dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

The FBI whistleblower who is cooperating with a Justice Department probe of the bureau was an early skeptic of false reports that said retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn had done something inappropriate with a Russian-born scholar at Cambridge University in England.

Agent William J. Barnett, who worked on the Crossfire Hurricane team investigating President Trump and his aides, said the allegation made no sense and was discredited by foreign intelligence agencies. “Not plausible,” he said.

The claim about Flynn and a Russian woman was repeated in 2017-18 by major U.S. newspapers as another suspected instance of possible Russian collusion by a Trump associate.

Now, new evidence has emerged, capped by Mr. Barnett’s testimony last month.

It was not known until recently that the FBI — in an official Jan. 4, 2017, closing document — had cleared Flynn of any inappropriate Russian contacts, including at Cambridge.

The document was uncovered by U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Jensen, whom Attorney General William Barr tapped to review the Flynn perjury prosecution. Mr. Jensen now has joined U.S. Attorney John Durham’s staff, which is looking at how the FBI opened and conducted the Trump inquiry.

The Cambridge setting in 2014 was a dinner in honor of Flynn, who was in his final days as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Among the academic diners, the only woman present was Svetlana Lokhova, a Russian-born British citizen who later wrote a book on Kremlin espionage. At dinner’s end, Flynn left with his DIA handler from the U.S. Embassy. Ms. Lokhova never saw him again.

The dinner remained unnoticed until 2017, when news stories, first in The Wall Street Journal, reported that something inappropriate had happened. The dinner became part of Trump-Russia lore telling of a supposed Flynn-Lokhova conspiracy.

Ms. Lokhova says she knows who started the smear: FBI informant Stefan Halper, a Cambridge professor and longtime Washington national security figure. The FBI hired and dispatched him to spy on the Trump campaign, picking volunteers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos as targets for tape-recorded chats. They never incriminated themselves.

Ms. Lokhova made her allegation in a defamation lawsuit filed in Virginia against Mr. Halper and news media outlets. Dismissed by a U.S. District judge, the case is now on appeal.