News Agency
\nWASHINGTON
\nA former FBI lawyer was sentenced to probation on Friday for altering an email the Justice Department relied on in its surveillance of an aide to President Donald Trump during the Russia investigation.
\nKevin Clinesmith apologized for doctoring the email about Carter Page\u2019s relationship with the CIA, saying he was \u201ctruly ashamed\u201d of an action that he said had \u201cforever changed the course of my life.\u201d
\n\u201cI pledge to Your Honor that I will never allow myself to show such poor judgment again,\u201d Clinesmith told US District Judge James Boasberg at a sentencing hearing held remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic.
\nThe sentence is likely to disappoint Trump supporters who have long asserted that the Russia probe was a witch hunt riddled with misconduct, particularly as it involved Page and the government\u2019s surveillance of him. The Russia investigation resulted in criminal charges against six Trump associates, but did not find sufficient evidence that Trump campaign associates had illegally coordinated with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
\nProsecutors had sought a prison sentence of several months, but the judge said he did not think such a punishment was necessary in part because of Clinesmith\u2019s evident remorse and because of the way he had already been \u201cthreatened, vilified and abused on a nationwide scale.\u201d
\n\u201cThis conduct is the only stain on the defendant\u2019s character that I\u2019ve been able to discern,\u201d Boasberg said in imposing a year of probation.
\nThough Trump has long railed against the FBI investigation into ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia, and suggested that the officials involved in it had broken the law and deserved prison, Clinesmith is so far the only current or former one to have been charged with any wrongdoing.
\nThe surveillance application process Clinesmith was part of was nonetheless tainted by major problems, with a Justice Department inspector general report identifying dozens of errors and omissions in the four warrant applications filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Even so, that aspect of the Russia investigation was a small piece of the much broader probe.
\nThe charge against Clinesmith was brought by John Durham, the US attorney for Connecticut, who was directed in 2019 by then-Attorney General William Barr to investigate actions during the Russia probe by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
\nBarr last October named Durham a special counsel as a way to ensure the continuity of his investigation during the Biden administration. The current status of Durham\u2019s work was not clear, though Barr has said that the focus of the inquiry is now centered on the FBI and not the CIA.
\nClinesmith pleaded guilty in September to altering a 2017 email that he had received from the CIA to say that Page was \u201cnot a source\u201d for the agency even though the original email indicated that he had been. As a result, when the Justice Department applied to the secretive surveillance court for the fourth and final warrant to eavesdrop on Page\u2019s communications on suspicion that he was an agent of Russia, it did not reveal that Page had had an existing relationship with the CIA.
\nPage had been approved several years earlier as an \u201coperational contact\u201d for the CIA, a term for people who provide information to the agency that they gather but are not tasked with carrying out contacts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
News Agency WASHINGTON A former FBI lawyer was sentenced to probation on Friday for altering an email the Justice Department relied on in its surveillance of an aide to President Donald Trump during the Russia investigation. Kevin Clinesmith apologized for doctoring the email about Carter Page\u2019s relationship with the CIA, saying he was \u201ctruly ashamed\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n