FBI Agent at Sussmann Trial Just Dropped a Bomb About an Ongoing Investigation
FBI agent Curtis Heide just revealed a whopper during his testimony at the trial of Michael Sussmann on Tuesday.
Heide testified that he is currently facing an internal investigation for withholding potentially exculpatory evidence from an application for a FISA warrant to surveil someone during their probe of Trump’s 2016 campaign. That wasn’t all. He also said that others who had been involved in the Trump-Russia probe were also being investigated, but he didn’t say who they were or what positions they held at the Bureau.
Heide said the evidence in question was “consensual recordings” of one of the subjects. He did not reveal who was being surveilled. “There are various consensual recordings … and the exculpatory information was not disclosed in the FISA court,” Heide said, adding that the investigation was ongoing and he denied that he’d withheld information.
Heide was the agent who handled a confidential human source who met with and recorded Trump campaign adviser George Papadopolous. Papadopolous denied that the Trump campaign had anything to do with the alleged hack of the DNC, and he also denied that the campaign had anything to do with Russia. It’s not clear that this is what Heide is being investigated over, but it fits the facts that we know so far because his denials were withheld from the warrant application, according to documents released by Attorney General William Barr. According to DOJ Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz, the failure to include those denials were two of 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” of the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe.
Heide also testified about the referral being framed as from the DOJ, as we reported previously. He and FBI agent Allison Sands authored the document.
The case identification was “Alfa Bank, Russia — Contacts / Agents, Sensitive Investigative Matter,” and the opening document said it “documents the opening of a Full Field Investigation into the network communications between a U.S.-based server and the Russian ALFA BANK organization.” Enclosed was a “White Paper.”
“On or about September 19, 2016, FBI received a referral of information from the U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, detailing an unusually configured email server in Pennsylvania belonging to the TRUMP ORGANIZATION,” the FBI wrote in September 2016. “In that referral, the DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE provided the FBI with a white paper that was produced by an anonymous third party. According to the white paper, a U.S.-based server that is owned by the TRUMP ORGANIZATION has been communicating with the Russian-based ALFA BANK organization in Moscow, Russia.”
Andy McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and now a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, told the Washington Examiner: “The investigation opening document is totally outrageous. It not only claims that the information came from the Justice Department. It suggests that the Justice Department commissioned and may even vouch for the white paper.”
The former federal prosecutor added, “To identify Sussmann as ‘the Department of Justice’ is especially outrageous under circumstances where (a) he is a lawyer for the Clinton Campaign, and (b) the representation that got him in the door to meet Baker was that he wasn’t representing anyone (which would include the Justice Department, if he had any such technical tie).”
This of course would delude other agents who would thereafter work on the case, perhaps giving it more credence thinking it was the DOJ, rather than the Clinton campaign, behind the information.
Heide claimed that it was a “mistake in their paperwork.”
“We may have conflated the Office of the General Counsel and the Justice Department,” Mr. Heide said on the witness stand. James Baker, who received the Sussmann tip, was the General Counsel. “I don’t know how that information got in there.”
So, his excuse is that he doesn’t even know the basic structure or breakdown of the FBI and the DOJ? Do these guys take us for fools? They must at this point, since it has taken so long to hold people to account here. But it will be fascinating now to see what comes out of this investigation and who else they are looking into — because this is showing even more FBI problematic issues then perhaps we already know in what they did here. So, grab the popcorn, because it sounds like we may see more coming out of this.
Post a Comment