Justice Won’t Be Served In SpyGate Without John Durham Investigating More Confidential Human Sources
BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND
JULY 21, 2022
Part 1 of 3
Rodney Joffe is not the only CHS deserving a close look. And to date, it appears Stefan Halper and Christopher Steele received, as most, a glance in their directions by the special counsel’s team.
The Crossfire Hurricane and Robert Mueller Special Counsel teams undisputedly had a problem with confidential human sources, or “CHS.” The question remains whether John Durham’s team also has a problem — with double-standards.
Yesterday, The Federalist reported that on Friday a federal judge concluded, “[D]ocuments suggest that Stefan Halper ‘may have made clear misstatements to the FBI’ and may be responsible for ‘some falsehoods’ about Michael Flynn and Svetlana Lokhova…” The judge’s comments came during proceedings in Lokhova’s defamation case against Halper, with the potential “misstatements” and “falsehoods” concerning Halper’s interviews with FBI agents in August of 2016.
According to electronic communications documenting the agents’ interview with Halper on August 11, 2016, Halper claimed to have witnessed Lokhova leave a dinner with Flynn, after which she “surprised everyone and got into [Flynn’s] cab and joined [Flynn] on the train ride to London.” Halper further “recalled that LOKHOVA ‘latched’ onto Flynn when he was at the [dinner.].”
The FBI’s summary of Halper’s comments added that he claimed to be “somewhat suspicious of LOKHOVA” and that he “believes that LOKHOVA’S father may be a Russian Oligarch living in London.” Halper repeated the story of Lokhova joining Flynn in a cab the next day during a second interview. But contrary to Halper’s claims, he did not attend the dinner at which Flynn spoke, Lokhova did not leave the dinner with Flynn, and she did not jump into a cab with him nor accompany him to London on the train.
In addition to Halper’s alleged lies to the FBI, Lokhova claims he repeated his false allegations about her and “General Flynn to various members of the media who, upon information and belief, include, among others, journalists working for the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.” In turn, according to Lokhova’s lawsuit, “many commentators, from national television hosts to ordinary citizens on social media, credited the false allegations that Plaintiff was a Russian spy who had ensnared General Flynn in a sexual or romantic imbroglio at the behest of the Kremlin.” Further, Lokhova’s complaint alleged, Halper’s claims to the FBI were “a key reason why the FBI opened a subpart of [the Crossfire Hurricane] investigation that specifically focused on General Flynn,” with the FBI targeting Flynn within days of Halper framing Lokhova as a honeypot.
The Federalist further revealed on Wednesday that the same electronic communications indicate Halper had lied to the FBI about former Trump adviser Carter Page. Specifically, the summary of the FBI’s debriefing with Halper documented Halper telling agents that he met privately with Page around July 18, 2016, and that “the purpose of the meeting was to ask the CHS if s/he would want to join the Trump campaign as a foreign policy adviser.”
In an exclusive interview with The Federalist in 2020, however, Page, who had not yet seen the electronic communications, unequivocally denied asking Halper “to be a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign.” “It is possible,” Page acknowledged at the time, “that they explored some ways Halper might get involved indirectly at some point down the road,” but it is “an extraordinary mischaracterization,” to say that he had asked Halper “to be a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign.”
Halper, however, was not the only problematic CHS involved in the investigation into Donald Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia. Christopher Steele, who had served as a CHS since 2013, reached out to his handler, Michael Gaeta, about Steele’s supposed “intel” on Trump. On July 5, 2016, Steele met with Gaeta, the later of whom was stationed in Rome at the time, telling Gaeta about Trump’s supposed concerning connections with Russia. Steele would later provide Gaeta with various memos that have since became known as the Steele dossier, with Gaeta in late July sending multiple memos to the New York Field Office.
The Christopher Steele Problem
Special Counsel John Durham’s November 2021 indictment of Igor Danchenko on charges that Danchenko lied to the FBI during questioning “related to his role as Steele’s ‘Primary Sub-Source’ for the notorious dossier that enabled Obama administration surveillance of the Trump campaign,” reveals one major problem with Steele serving as a CHS: Steele’s reporting was contrived…
https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/21/justice-wont-be-served-in-spygate-without-john-durham-investigating-more-confidential-human-sources/