Ex-cambridge scholar key to Trump claims of FBI bias

THE US justice department has ordered an inquiry into whether the FBI acted with political bias by sending one of its informants, reportedly a Cambridge academic, to meet with advisers to Donald Trump’s campaign.

Prof Stefan Halper, 73, was named by numerous media outlets including the Wall Street Journal as the suspected FBI informant. He has not yet made any public comment.

Prof Halper served in the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. The American was reportedly a foreign policy scholar at the University of Cambridge until 2015.

He was reported to have met Trump campaign advisers Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and Sam Clovis as the FBI investigated any ties between the campaign and Russia.

The justice department said its inspector general had been tasked with “determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation” in how the FBI acted before the 2016 vote.

Just hours before its statement was released, Mr Trump tweeted that he would “officially” demand a probe. He questioned whether his predecessor Barack Obama’s administration was involved in the decision to investigate before the election.

Mr Trump’s comment had piled pressure on the justice department, whose most senior figures he has repeatedly criticised in public.

The officials are overseeing the Russian election meddling investigation, now being run by special counsel Robert Mueller, that has blighted his presidency. Last week, Mr Trump said that if an informant had been embedded in his campaign, the scandal would be “bigger than Watergate”.

He tweeted on Sunday: “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Mr Trump was last night meeting senior justice department and intelligence officials at the White House to discuss his demand.