President Trump is squirming beneath the widening scrutiny leveled at him as his scandals pile up. Rampant corruption and extramarital affairs have weakened his presidency while the main threat to his administration, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, hums along consistently in the background.
Trump is terrified of what the FBI could be uncovering about him and his tweeting has become more erratic and desperate in a clear indication of that terror.
We now know that the FBI had an informant inside the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. The president and his propagandists at Fox News have been trying desperately to spin the revelation as a proof of abuse of power on the part of President Obama in a pathetic attempt to obfuscate one simple fact: if the FBI was monitoring Trump and his team during the election it was because they had reason to believe someone in the reality tv star’s camp was breaking the law.
Previously, The Washington Post revealed that the informant was a retired American professor who originally approached Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. The professor had been a source of intelligence for the United States for some time and became an informant for the FBI in 2016 as the bureau worked to uncover Russian efforts to sway the election.
Page was just one of three Trump advisors contacted by the informant, the other two being Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis and advisor George Papadopoulos (who has since pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI).
The Washington Post originally withheld the identity of the professor who informed the FBI about activities inside the Trump campaign after U.S. intelligence officials warned that exposing his name could put him in danger. Now that several other publications have printed his name, the Post has revealed it as well.
The informant was Stefan A. Halper, age 73, a former professor emeritus at Cambridge University. He started collaborating with the FBI after the bureau came into possession of evidence pointing to suspicious communication between operatives for the Russian government and members of the Trump team.
Most surprisingly, Halper worked in three previous Republican presidential administrations. He was a domestic policy advisor for President Richard Nixon, Assistant to the Chief of Staff for President Gerald Ford, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs for President Ronald Reagan. In other words, Halper is the furthest thing imaginable from a partisan Democratic operative.
While it’s as yet unclear what exactly Halper was able to glean for the FBI during his conversation with the Trump advisors, the president’s unhinged tweeting recently seems to indicate that it could be extremely damning information. Hopefully, the American people will finally get the truth they deserve soon enough.
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