FBI agent Peter Strzok continued to pursue secretive searches against retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn into March 2017, citing as justification how the Trump national security adviser may have received a suggestion of Russian help in 2016, even though the FBI had determined by then that it was Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos who received the alleged tip about “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
The new revelation was contained within a document titled Summary of National Security Letters Issued In Crossfire Razor filed with a federal court by Flynn’s legal team on Monday after the Justice Department put the declassified summary together. “Crossfire Razor” was Flynn’s code name as he was targeted by the bureau within its umbrella Crossfire Hurricane Trump-Russia counterintelligence investigation. The FBI summary shows that between Feb. 7, 2017, and March 7, 2017, Strzok “authorized the issuance of seven National Security Letters” (types of secretive administrative subpoenas) and that those were approved by the FBI’s deputy general counsel.
The Strzok-authored national security letters were titled “CROSSFIRE RAZOR, FOREIGN AGENTS REGISTRATION ACT – RUSSIA” and state that “the FBI opened a Full Investigation based on an articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates an individual may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation.” The memoranda claim: “The FBI is predicating the investigation on predetermined criteria set forth by the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE investigative team based on an assessment of reliable lead information. … Specifically, a senior foreign policy adviser for the Donald J. Trump campaign circa May 2016, made statements indicating he is knowledgeable that the Russians made a suggestion to the ‘Trump team’ that they could assist the Trump campaign with an anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama.” The memoranda further note that they pursued Flynn’s records because he “may have been in a position to receive a suggestion from the Russians that they could assist the Trump campaign.”
The “opening electronic communication” authored by Strzok to launch Crossfire Hurricane in late July 2016 looked into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia after an Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, informed the United States that Papadopoulos told him he heard Russia had damaging information on Clinton, who was then a candidate for president. Within the memo is an email from a legal attache that described what Downer recalled of his conversations with Papadopoulos, including how the Trump campaign adviser “suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama).”
Instead of quickly interviewing Papadopoulos in the summer of 2016, the FBI opened investigations into Papadopoulos, Flynn, Trump campaign associate Carter Page, and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort as possible people who had received the Russia dirt tip. When Papadopoulos was finally interviewed by the FBI in January 2017, he said Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud had told him that the Russians had damaging information on Clinton in April 2016. Despite being told that it was Papadopoulos who had been told about this alleged Clinton dirt, Strzok continued to cite the mystery as a reason to continue investigating Flynn.
Papadopoulos served 12 days in federal prison for lying to FBI investigators about his contacts with people tied to Russia. According to his statement of offense, Papadopoulos said Mifsud told him the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded in December 2019 that Crossfire Hurricane was adequately predicated, but U.S. Attorney John Durham quibbled with that publicly and made it clear he is investigating it further.
A heavily redacted Dec. 23, 2016, email from ex-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who was then an assistant general counsel with the National Security and Cyber Law Branch, said, “CROSSFIRE HURRICANE” and “No further NSLs are authorized for Razor.” But in February and March 2017, Strzok was pursuing the national security letters again.
Documents declassified in April indicate that Strzok abruptly stopped the FBI from closing its investigation into Flynn in early January 2017 at the insistence of the FBI’s “7th floor” leadership after the bureau had uncovered “no derogatory information” on Flynn but following the intercept of calls between Flynn and Russia’s ambassador. Emails showed Strzok, along with FBI lawyer Lisa Page and several others, sought out ways to continue investigating Flynn, including by potentially deploying the Logan Act.
Strzok’s national security letters on Flynn sought “to identify whether [the electronic account had] been in direct contact with Russian government officials or any other individuals who may have been involved in Russian intelligence activities.” The subpoenas sought a variety of Flynn phone records (including subscriber, toll billing, and transactional information) and targeted electronic transactional records for Flynn’s email address, with some of the requests stretching back into July 2015.
Strzok’s lawyer, Aitan Goelman, sent a letter to the Flynn case judge Monday, stating that attachments to a Sept. 24, 2020, Flynn filing “included both notes written by Mr. Strzok as well as text messages sent or received by Mr. Strzok” and claiming that “some of Mr. Strzok’s notes included in this attachment appear to have been altered.” Strzok’s lawyer said: “On at least two occasions, there were handwritten additions, not written by Mr. Strzok, inserting dates, apparently designed to indicate the date or dates on which the notes were written. On at least one occasion, the date added is wrong and could be read to suggest that a meeting at the White House happened before it actually did.”
Handwritten notes dated either Jan. 4 or Jan. 5, 2017, about a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting are likely what Strzok’s lawyer said were improperly dated. Those notes were released by the Justice Department in June and seem to quote former Vice President Joe Biden directly raising the “Logan Act” related to Flynn, according to an apparent conversation Strzok had with FBI Director James Comey after the meeting.
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to FBI investigators about his December 2016 conversations with a Russian envoy. But after changing legal teams, Flynn claimed he was innocent and had been set up by the FBI. Attorney General William Barr appointed U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Jensen to review the Flynn case, after which a host of new documents deemed exculpatory by Flynn’s lawyers were discovered. The Justice Department has moved to dismiss the case but has met resistance from the presiding judge.
Newly released internal text messages sent by FBI analysts working on the case against retired Flynn in 2016 and 2017 reveal doubt and chaos inside the investigation against President Trump’s first national security adviser, and the summary of a September 2020 interview with FBI agent William Barnett, who was the lead case agent on the Flynn case in 2016 and 2017, shows he believed the Flynn case should have been shut down in late 2016 and early 2017.
