Guilty Russia-Probe FBI Lawyer Who FALSIFIED Email Asks for Probation

Former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith plead guilty to making false statements in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia this past summer in August. Clinesmith had falsified an email which was then used to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application to surveil a former Trump aide and campaign advisor, Carter Page.

Now that it’s time for sentencing, the disgraced lawyer is asking the court for leniency and to be spared from a prison sentence, according to a memorandum filed Thursday by his attorneys.

Clinesmith’s lawyers wrote that he “made a grievous mistake. By altering a colleague’s email, he cut a corner in a job that required far better of him. He failed to live up to the FBI’s and his own high standards of conduct… And he committed a crime.”

Clinesmith’s charges stem from an inquiry of the “Crossfire Hurricane” Russia probe conducted by John Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut.

When the FBI sought to renew a FISA to continue to surveil Carter Page In June 2017, Clinesmith was asked to determine whether Page was a source for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The fact that Page had been a source to the Intelligence Agency concerning Russia activity was a necessary disclosure as it would have explained the purpose of his Russian contacts.

The CIA had informed Clinesmith in an email that Page had been an “operational contact” between 2008 and 2013. However, Clinesmith deleted that section of the email prior to submitting it to obtain the FISA.

Clinesmith’s lawyers admitted that he knowingly doctored the email because he stated that Page was “not a source” for the CIA.

Just last week, Carter Page has filed a $75 million lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Justice Department, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Clinesmith.

The lawsuit filed on Friday accuses the agencies of violating Page’s constitutional and “legal rights in connection with unlawful surveillance and investigation of him by the United States Government.”

“This case is about holding accountable the entities and individuals who are responsible for the most egregious violation and abuse of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] FISA statute since it was enacted over forty years ago,” the complaint states.

Chief FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer issued a scathing rebuke of how the FBI handled the applications used to spy on Page, writing, “The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.“

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