Everything you need to know about Trump’s FBI spy claim
"The Frothing Right Prefers Oleg Deripaska as an FBI Asset to Christopher Steele"
Rod Rosenstein has expanded a probe to look into alleged spying on the Trump campaign. (Reuters/Joshua Roberts)
Written by Max de Haldevang
May 21, 2018
After a barrage of tweets from president Donald Trump yesterday (May 20), the Department of Justice will now probe the FBI’s use of an informant to gather information on the Trump campaign in 2016.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, in a photo from 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
By David Ignatius Opinion writer May 22 at 7:21 PM Email the author
In the bizarre double helix that is the Russia investigation, one of the recurring themes is the role of would-be influencers. They start off as connectors and facilitators, but gradually (and implausibly) they move to the center of the story.
That’s true with Stefan Halper, the retired American professor at Britain’s Cambridge University who has become the object of President Trump’s counter-witch-hunt to expose a supposed FBI mole who infiltrated his campaign. The FBI is guarding Halper’s identity, as it should any trusted informant, but he was named a week ago by conservative news sites and then by other publications.
It’s outrageous that Trump has encouraged “outing” this putative intelligence source. And this latest attempt to deflect special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation only adds to suspicion that Trump has something very big to hide.
But it’s laughable to imagine Halper as a superspy, infiltrating the heart of the Trump campaign. Those who know Halper describe someone closer to a gregarious busybody and academic eccentric — an intellectual who jostles for first billing on a book cover — than a mole burrowing toward Trump’s inner circle. Like many underemployed ex-professors, he likes to gossip, and perhaps that made him a good intelligence source. But this is not James Bond.
A former British intelligence officer who knows Halper well describes him as “an intensely loyal and trusted U.S. citizen [who was] asked by the Bureau to look into some disconcerting contacts” between Russians and Americans. Isn’t that what the FBI and its sources are supposed to do?
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
