Ex-FBI lawyer gets probation for doctoring Page-case email
WASHINGTON — The former FBI lawyer who admitted to doctoring an email that other officials relied on to justify secret surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser was sentenced Friday to 12 months of probation, with no time behind bars.
Prosecutors had asked that Kevin Clinesmith, 38, spend several months in prison for his crime, while his attorneys said probation would be more appropriate. Clinesmith pleaded guilty last summer to altering an email that one of his colleagues used in preparing an application to surreptitiously monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page during the bureau’s 2016 investigation of Russia’s election interference.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said Clinesmith’s conduct had undermined the integrity of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approved the FBI’s flawed applications to surveil Page. “Courts all over the country rely on representations from the government, and expect them to be correct,” Boasberg said.
But the judge also said he agreed with a finding by the Justice Department inspector general that Clinesmith and other FBI officials’ actions were not motivated by political bias, and he believed Clinesmith’s contention that he thought, genuinely but wrongly, that the information he was inserting into the email was accurate.
Boasberg also ordered Clinesmith to perform 400 hours of community service. “This conduct is the only stain on the defendant’s character that I’ve been able to discern,” the judge said.
The case against Cline
smith is the first and only criminal allegation to arise from U.S. Attorney John Durham’s review of the FBI’s Russia case, and it has become a political lightning rod.
Durham’s investigation is ongoing, though it is unclear who else might face criminal exposure, or what public findings it may ultimately produce. In his final months as former President Donald Trump’s attorney general, William Barr appointed Durham as a special counsel, giving him extra legal and political protection from being relieved of his assignment in the Biden administration.
Clinesmith’s lawyers have argued that his altering the email was a mistake meant to save him time and personal embarrassment. But Trump and his political allies have highlighted the case as part of their allegations that the bureau was biased and seeking to undermine Trump with the investigation that explored possible ties between Russia and his campaign. The case was ultimately taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Clinesmith said in a lengthy statement in court that he took “full responsibility” for what he termed a “lapse in judgment.”
“I let the FBI, Department of Justice, my colleagues, the public, and my family down. I also let myself down,” he said, adding later, “Please do not let my error reflect on those who continue to serve our country.”
He also talked about the effects of losing his job and reputation. His list of apologies included one to his wife — who is pregnant with their first child — for the stress and loss of his $150,000 income, and one to the FBI for bringing public criticism upon it and for the extra work colleagues had to do in remedial actions.
“I apologize to everyone,” he said.
In the wake of the inspector general’s findings about Clinesmith, along with other significant errors in the applications to surveil Page, lawmakers have questioned whether the FBI should maintain its authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under pressure from the surveillance court, the bureau has implemented changes.
ANTI-TRUMP TEXTS
In arguing that Clinesmith deserved to go to prison, Durham’s team highlighted anti-Trump texts that he had sent and argued that it was “plausible that his strong political views and/or personal dislike of [Trump] made him more willing to engage in the fraudulent and unethical conduct to which he has pled guilty.” Clinesmith was suspended for two weeks over the messages.
“While it is impossible to know with certainty how those views may have affected his … conduct, the defendant plainly has shown that he did not discharge his important responsibilities at the FBI with the professionalism, integrity, and objectivity required of such a sensitive job position,” prosecutors wrote.
Federal sentencing guidelines in Clinesmith’s case called for a penalty of anywhere from zero to six months in prison, though the U.S. probation office recommended a term of probation, according to court filings.
Justin Shur, Clinesmith’s lawyer, argued that probation was appropriate. Clinesmith, he said in court, had otherwise lived a life “in service of others.”
Shur wrote that while Clinesmith acknowledged that he had “made a grievous mistake” in altering the email, he did so thinking the information he was adding was accurate.
“While there is no satisfactory answer, any explanation must start with the considerable pressure he was under at the time — both at work and in his personal life,” Shur wrote.
Shur said Clinesmith’s career is already “in shambles,” as he has been unemployed for more than a year and his case has received extensive public attention. Boasberg signaled that he was sympathetic to the costs Clinesmith has already paid, noting that he went from being a government lawyer with no public profile to “standing in the eye of a media hurricane.”
NOT IN DISPUTE
The basic facts of the case are not in dispute, though prosecutors and defense attorneys seem to disagree on what motivated Clinesmith and how sinister his actions were.
Clinesmith was an FBI attorney helping investigators on the Russia investigation, and in June 2017, he was asked to clarify whether Page was ever a source for the CIA. That was important because the FBI — with approval of the surveillance court — had been monitoring Page as a possible agent of a foreign government and was applying for permission to keep that surveillance going.
If Page was a CIA source, though, that would have to be disclosed to the court, as it would raise significant questions about whether he should be tracked as a possible foreign agent.
Page had provided information to the CIA as an “operational contact,” and when Clinesmith sought clarity, a CIA liaison told him as much, using jargon and pointing to documents that made his role clear. But, according to Clinesmith’s lawyers, Clinesmith believed Page was not a direct source, but rather a subsource of the agency.
He said as much to an FBI supervisor inquiring about the matter, and — when the supervisor asked if the CIA had put that in writing — forwarded an email from the liaison, but added the text, “not a ‘source.’”
In altering the email, Clinesmith “completely changed the meaning of the document,” prosecutor Anthony Scarpelli said Friday.
“The act of altering the email to change its meaning may seem simple and a momentary lapse of judgment on the part of the defendant,” Scarpelli said. “But the resulting harm is immeasurable.”
Testifying at the hearing, Page said he had been harassed on the street and while riding the D.C. Metro, and that he received death threats and was called a “traitor” after the surveillance of him was publicly disclosed and he was cast in media reports as a possible Russian asset. He called the inquiry into whether Trump associates had conspired with Russia in its 2016 election interference a “manufactured scandal.”
He said, though, that he had no desire to see Clinesmith suffer: “I know what it is like to have your life destroyed, although in my case, it didn’t happen because of something I myself did.”
Shur wrote that Clinesmith genuinely believed Page had not been a source, and doctored the email as part of a “misguided attempt to save himself time and the embarrassment of having to backtrack on his assurance he had it in writing.”
He vigorously disputed that Clinesmith had acted out of animus toward Trump, noting that Clinesmith had separately sent an undoctored copy of the CIA liaison’s email to the FBI case agent. Shur wrote that Clinesmith had initially resisted surveilling Page, rejected surveillance of another Trump campaign adviser and opposed inserting an FBI source into the Trump campaign.
“Had Kevin been personally motivated to harm President Trump, he would never have done any of those things,” Shur wrote.
Prosecutors, however, cast Clinesmith’s actions as more nefarious and advocated for a sentence “of incarceration that is at least between the middle and upper end” of what sentencing guidelines called for.
In discussing whether Page was an FBI source with the FBI supervisor, they wrote, Clinesmith recognized that disclosing such a fact would be “a terrible footnote,” because it would mean the FBI had hid that information in previous applications. They wrote that Clinesmith’s misconduct had “fueled public distrust of the FBI” and the surveillance program.