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Home » Jonathan Turley on the “spy”

Jonathan Turley on the “spy”

The New Neo Posted on by

Jonathan Turley is another writer—a lawyer—whose viewpoints especially interest me because he doesn’t parrot any party line. He’s mostly a libertarian, and as far as I can tell he tends to vote Democratic or libertarian. At any rate, he’s not a Trump guy, but often quite fair and cautious.

This is what he wrote today:

[A 2012 memo to the DOJ] continued, “Simply put, politics must play no role in the decisions of federal investigators or prosecutors regarding any investigations or criminal charges. Law enforcement officers and prosecutors may never select the timing of investigative steps or criminal charges for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”

Halper [the “spy”] reportedly was part of a covert operation. However, Halper adds a new, potentially significant element to this controversy. Indeed, it is hard to understand the objections to the investigation of his role [see NOTE* below]. All Americans should be concerned by the implications of an administration running a long investigation into the activities of its opposing party. Three questions could well determine if there was a serious problem of abusive tactics or merely bad optics in the running of [Halper].

The first involves timing: the earlier, the more suspicious. The second involves money: was he paid, and how much, and by whom? The third involves what is called “intrusion.” Turley explains:

Perhaps the most serious allegations deal with Halper’s reported effort to advise the Trump campaign or secure a position in the new administration. If Halper was a longtime paid asset of the FBI and CIA, such a role would be deeply troubling. If successful, the FBI could have had a person working with the campaign or even in the administration who was on its covert budget. Even if they stopped paying Halper, it is doubtful that he would disclose his prior relationship. Trump officials have said they were unaware of the connection in their conversations with him.

In his meetings, Halper was clearly trying to influence or possibly join the campaign while working with the FBI. At a minimum, Halper met with with Trump campaign advisers, including Papadopoulos, Page and former national campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis. Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro reportedly submitted Halper’s name for a post during the presidential transition. If the FBI knew Halper was actively seeking a role in either the campaign or the administration, this could be every bit as serious as Trump alleged.

While the media has tended to downplay these allegations, they are manifestly serious. The use of a paid FBI asset to target a national campaign in this way would be unprecedented.

NOTE*: Turley sometimes shows a puzzling naivete for a man so smart. He writes “it is hard to understand the objections to the investigation of his role.” But it’s not hard at all. It’s politics, Jake.]

Comments

Jonathan Turley on the “spy” — 23 Comments

  1. I think he means viewing the situation in a legal context, it is hard to understand the objections to the investigation. Turley and McCarthy have done an excellent job of analyzing the facts that are known and their legal significance.

  2. “If Halper was a longtime paid asset of the FBI and CIA, such a role would be deeply troubling. If successful, the FBI could have had a person working with the campaign or even in the administration who was on its covert budget.”

    At the very least they would have tried to get more than one asset working with the campaign or even in the administration. What basis is there in assuming they were not successful?

    Given that “Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro reportedly submitted Halper’s name for a post during the presidential transition”… he would be at the top of my list of possibilities. Navarro is the Assistant to the President and Director of Trade and Industrial Policy.

    Those leaks from Trump’s phone calls and Trump’s meetings restricted to top management point to a highly placed leaker.

  4. Geoffrey Britain,

    I thought almost the same thing: “What’s the name of the guy who keeps trying to sell Halper to them? That guy’s a spy too.”

    Definitely an Asset, if you know what I mean (And I think you do…).

  5. Some sources said that the first shot came from an ATF/Fed operative in Waco 2 massacre.

    It gave the necessary cover to open fire and to call it suppressing gang activity later on. Although who has an entire SWAT team sniper in position to kill, to suppress gang activity, is unknown. After all, I don’t hear of MS 13 dying like flies to police SWAT. It would clean up the neighborhood a lot.

    Later, all the phones were reset to factory settings, to prevent any kind of leak or inappropriate narrative from Waco 2.

  6. I have been wondering about Halper’s own ideology and political position, as several reports in addition to The Hill mention his Republican antecedents:
    “While the media has tended to downplay these allegations, they are manifestly serious. The use of a paid FBI asset to target a national campaign in this way would be unprecedented. The closest we have come historically was the allegation in 1980 that aides to Ronald Reagan spied on Jimmy Carter’s campaign and obtained confidential documents Carter used to prepare for a debate. While he has denied the allegations, one of those aides identified was Halper.”

    RINO? Never-Trumper? Did he change to being a Democrat? Or is he just a guy doing a job — he’s been paid some pretty hefty sums for writing reports: did the US get its money’s worth, or is that just a cover to keep him on retainer for being a spy?

    Excuse me: for being a “secret informant.”

    https://www.weeklystandard.com/eric-felten/trump-complains-about-fbi-trying-to-put-spy-in-his-campaign-does-he-have-a-point

    “It Depends on What Your Definition of ‘Spy’ Is
    ERIC FELTEN”

  10. Yikes, the possibility that the FBI was setting up spies in Trump’s administration is frightening. I had assumed Halper (and Misfud) were agent provocateurs stirring up Russia collusion talk in order to justify the FISA warrant, which itself was possibly just cover for the already in progress surveillance of the Trump campaign. Placing operatives within Trump’s administration, while Obama has set up shop with Jarrett in Kalorama (i.e. just miles from the WH), makes it look like that Obama “shadow government” talk was a possibility.

    This just keeps getting worse! Bookworm has asked the classic question: “What did Obama know, and when did he know it?” While we’re at it, where is he now and when will we hear from him on this?

  11. “What did Obama know….?”

    He had to have known everything.

    (But let’s pretend that even though he was the man at the top, no one told him anything… And while we’re at it, let’s also keep pretending that Obama’s administration was the “most transparent administration ever”….)

  13. Major Paper: We’ve Got Proof Obama Spying on Trump Began Months Before FBI Admits

    it was revealed via FBI leaks that the bureau utilized an “informant” to question a handful of marginal campaign figures – George Papadopoulos and Carter Page – about their contacts with Russia during the 2016 campaign.

    That revelation initially seemed to align with evidence of an “electronic communication” discovered by House Intelligence Committee investigators dated July 31, 2016, which appeared to mark the official beginning of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.

  14. Having spent a career in the American Foreign Service, I have to admit to being surprised that the Australian High Commissioner to the Court of St. James would spend the evening drinking with a young campaign aide — George Papadopoulos. It is not the only part of this story that is fishy, but it is another element that does not pass the smell test. Unless there is some kind of personal relationship — something that is possible — a senior diplomat would be more likely to spend the evening with others of similar rank. Yes, as a senior officer in an embassy, I did meet with junior officers, but only in order to share thoughts on career development, never to talk about damning emails of one political party. Fishy.

  15. F Says:
    May 23rd, 2018 at 10:00 am
    Having spent a career in the American Foreign Service, I have to admit to being surprised that the Australian High Commissioner to the Court of St. James would spend the evening drinking with a young campaign aide
    * * *
    That always struck me as a bizarre pairing – and IIRC we really haven’t heard any details on how they got together: coincidence in a bar? planned outing? romantic tryst?
    (It’s a spy story: we have to consider everything!)

    But why would such a high ranking official let himself get roped into anything so shoddily clandestine in the first place, even if he was a big Obama donor: True Believer? Blackmail? (It’s a spy story…)

    “Yes, as a senior officer in an embassy, I did meet with junior officers, but only in order to share thoughts on career development, ”

    But were you meeting with junior officers of another country to discuss their careers?
    Other than maybe scouting out possible spies secret informants….

  17. What did Mark Felt and his FBi spies know and when did he know it at the time of Watergate breakin.

  18. Barry Meislin Says:
    May 23rd, 2018 at 4:12 am
    The first domino?
    https://spectator.org/john-brennans-plot-to-infiltrate-the-trump-campaign/
    * * *
    May include the answer to F’s question and my speculations:

    “Brennan’s Langley group had access to Halper’s file and sized him up as the perfect embed: a Republican-oriented foreign policy scholar who could plausibly interact with Trump officials while serving as a nexus between the CIA and Brennan’s friends in British intelligence. Halper’s ties to Richard Dearlove, a former head of British intelligence, are well known, and Halper knows Alexander Downer, the pub-crawling Aussie diplomat, through a mutual association with Cambridge University.”
    * * *
    George Parry has some more answers here, which I had not seen when it came out. So much of following this story depends on what news reports cross one’s viewing.

    https://spectator.org/the-papadopoulos-affair-such-a-downer/

    “But how did Papadopoulos’ fateful meeting with Downer come about? And what prompted Downer to report this drunken blather to U.S. intelligence?

    To answer these questions, it is helpful to go back to February 2006, when then Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer – yes the same guy who happened to be in that London gin joint – and former President Bill Clinton signed a Memorandum of Understanding between the Australian government and the William J. Clinton Foundation by which Australian taxpayers would pay up to $25,000,000 to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS in China, Vietnam, and Papua New Guinea.
    …
    Even though CHAI already had the contract, the Australian government later published an invitation for bids to perform the exact same task. As noted by Smith, this kind of pre-textual advertising is deceptive and a classic marker for fraud.
    …
    In short, the audit described yet another taxpayer-funded Clinton Foundation boondoggle where nobody knows how the money was spent. This one was served up to the Australian taxpayers by none other than the same Alexander Downer who ten years later would just happen to cross paths with George Papadopoulos while Bill Clinton’s wife was running for president. And also by happy chance, Downer was able to help the Clintons by getting a drunken Papadopoulos to talk about about the Russians having dirt on Mrs. Clinton. What a remarkable string of coincidences!

    But, among us old law enforcement types, there is a tried and true axiom that, in life, there is no such thing as a coincidence. Which raises the question as to whether Downer’s conversation with Papadopoulos was a matter of serendipity or part of a carefully orchestrated scheme calculated to benefit the Clinton campaign. Consider the following: [details of P. meeting Professor M.]
    …
    All of this raises many questions.

    Did Mifsud’s information about the Clinton “dirt” and emails come from the Russians or someone else? If someone else, who? What was his motive in telling Papadopoulos about it? Did Mifsud dangle this story in the hope that Papadopoulos would repeat it?

    How did Papadopoulos’ May 2016 meeting with Downer occur so soon after his April 26, 2016 meeting with Mifsud? Were these events coordinated? Was Downer’s meeting with Papadopoulos a chance encounter or was it arranged in advance? It is reported that an official at the Israeli embassy introduced Papadopoulos to Downer. Was this done at Downer’s request? If so, why? Put another way, why would Australia’s top diplomat to the UK want to meet with a peripheral, low-level adviser to the Trump campaign?

    Was Downer instructed to arrange the meeting? If so, by whom? The FBI, CIA, MI-6 or some similar intelligence agency? The Clinton campaign?

    Was Downer briefed by any agency on how to conduct the meeting or the questions to be asked? Was he wired? Is there some other official record of the meeting? To whom did he report the results of the meeting?

    Did Downer really wait two months to report his conversation with Papadopoulos to the FBI? If so, why? Did he report Papadopoulos’ statements to the Clinton campaign or others working on behalf of its interests?
    …
    Did the FBI prep Halper for his meeting with Papadopoulos? Was Halper wired? Was he paid by the FBI? Were FBI funds used to pay for Papadopoulos’ trip to London and for the policy paper?

    There are a thousand other questions that come to mind. But suffice it to say that, taken in sequence, these meetings with Mifsud, Downer, and Halper raise a reasonable inference that Papadopoulos was manipulated to repeat a planted, fictitious story about Clinton dirt and emails in order to create the appearance of collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russians and a fabricated predicate for the FBI investigation of that campaign. Given that for the first time in this nation’s history the FBI and the Department of Justice have conducted electronic surveillance of a presidential campaign and used at least one undercover informant to infiltrate and spy on that campaign, it is certainly fair to conclude that strange”r things than the possible duping and manipulation of George Papadopoulos have happened.”
    * * *
    So, I’m going with a Modified Limited Blackmail theory on this one. Downer’s duplicity with the Clintons was already known, but maybe they have something else on him, or he’s just that good a buddy.

  19. In the early 1970s, Felt had supervised Operation COINTELPRO, initiated by Hoover in the 1950s. This period of FBI history has generated great controversy for its abuses of private citizens’ rights. The FBI was pursuing leftist groups, such as the Weather Underground, which had planted bombs at the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department building. Felt, along with Edward S. Miller, authorized FBI agents to break into homes secretly in 1972 and 1973, without a search warrant, on nine separate occasions. These kinds of FBI operations were known as “black bag jobs.” The break-ins occurred at five addresses in New York and New Jersey, at the homes of relatives and acquaintances of Weather Underground members. They did not contribute to the capture of any fugitives. The use of “black bag jobs” by the FBI was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the Plamondon case, 407 U.S. 297 (1972).

    The Church Committee of Congress revealed the FBI’s illegal activities, and many agents were investigated. In 1976, Felt publicly stated he had ordered break-ins, and recommended against punishment of individual agents who had carried out orders. Felt also stated that Patrick Gray had also authorized the break-ins, but Gray denied this. Felt said on the CBS television program Face the Nation he would probably be a “scapegoat” for the Bureau’s work.[55] “I think this is justified and I’d do it again tomorrow,” he said on the program. While admitting the break-ins were “extralegal”, he justified them as protecting the “greater good.” Felt said:

    To not take action against these people and know of a bombing in advance would simply be to stick your fingers in your ears and protect your eardrums when the explosion went off and then start the investigation.

    That American memory problem that starts and begins with AP and the national media propaganda arms.

    In June 1973, Ruckelshaus received a call from someone claiming to be a New York Times reporter, telling him that Felt was the source of this information.[54] On June 21, Ruckelshaus met privately with Felt and accused him of leaking information to The New York Times, a charge that Felt adamantly denied.[46] Ruckelshaus told Felt to “sleep on it” and let him know the next day what he wanted to do. Felt resigned from the Bureau the next day, June 22, 1973, ending his thirty-one year career.

    In a 2013 interview, Ruckelshaus noted the possibility that the original caller was a hoax. He said that he considered Felt’s resignation “an admission of guilt” anyway.[54]

    Don’t worry, spying on Americans is only a crime when it is Democrats doing it to their enemies and not the other way around.


    President Ronald Reagan pardoned Felt and Miller.
    In a phone call on January 30, 1981, Edwin Meese encouraged President Ronald Reagan to issue a pardon. After further encouragement from Felt’s former colleagues, President Reagan pardoned Felt and Miller. The pardon was signed on March 26, but was not announced to the public until April 15, 1981.

    In the pardon, Reagan wrote:

    During their long careers, Mark Felt and Edward Miller served the Federal Bureau of Investigation and our nation with great distinction. To punish them further–after 3 years of criminal prosecution proceedings–would not serve the ends of justice.
    Their convictions in the U.S. District Court, on appeal at the time I signed the pardons, grew out of their good-faith belief that their actions were necessary to preserve the security interests of our country. The record demonstrates that they acted not with criminal intent, but in the belief that they had grants of authority reaching to the highest levels of government.[64]

    The FBI determines which US Presidents gets to spy on which political parties and citizens.

  20. If Felt took action against Ayers and Bernadine, why is that those 2 are free as a bird and Nixon resigned.

    The FBI and the Deep State determines who is guilty and who is innocent: who deserves to be punished and who deserves to be pardoned.

    Your “US” political system isn’t quite as robust as the media claimed.

  21. Speaking of flailing Democrats, serial liar James Clapper — Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence —told the cackling hens on The View yesterday that the FBI placing spies within presidential campaigns is just standard operating procedure that “happens all the time.” Ok, well, if that’s true, then identify the spies you placed in the Pansuit Princess’s and Jeb!’s campaign. Go ahead, Director, we’ll all wait right here. Good lord.

  22. the Democrats have a new campaign message! — And boy, you aren’t going to believe what it is. No kidding, the party of MS-13, Hamas, Iran and open borders has gotten hold of new polling data that tells them that the magic bullet to enable them to save their sagging prospects for taking back the House of Representatives in the midterms is to use the phrase…wait for it…oh, you have to wait for this one…DRAIN THE SWAMP!
    Yes, friends, the Democrat Party finds itself so bereft of anything resembling creative thought, so utterly lost for a viable campaign strategy for 2018, so without any real means to compete with Donald Trump and so completely lacking in the slightest shred of understanding of the cultural and political dynamics that led to their crushing defeats in 2014 and 2016 that they now have decided to have Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi — the two people who, more than any other living Americans, literally define the DC Swamp — go out and recite the Trump campaign slogan to their audiences of brainwashed nitwits.

  23. http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2009/06/why-i-own-guns-michael-gaddys-battle.html

    Amis don’t think they are slaves?

    Prove it. Get rid of these traitors you call politicians and loyal bureaucrats. See if that works for ya. If it doesn’t… then obviously, slave is truer than “free”.

    Our elected and appointed criminals have destroyed our constitution; stolen our country’s wealth; created rampant racism by polarizing the races; openly admitted to voting for legislation that adversely impacts millions without ever reading it; attempted to destroy a complete culture (Southron) because it does not fit their criminal agenda; infested their ranks with sanctimonious moral midgets who cannot control their carnal cravings; totally corrupted the criminal justice system, putting the innocent behind bars while protecting criminal cronies; imprisoned hundreds of thousands for committing “victimless” crimes; installed political and social activists in black robes; lied this nation into illegal, immoral wars that killed and maimed millions, many of them our own misguided citizens; turned our local, state and federal police into elements that would make Heinrick Himmler and Uncle Joe Stalin proud; made ignorant boobs of our children with their socialized, Marxist educational machine, and done all within their power to destroy all vestiges of our republic.

    Now, these moral cowards insist the only way this nation can remain safe is to turn over to them the only tool we have left to insure liberty, because they believe themselves to be of some higher moral and intellectual plane.

    I consider those in power as I do any other criminal. I would never turn over my weapon to the bank robber, murderer or rapist, therefore, I will never relinquish my right to keep and bear arms, nor my wonderful memories and experiences involving firearms to a bunch of bottom feeders in three-piece-suits or uniforms and badges.

    I would not want to explain that failure in judgment to my grandfather. He would never understand if I voluntarily sold myself into slavery.

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