A federal judge in Washington has scheduled a hearing on Wednesday for former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith to submit a plea to a charge that he fraudulently altered an email from the CIA to obtain a warrant to spy on the 2016 Trump campaign.
Clinesmith is expected to plea guilty in the first criminal case to result from U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation of the origins of the Obama administration’s Russia-collusion investigation, which President Trump calls “Obamagate.” Top Obama officials, fueled by the debunked Steele dossier, accused the Trump campaign of colluding with Russia to win the election. But special counsel Robert Mueller couldn’t find evidence to support the claim.
The Washington Examiner reported Judge James Boasberg, the presiding judge in the criminal case against Clinesmith, set the virtual phone hearing for Wednesday at 1 p.m. before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Clinesmith worked on both the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s misuse of classified information and the Trump-Russia inquiry. He is expected to admit that he falsified a document during the bureau’s efforts to renew FISA authority to wiretap onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Clinesmith had claimed in 2017 that Page was “not a source” for the CIA. But the CIA actually had told the bureau several times that Page was a contact.
In the charging documents submitted to the court Friday, Durham said Clinesmith was being charged under 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(3) for “False Statements.”
“On or about June 19, 2017, within the District of Columbia, the defendant, Kevin Clinesmith, did willfully and knowingly make and use a false wiring and document, knowing the same to contain a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and entry in a matter before the jurisdiction of the executive branch and judicial branch of the Government of the United States,” Durham told the court.
Clinesmith’s lawyer said his client thought the information he submitted was correct.
He’s accused of changing the CIA confirmation that Page was a contact to the claim that Page was “not a source.”
The Justice Departmant inspector general found 17 “errors or omissions” in the applications for FISA warrants for Page. And in January, the Justice Department determined that the final two of the four warrants “were not valid.”
