A former FBI attorney has pleaded guilty to falsifying a claim made to oversee the government on a key figure in former special adviser Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian mediation in the 2016 election, according to court documents.
It is the first legal development that comes from a review of the work of the Mueller team, an effort led by John Durham, the American lawyer in Connecticut. Attorney General William Barr set out more than a year ago to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation.
A lawsuit filed Friday in the federal court in Washington, DC, said Kevin Clinesmith will plead guilty to one count of making a false statement by changing an email in the course of a search for a renewal of government oversight of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser. The warning for approval by the Surveillance Court for Foreign Intelligence has been a flash point for conservative critics of the FBI and the Mueller investigation.
The Justice Department inspector general reported last December that when Clinesmith was working in the FBI’s Office of General Counsel, he changed an email about Page, saying it was “no source” for another U.S. Intelligence Agency. Page has publicly stated that he was briefly a source for the CIA.
Clinesmith told the Inspector General that he did not consider Page a “recruited possession.”
“Kevin is deeply sorry that he changed the email,” said his lawyer Jonathan Shur. “It was never his intention to mislead the court or his colleagues because he believed the information he passed on was accurate, but Kevin understands what he was doing was wrong and accepts responsibility.”
Barr predicted the expected plea deal in an interview with Fox News on Thursday night. He said it would not be an “earth-shattering development” but would “indicate that things are moving at the right pace, as determined by the facts in this study.”
The inspector general’s report concluded that the FBI had a legitimate reason for opening an investigation into Russian election mediation and whether anyone connected with the Trump campaign was involved. The report concluded that there was no evidence of political bias in the decision.
But Inspector General Michael Horowitz said the FBI made serious and repeated mistakes in seeking a mandate under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to monitor Page. The FBI’s proposals to the court made allegations that were “inaccurate, incomplete or not supported by appropriate documentation,” he said.
Barr said he asked Durham to look into the origins of the investigation because he did not believe the FBI had a good reason for launching it. He told NBC News last December that the FBI began looking into the campaign on the tin of suspicions and continued to press, even after it went nowhere.
“There needs to be some basis before we use these very potent forces in our core first amendment activity. And here, I feel that this was very inadequate,” he said.
