A top Republican senator said a Pentagon office “continually failed” to assist him properly in his investigation into “Spygate” figure Stefan Halper and the controversial FBI informant’s role in the Russia investigation.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to James Baker, the director of the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment, saying his office “has continually failed to furnish all requested records” related to Halper during the “investigation of the mishandling of the Russia investigation.”
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December report on the Russia investigation said the FBI concealed significant information provided by Halper, a confidential human source who was dubbed “Source 2.” Halper, 75, a Virginia resident and Cambridge professor, worked as an FBI informant in 2016 and recorded discussions with at least three Trump campaign members: campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, campaign associate Carter Page, and campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis. While Halper worked for the FBI, he received thousands of dollars from the Pentagon.
Grassley pushed Baker for answers in January and received a letter he deemed lacking in February. He’s now asking for answers again, claiming that “it appears that either ONA has refused to comply with my requests or that ONA simply does not maintain full records of Halper’s work.”
A Defense Department audit in 2019 revealed more than $1 million in contracts awarded to Halper between 2012 and 2018, with the ONA unable to provide “sufficient” documentation of whether Halper was doing the research work he’d been hired to do. The ONA is touted as the Pentagon’s “source of deep, long-term future thinking.”
When Halper’s role as an FBI informant was leaked to the media in May 2018, it led to accusations from Trump and Republicans that the Obama administration used Halper as part of an illegal effort to spy on the Trump campaign, dubbed “Spygate” and later “Obamagate” by allies of the president.
“On what date did you become aware of Halper’s role in Crossfire Hurricane? How did you become aware?” Grassley’s June letter asked Baker.
Grassley previously asked Baker whether Halper used Pentagon funds to recruit sources for the FBI’s investigation into “the now-debunked theory” of Trump-Russia collusion, and the ONA said that if Halper had done so “it would have been unlawful.”
Grassley is also pushing for more answers about Halper’s relationship with Russian intelligence officer Vyacheslav Trubnikov, asking whether it could have resulted in “biased and unreliable information” making its way into Halper’s work funded by the Pentagon.
Baker repeatedly told Grassley that ONA’s security agency found “no derogatory information” on Halper and claimed that “we are not aware of any purported relationship” between Halper and Trubnikov.
Grassley called this response “unresponsive to my question.” The senator followed up with more questions: “Could a relationship between a contractor and a source suggest that a deliverable may be tainted with inaccurate or misleading information, especially a source that is a known intelligence officer for a foreign, hostile government? If not, why not?”
Baker’s claim of ignorance about the “purported relationship” between Halper and Trubnikov appears to be betrayed by Trubnikov being invited by Halper to speak at his Cambridge University seminars in 2012 and 2015, and recently declassified transcripts show Halper’s recorded Russia-related discussion with Papadopoulos began with Halper name-dropping high-level Russian officials, including Trubnikov.
“I have a lot of friends in Russia,” Halper said. “One of them is Slava Truvnikoff [sic]. Do you know Truvnikoff? Truvnikoff was the director of KGB and the FSB.”
Halper told Papadopoulos: “I brought him to talk to [redacted] to talk to us about how their intelligence service works.”
“He was very forthcoming,” Halper said. “He’s retired now. … He’s a private citizen, but he’s really plugged in. Knows a lot. And is very helpful in all kinds of ways. … He’s like a real swordsman.”
Notes by State Department official Kathleen Kavalec following an October 2016 meeting show that British ex-spy Christopher Steele told her Trubnikov was “involved” in a collusion effort between Trump and the Kremlin, with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort as the “go-between.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller, who took up the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, concluded that the Russians interfered in the 2016 presidential election but did not establish any criminal conspiracy between the two.
Grassley says Halper listed Trubnikov as “a consultant and advisor” for a 2015 paper Halper worked on for ONA.
In his lengthy report released in December, Horowitz concluded the FBI “omitted” Papadopoulos’s recorded statements to Halper in September 2016 “denying that anyone associated with the Trump campaign was collaborating with Russia or with outside groups like WikiLeaks.”
Haper organized the Cambridge Intelligence Seminars, gatherings of academics and intelligence officials, alongside Sir Richard Dearlove, a former director of MI6 who spent decades with the British spy agency. Steele, who was hired by Fusion GPS through the Clinton campaign and authored the flawed dossier used to get Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to target Trump associates, was in MI6 from 1987 until 2009. Dearlove, who left in 2004, called Steele’s reputation “superb.”
Recently declassified footnotes indicate Steele’s dossier may have been compromised by Russian disinformation.
Svetlana Lokhova, a Russian-born British citizen, claimed in a 2019 lawsuit that Halper “embroiled an innocent woman,” Lokhova herself, “in a conspiracy to undo the 2016 presidential election.” Halper demanded the federal court that claims labeling him a “spy” and “rat f—-er” be dismissed and his accuser be sanctioned by the judge. The lawsuit was dismissed in February, but Lokhova filed an appeal.
Lokhova attended a Cambridge seminar in 2014 that was also attended by Michael Flynn, then President Barack Obama’s Defense Intelligence Agency Director who later played a prominent role in Donald Trump’s campaign and was swept up in Mueller’s investigation. Lokhova attended as a graduate student and claimed Halper used this dinner as a pretext to spread false rumors about her and Flynn.
Halper responded that Lokhova’s accusations were “spurious” and referred to her accusations about a coup against Trump as “implausible conspiracy theories.”
Grassley also wants to know if Baker or anyone at ONA had any involvement in leaking information about Flynn to the news media.
Last month, a Defense Department official denied allegations that Baker leaked classified information to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius related to Flynn’s conversations with then-Russian diplomat Sergey Kislyak.
Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, responding to a November court filing, said Baker is “believed” to be behind the leaks.
Grassley’s letter asked: “Did you provide any information relating to any Flynn-Kislyak call to the media? If so, what information?”
U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut is looking at classified leaks as part of his investigation of the Trump-Russia investigators.
