Declassified FBI documents show briefing to Trump and Flynn used as pretext to investigate campaign
(Worthy News) – Declassified FBI documents show the counterintelligence briefing the bureau gave to Donald Trump and his national security team during the 2016 campaign was used as a pretext to gather investigative evidence on the Trump campaign and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
The records, declassified by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and obtained by the Washington Examiner, show that agent Joseph Pientka, who led the portion of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation focused on Flynn, never warned candidate Trump that the FBI believed the Russian government was attempting to influence his campaign and used the briefing to further the bureau’s inquiry.
Pientka, who would later accompany then-FBI special agent Peter Strzok to interview Flynn in January 2017, filed a seven-page electronic communication on Aug. 30, 2016, detailing the briefing he gave to Trump, Flynn, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at the FBI’s New York Field Office a week earlier. The electronic communication was approved by Strzok and Kevin Clinesmith, the now-former FBI lawyer whom the DOJ inspector general found had falsified a document related to the wiretapping of onetime Trump campaign associate Carter Page and is now believed to be under criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]
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