Declassified FBI documents show the counterintelligence briefing the bureau gave to Donald Trump and his national security team during the 2016 campaign was used as a pretext to gather investigative evidence on the Trump campaign and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
The records, declassified by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and obtained by the Washington Examiner, show that agent Joseph Pientka, who led the portion of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation focused on Flynn, never warned candidate Trump that the FBI believed the Russian government was attempting to influence his campaign and used the briefing to further the bureau’s inquiry.
Pientka, who would later accompany then-FBI special agent Peter Strzok to interview Flynn in January 2017, filed a seven-page electronic communication on Aug. 30, 2016, detailing the briefing he gave to Trump, Flynn, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at the FBI’s New York Field Office a week earlier. The electronic communication was approved by Strzok and Kevin Clinesmith, the now-former FBI lawyer whom the DOJ inspector general found had falsified a document related to the wiretapping of onetime Trump campaign associate Carter Page and is now believed to be under criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham.
“I will provide you with a counterintelligence and security brief that will give you a baseline on the methodology used by Foreign Intelligence Services to the detriment of U.S. National Security,” Pientka quotes himself as telling Trump, Flynn, and Christie. “In addition, this brief will advise you that if you are not already a target of a Foreign Intelligence Service, due to the fact that you are receiving this classified briefing, you will be.”
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz previously testified that this briefing was a “pretext” to gather evidence on the candidate and his foreign policy adviser to help in their counterintelligence investigation. Pientka’s notes were categorized under “Foreign Agents Registration Act — Russia, Sensitive Investigative Matter.”
Pientka said that during the part of the briefing given by an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that he “actively listened for topics or questions regarding” Russia.
“Statistically speaking the FBI has approximately [redacted] cases n Known or Suspected Russian IOs [intelligence officers] posted to the U.S. We also have approximately [redacted] cases on Known or Suspected Chinese IOs — almost [redacted] the Russian establishment presence,” Pientka said he told Trump, Flynn, and Christie. “What is interesting about the two services is how they will have different methodology regarding how they will collect intelligence. The Russians [redacted] rely on an establishment presence while the Chinese take a more asymmetrical approach.”
At this point, Pientka said Trump asked: “Joe, are the Russians bad? Because they have more numbers are they worse than the Chinese?” According to Pientka, he “responded by saying both countries are bad” and that “the numbers of IOs present in the U.S. is not an indicator of the severity of the threat.” Pientka said he “reminded Trump the Chinese asymmetrical presence in the U.S.”
Horowitz testified in December that the bureau used an intelligence briefing ostensibly about guarding against foreign interference to gather evidence against Trump and Flynn, the incoming national security adviser. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign got an identical briefing, Horowitz said, but hers was not used by the FBI to collect information on the candidate or her team. After all, Clinton’s campaign was not the subject of a counterintelligence investigation.
“They sent a supervisory agent to the briefing from the Crossfire Hurricane team, and that agent prepared a report to the file of the briefing. About what Mr. Trump and Mr. Flynn said,” Horowitz testified. “The incident, the event, the meeting was a briefing, and the FBI considered and decided to send that agent there to do the briefing. So the agent was actually doing the briefing but also using it for the purpose of investigation.”
Horowitz’s report found a “supervisory special agent was selected to provide the FBI briefings, in part, because Flynn, who was a subject in the ongoing Crossfire Hurricane investigation, would be attending the Trump campaign briefing.”
“It was a strategic counterintelligence briefing. I mention that because it precisely wasn’t a defensive briefing. It was an intelligence briefing,” Horowitz told lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “They were treated differently in that the agent wrote it up to the file and put the information in the file. The briefings were identical, but one was for investigative purposes, and one was purely for the intelligence briefing.”
Horowitz said the goal of a counterintelligence investigation “is to identify potential threats to the nation” and criticized the FBI’s decision to use a defensive briefing in this way.
The FBI viewed the briefing of Trump and his advisers “as a possible opportunity to collect information potentially relevant to the Crossfire Hurricane and Flynn investigations.” The FBI agent in attendance documented his interactions at the briefing and “added the electronic communication to the Crossfire Hurricane investigative file.”
Horowitz said the decision to take this action was made by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and FBI General Counsel Jim Baker, who have both since left the bureau. The bureau did not tell the Justice Department or the other intelligence community participants that they were using the briefing for investigative purposes, the inspector general noted.
“We concluded that the FBI’s use of this briefing for investigative reasons could potentially interfere with the expectation of trust and good faith among participants in strategic intelligence briefings, thereby frustrating their purpose,” said Horowitz’s report, which included addressing this matter as one of nine main recommendations for the bureau.
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to FBI investigators about his December 2016 conversations with a Russian envoy. After changing legal teams, Flynn claimed this year that he was set up by the bureau and moved to withdraw his guilty plea. The Justice Department has since moved to drop the case, and the matter is still playing out in the courts.
