “but he was just a boring old academic. I couldn’t see why he was painting me as a Russian spy,” she told The Federalist, “until Halper was exposed as an informant. Then the pieces all fit together.”
Chuck Ross had already identified Halper as a London-based academic with ties to the intelligence community who had a mysterious meeting with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, when the New York Times and Washington Post ran stories in May 2018, describing in detail an unnamed CIA and FBI source. While the Times and Post omitted Halper’s name, the specifics provided outed Halper as the informant. Later, we would learn that Halper had contact with not just Papadopoulos, but also Trump adviser Carter Page and campaign chairman Sam Clovis. Now Flynn can be added to the mix.
A Coordinated Effort To Take Down Flynn — and Trump
Lokhova’s amended complaint details the Halper connection and presents a compelling case that he, along with Andrew and Dearlove — both of whom are connected to British intelligence — coordinated with Brennan and multiple media outlets to paint Lokhova as a spy in order to portray Flynn as, at best, compromised and, at worst, a traitor and Russian compatriot.
While the plot had its roots in 2014, when Lokhova briefly met Flynn, it was not executed until Feb. 19, 2017, when Lokhova’s former mentor, Christopher Andrew, penned a piece for the U.K.’s Sunday Times titled “Impulsive General Misha shoots himself in the foot.” Andrew, the former official historian of the British domestic security system, MI5, used every rhetorical device available to craft a tale of intrigue and espionage.
It all paints a pretty sordid picture of deep state scumbags.