A key FBI informant in the widely-debunked Russia collusion case was paid nearly $1.2 million over three decades, was motivated in part by “monetary compensation.” Just the News reports it has obtained nearly 700 pages of once-secret documents that were recently turned over by FBI Director Kash Patel to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan after President Donald Trump ordered them declassified at the start of his second administration.
The documents reveal “the most extensive portrait yet of former FBI informant Stefan Halper, a Pentagon consultant and academic who, along with retired British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, was used by bureau agents to build the Crossfire Hurricane case against Trump and his advisers during the end of the 2016 election and the beginning of Trump’s first term in office” according to Just the News.
The FBI document said Halper was primarily involved in reporting on “Counterintelligence” and secondarily involved in reporting on “Russia.” The FBI also said in a declassified April 2017 report that Halper had started as a confidential human source (CHS) in December 2008 but then stopped in January 2011, and then reactivated as an FBI source again in March 2011. The bureau said that Halper had previously been “closed” because he had “violated instructions” but that “since the reopening, the CHS has complied with all instructions given to him by the FBI.” The bureau called Halper an “integral part” of Crossfire Hurricane.
The FBI said Halper’s “motivation” for providing information to the FBI was “monetary compensation” and “patriotism/ideology.” The FBI wrote: “CHS behavior has been excellent. The CHS has agreed to assist the case agent in the goals of the investigation. The CHS has devoted significant time and energy to assisting the FBI in its goals.”
When the FBI form asked if there was anything on Halper that “could reasonably be construed as derogatory, including any “statements made by the CHS.” The FBI answered “none.” The “average CHS utility value” given to Halper by the bureau remains repeatedly blacked out.
Just the News reports:
The memos confirm Halper was the source of one of the most sensational bogus claims to land in the FBI’s probe in summer 2016: that Flynn had left a 2014 foreign meeting alone with Russia scholar Svetlana Lokhova when he was a three-star general leading the Defense Intelligence Agency.
FBI agents ultimately deemed Halper’s account to be “not plausible” and “not accurate”, but the bureau proceeded to investigate Flynn, kept paying Halper and continued to vouch for his veracity as a confidential human source codenamed “Mitch,” the memos show.
For instance, a March 2017 memo showed the FBI’s Validation Management Unit wrote that it “assesses it is likely HALPER is suitable for continued operation, based on his or her authenticity, reliability, and control.”
That memo makes no mention in its unredacted portions of the concerns about the account Halper gave about Flynn and Lokhova, which were confirmed in a memo from William Barnett, the FBI agent who handled the retired Flynn’s case in 2016 and 2017.
The new FBI records also show Halper was paid $70,000 by the FBI between August 2016 and the start of February 2017 — a time period spanning his activation as an informant targeting the Trump campaign and then the 2016 election and Trump’s inauguration. The FBI records also showed that the bureau had paid Halper “$1,181,064.44” from 1991 into early 2017.
Continue Reading: Just the News
