A Cambridge University academic is once again speaking out against unfounded allegations made by FBI informant Stefan Halper, the FBI informant who communicated with various Donald Trump campaign officials during the 2016 election.
Halper is said to have voiced concerns over cozy interactions between Ret. Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn and Svetlana Lokhova, a Russian intelligence researcher during an event organized by Cambridge Intelligence Seminar (CIS) in 2014.
Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller News Foundation writes:
According to the [Wall Street Journal], Flynn sat next to Lokhova at the CIS dinner. At one point, she showed Flynn an “erotic postcard” from 1912 of a young woman with Joseph Stalin. Flynn also mentioned hiring Lokhova as his translator for a trip to Russia he planned to make. He and Lokhova remained in email contact for a short time after the Cambridge event.
There was no evidence presented that Flynn or Lokhova did anything wrong other than arouse suspicions from a dinner attendee now known to be Halper.
Lokhova declined Tuesday to comment about Halper beyond her short statement. But she referred back to an interview she gave to the BBC on May 12, 2017 in which she denied allegations that she was a Kremlin agent or a “honey pot,” a spy term used to describe a woman used to seduce a target in order to gather intelligence.
The Defense Intelligence Agency was told of the future National Security Advisor’s interactions with Lokhova, yet according to the agency’s liaison Dan O’Brien, “nothing rose to the level,” to which the information required an investigation.
Christopher Andrew, MI5 historian and head of CIS, calls Halper’s allegations of Kremlin influenced over CIS nothing short of “absurd.”
When asked to comment on recent revelations concerning her former colleague, Lokhova told the Daily Caller News Foundation, “Stef Halper, who is currently under [Department of Justice] investigation for his activities, has been revealed by [the New York Times] as the source of the false allegations about me and General Flynn.”
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein directed Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Sunday to enlarge the scope of his investigation to include possible politically motivated acts regarding how the FBI “conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with the Russian agents who interfered in the 2016 presidential election.”
Halper’s activities as an FBI informant are likely to come under the purview of Horowitz’s new inquiry.
Recent reports detailed Halper’s interactions with Trump campaign officials — Sam Clovis, Carter Page, and George Papadopoulos.
The New York Post writes:
Halper made his first overture when he met with Page at a British symposium. The two remained in regular contact for more than a year, meeting at Halper’s Virginia farm and in Washington, DC, as well as exchanging emails.
The professor met with Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis in late August, offering his services as a foreign-policy adviser, The Washington Post reported Friday, without naming the academic.
…
Days later, Halper contacted Papadopoulos by e-mail. The professor offered the young and inexperienced campaign aide $3,000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to London, ostensibly to write a paper about energy in the eastern Mediterranean region.
The Oxford-educated Halper began his career in government in 1971 as a member of President Richard Nixon’s Domestic Policy Council, later serving as the Office of Management and Budget’s Assistant Director of Management and Evaluation Division between 1973-1974. The international relations scholar then worked as an aide to all three of President Gerald Ford’s Chief of Staffs — Alexander Haig, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney — until 1977.
Public records show the longtime federal official was paid a large sum in 2016 for work he undertook during the Obama years.
The Department of Defense paid Halper $282,295 on September 27, 2016 for work titled, “INDIA AND CHINA ECON STUDY,” says USASPENDING.gov.
The amount was one of two payments made to Halper for the job; the second, worth $129,280, was made on July 26, 2017. The record marks Halper’s “Period of Performance” as September 26, 2016 to March 29, 2018.
The government spending tracking website says the Department of Defense paid the foreign policy wonk a total of $1,058,161 for work between 2012-2018.
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