A whistleblower has told the House Judiciary Committee that the Obama FBI launched an off-the-books operation targeting Donald Trump and his campaign as soon as he announced his bid for the White House in 2015.
The operation, ordered by then-FBI Director James B. Comey, predicated the Crossfire Hurricane operation. According to an FBI agent involved in the clandestine criminal investigation, Comey sent two female FBI undercover agents to infiltrate Trumps 2016 campaign at high levels, who were directed to act as "honeypots" while traveling with Trump and his campaign staff on the trail, the Washington Times reports.
According to the disclosure, which The Washington Times reviewed, the investigation differed from the later Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence operation targeting Russian collusion. It said the early off-the-books probe was a criminal investigation targeting Mr. Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign staff.
The agent “personally knew” that Mr. Comey ordered an FBI investigation against Mr. Trump and that Mr. Comey “personally directed it,” according to the disclosure.
The whistleblower says that the investigation wasn't targeting any specific crimes, but was more of a 'fishing expedition' to try and find something incriminating on Trump.
Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecher told the Times that if the report is true, it's a "booming, egregious violation" of the rules governing the attorney general and the FBI.
"It’s an unpredicated infiltration of a presidential campaign which is sensitive," he said. "It’s sensitive to the point where it would have to have been approved by the [attorney general] and … would have to be predicated. And in this case, I’m not hearing any predication. It would have to be on the books anyway, regardless."
Unlike Crossfire Hurricane - a counterintelligence investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign coordinated, knowingly or unknowingly, with the Russian government - the earlier honeypot operation "had no predicated foundation, so Mr. Comey personally directed the investigation without creating an official case file in Sentinel or any other FBI system."
The report claims that the undercover agents’ real targets included campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, a now-infamous figure in the Trump-Russia saga. Papadopoulos ultimately pled guilty to a single count of making false statements to the FBI about his Russian contacts—a charge that landed him 12 days in prison. But documents released later showed that he had repeatedly denied Trump campaign involvement in the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee emails.
In one chilling detail, the whistleblower’s disclosure alleges that the FBI closed the secret operation only after a journalist got hold of a photograph of one of the undercover agents, threatening to publish it. In an attempt to quash the story, the FBI press office reportedly told the outlet that the photo depicted an “informant” whose life could be endangered if her identity was revealed.
One of the undercover agents was allegedly moved to the CIA to keep her out of the spotlight as a potential witness, while another FBI employee involved in the operation was promoted.
Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017 amid controversy over the Russia probe, has yet to respond to the new allegations.