The House Judiciary Committee is examining a whistleblower report that the FBI targeted Donald Trump soon after he announced his presidential campaign in June 2015, an off-the-books operation ordered by FBI Director James B. Comey that predated the Crossfire Hurricane operation.
An FBI agent involved in the probe revealed the off-the-books criminal investigation on Tuesday in a protected disclosure sent to the committee.
The whistleblower disclosure said two female FBI undercover agents infiltrated Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign at high levels and were directed to act as “honeypots” while traveling with Mr. Trump and his campaign staff on the trail.
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 off-the-books investigation did not appear to target a specific crime but was more of what agents would describe as a fishing expedition to find something incriminating about Mr. Trump.
The Times reached out to the FBI and Mr. Comey for comment.
A House Judiciary Committee spokesman said the committee received the whistleblower allegations and “plans to look into them.”
The whistleblower said the undercover operation was hidden from Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz, who investigated misconduct in the bureau’s probe of the Trump campaign.
The whistleblower disclosure also said the secret investigation may indicate institutional bias against Mr. Trump, though “it does not appear that any information about this investigation was turned over to Trump’s criminal defense counsels.”
Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker said the report, if true, is 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 told The Times. “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.”
Mr. Trump launched his first presidential campaign on June 16, 2015, at Trump Tower in New York City, about a year before the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane, a counterintelligence investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign coordinated, knowingly or unknowingly, with the Russian government’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.
The FBI investigation and a Justice Department special counsel probe did not find evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
The earlier off-the-books investigation, according to the disclosure, “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 disclosure notes that the FBI has multiple methods of concealing highly sensitive investigations, so Mr. Comey did not have a “legitimate reason” to avoid creating a case file in the FBI’s system.
Mr. Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 until May 2017, when President Trump fired him.
The disclosure said Deputy Director Dave Bowdich and Paul Abbate, assistant director in charge of the Washington field office, were also involved in helping Mr. Comey execute the secret probe.
The undercover “honeypot” agents targeted Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, according to the whistleblower.
Mr. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to the felony charge of making false statements to the FBI in October 2017 about his contacts related to U.S.-Russia relations.
Mr. Trump pardoned him in 2020, two years after he served 12 days in federal prison and was placed on a one-year supervised release.
Justice Department documents declassified in April 2020 revealed that FBI agent Curtis Heide was the handler for a confidential human source who recorded Mr. Papadopoulos.
In the recordings, Mr. Papadopoulos adamantly denied that the Trump campaign was involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee’s emails in 2016.
He rebuffed claims that the Trump campaign was working with Russia.
Mr. Papadopoulos’ denials were withheld from the FBI’s warrant application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, according to documents released by Attorney General William P. Barr.
In a December 2019 report, Mr. Horowitz listed the failure to include Mr. Papadopoulos’ denials as two of 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FBI’s application for court permission to spy on Trump campaign figure Carter Page.
The FBI whistleblower said the off-the-books investigation was closed because a newspaper obtained a photograph of one of the undercover agents and was about to publish it.
The FBI press office, according to the agent’s disclosure, misled the newspaper by claiming the photograph was of an FBI informant, not an undercover agent. The FBI said the informant would be killed if the photograph was published.
Additionally, the FBI employee alleged that one of the undercover agents agreed to be transferred to the CIA so she would not be available as a potential witness, and another bureau employee involved in the operation was rewarded for her activities with a promotion and now is a high-level FBI executive.
“The FBI employee personally observed one or more employees in the FBI being directed to never discuss the operation with anyone ever again, which included talking with other people involved in the operation,” the disclosure states.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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