Spygate is a disproven conspiracy theory peddled by 45th U.S. president Donald Trump and his political base on many occasions throughout his first presidential term. It primarily centered around the idea that a spy was planted by the Obama administration to conduct espionage on Trump's 2016 presidential campaign for political purposes. On May 17, 2018, Trump tweeted: "Wow, word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI spied on the Trump campaign with an embedded informant. In that tweet, he quoted Andrew C. McCarthy, who had just appeared on Fox & Friends repeating assertions from his own May 12 article for National Review.
Trump made more assertions, without providing evidence, on May 18 and May 22–23, 2018, adding that it was done in an effort to help Trump's rival, Hillary Clinton, win the general election. He said the supposed spy, later identified as professor Stefan Halper, was paid a "massive amount of money" for doing so. In the middle and second half of 2016, Halper, a longtime confidential source for U.S. intelligence, began working as a secret informant for the FBI, targeting three Trump campaign advisers separately in a covert effort to investigate suspected Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. However, as of May 2018, the Trump administration had produced no evidence that Halper had actually joined the Trump campaign or any politically motivated surveillance of the campaign.
On June 5, 2018, Trump further alleged that a counterintelligence operation into the Trump campaign had been running since December 2015. The House Intelligence Committee, then in Republican control, concluded in an April 2018 report that the FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign did not begin until late July 2016, while the February 2018 Nunes memo written by Republican aides reached the same conclusion, as did the February 2018 rebuttal memo by committee Democrats. Whether the use of the FISA warrant, which permits investigators to collect archived communications well prior to the issuance of the warrant, includes the December 2015 date remains partially classified.
Political commentators and high-ranking politicians from both sides of the political spectrum have dismissed Trump's allegations as lacking evidence and maintained that the FBI's use of Halper as a covert informant was in no way improper. Trump's claims about when the counterintelligence investigation was initiated have been shown to be false. A December 2019 Justice Department Inspector General report "found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any [Confidential Human Sources] within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign."
Spygate is similar to but distinct from Trump's March 2017 assertion that President Obama "had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower," which the Trump Justice Department stated was untrue in September 2017 and October 2018 federal court briefs. It is also part of Trump's larger list of spying allegations against the Obama administration.
Background
Origins of FBI investigation
In early February 2018, the Nunes memowritten by aides of Republican Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committeeconfirmed that a tip about George Papadopoulos "triggered the opening of" the original FBI counterintelligence investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia in late July 2016.Multiple sources:
Later that month, a rebuttal memo by committee Democrats stated that "the FBI initiated its counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016".
In April 2018, the House Intelligence Committee, then in Republican control, released a final report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which stated that the House Intelligence Committee found that "in late July 2016, the FBI opened an enterprise CI [counterintelligence] investigation into the Trump campaign following the receipt of derogatory information about foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos". In March 2019, Nunes, the then-ranking member of the committee, asserted that it was "for certain" false that the FBI investigation began in late July 2016 as his earlier report had found, but media reports offered no further evidence or explanation from Nunes on this claim.
On May 16, 2018, The New York Times reported the existence of a 2016 FBI investigation named Crossfire Hurricane tasked with investigating whether individuals within the Trump campaign had inappropriate or illegal links to Russian efforts to interfere with the election. Four individualsMichael T. Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page and George Papadopouloswere initially investigated because of such ties. During the investigation, the FBI obtained phone records and other documents using national security letters. The Times also reported that FBI agents, believing that Trump would lose the election, and cognizant of Trump's claims that the election was rigged against him, tried to avoid allowing the investigation to become public as they feared that Trump would blame his defeat on the revelation of the investigation.
Activities of Stefan Halper
Stefan Halper, an FBI informant, spoke separately to three Trump campaign advisersCarter Page, Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulosin 2016 in an effort to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. There is no evidence that Halper had actually joined Trump's campaign.
Page said that he "had extensive discussions" with Halper on "a bunch of different foreign-policy-related topics", ending in September 2017. A former federal law enforcement official told The New York Times that the initial encounter between Halper and Page at a London symposium on July 11–12, 2016 was a coincidence, rather than at the direction of the FBI.
Clovis's attorney said that Clovis and Halper had discussed China during their sole meeting on August 31 or September 1, 2016, and Clovis stated in May 2018 that it appeared Halper was only offering his assistance to the campaign.
The New York Times reported that on September 15, 2016, Halper asked Papadopoulos if he knew of any campaign coordination with Russian efforts to disrupt the election campaign; Papadopoulos twice denied he did, notwithstanding Joseph Mifsud telling him the previous April that Russians had Hillary Clinton emails, and Papadopoulos bragging about it to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in May. WikiLeaks released DNC emails on July 22, and four days later the Australian government informed the FBI of Downer's conversation with Papadopoulos, triggering the opening of the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections on July 31. The failure of the FBI to include Papadopoulos's exculpatory statement to Stefan Halper denying that the Trump campaign was involved in the DNC email hack in its FISA application or to notify the FISA court thereafter was cited in the Inspector General's report as one of the principal faults of the Crossfire Hurricane Operation. Papadopoulos was paid $3,000 by Halper for a research paper on the oil fields of Turkey, Israel and Cyprus.
In April 2019, The New York Times reported that the FBI had asked Halper to approach Page and Papadopoulos, although it was not clear if he had been asked to contact Clovis. In May 2019, the Times reported that Page had urged Halper to meet with Clovis and that the FBI was aware of the meeting but had not instructed Halper to ask Clovis about Russia matters. The Times also reported that the FBI also sent an investigator under the pseudonym Azra Turk to meet with Papadopoulos, while posing as Halper's assistant. The Times stated that the FBI considered it essential to add a trained and trusted investigator like Ms. Turk as a "layer of oversight", in the event the investigation was ultimately prosecuted and the government needed the credible testimony of such an individual, without exposing Halper as a longtime confidential informant.
The 2019 Inspector General report on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation contained additional details about Halper's contacts with these three campaign members. The report describes him as "an FBI CHS" and notes that "the Crossfire Hurricane team conducted three CHS [confidential human source] operations prior to the team's initial receipt of Steele's reporting on September 9, 2016. All three CHS operations were with individuals who were still with the Trump campaign."
The first meeting, in August 2016, was a consensually recorded meeting with Carter Page.
The second meeting, in September 2016, was with "a high-level official in the Trump campaign who was not a subject of the investigation", likely Clovis. It too was a "consensually recorded meeting" and was "about Papadopoulos and Carter Page". "Little information" was received by Halper.
The third meeting, in September 2016, was with Papadopoulos.
Exposure of Stefan Halper
In late April 2018, Devin Nunes sent a classified subpoena to the Justice Department. In response, the Justice Department rejected the request for information "regarding a specific individual". On May 8, 2018, The Washington Post described this individual as "a top-secret intelligence source" and "a U.S. citizen who has provided intelligence to the CIA and FBI."
On May 17, 2018, The Daily Caller reported that Stefan Halper, a professor at Cambridge known for his work for the CIA, had met Trump campaign advisors Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. On May 18, The New York Times and The Washington Post separately published articles about an FBI informant gathering information from Trump campaign officials. Neither newspaper would then name the FBI informant, but the Times described him as an "American academic who teaches in Britain" who contacted Page and Papadopoulos, while the Post reported that he is "a retired American professor" who met Page "at a British university". New York described that putting the information in the Caller, Post and Times reports together "all but confirm" Halper as the FBI informant.
Trump and his allies' allegations
May 2018
On May 12, 2018 Andrew C. McCarthy wrote in the National Review that:
"[Glenn Simpson] testified that Christopher Steele told him the FBI had a "human source" i.e., a spy— inside the Trump campaign. ... Simpson gave his testimony about the FBI's human source at a closed Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on August 22, 2017."
"Simpson explained to the Senate committee (italics [McCarthy's]): Essentially what [Christopher Steele] told me was they [the FBI] had other intelligence about this matter from an internal Trump campaign source and ... one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization."U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Interview of Glenn Simpson, August 22, 2017, p. 175
On May 17, 2018, on Fox & Friends that prompted Trump's reply, where Andrew C. McCarthy said in reply to a question:
Kilmeade: "Are we wrong to point out this line buried in the middle of the [New York Times] story, at least one government informant met several times with Paige and Papadopoulos. Did they [the FBI] actually put someone undercover to try to bring these guys out?"
McCarthy: "Yeah, they did, Brian. I've written a couple of columns in the last week or so pointing out that there is probably no doubt that they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign..."https://video.foxnews.com/v/5786003355001?playlist_id=930909787001#sp=show-clips. 0:56-1:19.
On May 17, 2018, Trump tweeted:
On May 18, Trump made the following statement on Twitter:
On May 22, Trump made the following accusation on Twitter:
A day later, he followed up with a related tweet: