A Cambridge professor with deep ties to American and British intelligence has been outed as an agent who snooped on the Trump presidential campaign for the FBI.
Multiple media outlets have named Stefan Halper, 73, as the secret informant who met with Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos starting in the summer of 2016. The American-born academic previously served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations.
The revelation, stemming from recent reports in which FBI sources admitted sending an agent to snoop on the Trump camp, heightens suspicions that the FBI was seeking to entrap Trump campaign aides. Papodopoulous has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, while Page was the subject of a federal surveillance warrant.
“If the FBI or DOJ was infiltrating a campaign for the benefit of another campaign, that is a really big deal,” President Trump tweeted Saturday, calling for the FBI to release additional documents to Congress.
The Halper revelation also shows the Obama administration’s FBI began prying into the opposing party’s presidential nominee earlier than it previously admitted.
Halper’s sit-downs with Page reportedly started in early July 2016, undermining fired FBI Director James Comey’s previous claim that the bureau’s investigation into the Trump campaign began at the end of that month.
Halper made his first overture when he met with Page at a British symposium. The two remained in regular contact for more than a year, meeting at Halper’s Virginia farm and in Washington, DC, as well as exchanging emails.
The professor met with Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis in late August, offering his services as a foreign policy adviser, the Washington Post reported Friday, without naming the academic.
Clovis did not see the conversation as suspicious, his attorney told the paper — but is now “unsettled” that “the professor” never mentioned he’d struck up a relationship with Page.
Days later, Halper contacted Papadopoulos by email. The professor offered the young and inexperienced campaign aide $3,000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to London, ostensibly to write a paper about energy in the eastern Mediterranean region.
“George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?” the professor pressed Papadopoulos when they met, according to reports — a reference to Trump’s campaign-trail riffs about Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
Sources close to Papadopoulos told NBC News that he now believes Halper was working for an intelligence agency.
Highly detailed descriptions of the FBI informant in Friday reports in the New York Times and Washington Post pegged Halper in all but name. Outlets including NBC and Fox News subsequently connected the dots. The revelation confirms a March report in the Daily Caller that outlined Halper’s repeated meetings with Papadopoulos and Page.
It is not clear if the professor was paid [by the FBI] to speak with Trump campaign figures, but public records show that he has received large payments from the federal government in the last two years.
The Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment — a shadowy think tank that reports directly to the secretary of defense — paid Halper $282,000 in 2016 and $129,000 in 2017.
Halper has close personal and professional ties to the CIA reaching back decades. He is the son-in-law of a former deputy director of the agency and worked on the 1980 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, who had served as CIA director.
When Bush became Ronald Reagan’s running mate, Halper was implicated in a spying scandal in which CIA officials gave inside information on the Carter administration to the GOP campaign.
Meanwhile, reports emerged Saturday that Donald Trump Jr. met in August 2016 with a representative of Saudi crown princes, who offered pre-election help to his father’s campaign.
An Israeli political strategist who attended the meeting told the New York Times that their plan to carry out a pro-Trump social media campaign did not go forward.
Fox News, for reasons I don't quite understand, is not disclosing the mole's name yet, but they are discussing the ramifications of his being identified. For the last week his name has been known, and every night on Fox they have been discussing the abuses of power, the threat to Constitutional freedoms, and the outright tyranny of the FBI, DOJ, CIA (John Brennan), Director of National intelligence (James Clapper) in their weaponization of federal agencies against one party, and coup against Trump and his officials. And likely these same FBI investigators were providing opposition research for Obama during his presidency, and for the Hillary Clinton campaign.
No one can say this is minor. The Watergate break-in was small in itself. But it revealed that the Nixon administration was using the FBI and CIA to do surveillance on several thousand Democrat/Left and Vietnam anti-war protestors without warrants or justifiable cause. That was the real significance of Watergate.
Before this is over, we will see that a similar abuse of power has occurred under the Deep State/Democrats. We are already seeing exposure of that circle of abuse widening.
The even scarier part for me is that (unlike under Watergate) the news media(sometimes called the "Fourth Estate", for its trusted position to be a watchdog on the three branches of government), whose job it is to expose government abuse, IS ACUALLY DOWNPLAYING, COVERING UP AND ENABLING this abuse of power. It is precisely their job to hold the three branches of government accountable. But instead they are completely on Team Obama/Hillary. During Watergate, the media was all over the Watergate investigation and its dangerous ramifications. Now the media are actually suppressing its importance. Oh yes, let's interview Stormy Daniels' attorney for a 75th time! Nothing to see here!
And that Democrats, both at the grassroots and in the media, even knowing all the crazy abuses by Obama/Hillary and their Deep State federal officials, they would still have Hillary over Trump, and dislodge Trump by any deceit and abuse of power they could manage. We see that playing out every day.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
