More questions have been raised about the meeting between Stefan Halper and then President Donald Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.
And the new details suggest that Page could have been set up by Halper, and possibly the FBI, to justify an investigation into the Trump campaign, Margot Cleveland of The Federalist reported.
It appears Stefan Halper, or his handler, exaggerated the circumstances of Halper’s mid-July 2016 meeting with former Donald Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, raising more questions about Halper’s role in Spygate.
Advertisement - story continues below
The Federalist asked Page whether the inspector general’s report, which documented 17 significant inaccuracies or omissions in the secret federal surveillance applications, accurately portrayed his various interactions with Halper. According to the IG report, after the launch of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI tasked Halper as a confidential human source to target Page, George Papadopoulos, and another unnamed, high-ranking Trump campaign official, widely known to be Sam Clovis.
Halper’s handling agent told the IG it was “serendipitous” that Source 2 — the moniker used for the unnamed Halper — “had contacts with three of their four subjects, including Carter Page.” They “couldn’t believe [their] luck,” the handling agent noted, upon learning that Halper knew Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, and had crossed paths with Page just weeks before.
Stop the censors, sign up to get today's top stories delivered right to your inbox
The case agent asked Help about Papadopoulos who he claimed he had not heard of and then “asked whether the team had any interest in an individual named Carter Page.”
Halper told the FBI that “in mid-July 2016, Carter Page attended a three-day conference, during which Page had approached Source 2 and asked Source 2 to be a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign.”
Advertisement - story continues below
“That is quite clearly not a correct characterization,” Page said to The Federalist. “I never asked him ‘to be a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign.’”
It is possible that they did discuss some ways Halper could get involved at a later date but that nothing specific had been talked about.
“The IG report unequivocally stated the FBI had not used any confidential human source prior to the July 31, 2016, launch of Crossfire Hurricane. Yet there was Halper at a small dinner gathering, chatting with Page, possibly about the Trump campaign. And it was Halper, not the FBI, who raised Page as a potential person of interest in the Crossfire Hurricane team’s first meeting with the confidential human source,” Cleveland said.
“The plan going into the meeting was to talk generally with Source 2 about Russian ‘interference in the election, what [Source 2] may know, and … to bring up Papadopoulos,’” the agent assigned to the case told the Inspector general.
But the agents “did not tell Source 2 that there was an open investigation or who the subjects were.”
Advertisement - story continues below
It gets more suspicious when, after this report was published, Svetlana Lokhova, the woman who sued Halper for defamation said this on Twitter.
“As a former Research Fellow at Cambridge, I can add: Halper was a Life Fellow of Magdalene College. Means he donated to the College.
“Dr Williams was the Master of Magdalene. He is a former Archbishop of Canterbury. Halper would have had to PERSONALLY invite Page to that dinner,” she said.
As a former Research Fellow at Cambridge, I can add:
Halper was a Life Fellow of Magdalene College. Means he donated to the College.
Dr Williams was the Master of Magdalene. He is a former Archbishop of Canterbury.
Halper would have had to PERSONALLY invite Page to that dinner https://t.co/XEeUfIADau— Svetlana Lokhova (@RealSLokhova) January 8, 2020
Advertisement - story continues below
This would mean there is a good chance that Halper was involved in setting up Page leading to the Trump campaign investigation.
Cleveland Noted:
These facts made Halper’s mid-July encounter with Page at a conference in the United Kingdom suspicious. The added fact that Halper met Page not during the conference proper, but at a small dinner gathering to kick off the conference, seemed even more suspect. Now that we know Halper wasn’t a mere fellow dinner guest at the gathering but was instead sitting abreast the table at his own college, it screams “set-up.”
Advertisement - story continues below
One wonders, otherwise, what would prompt one of the limited number of seats at the welcome dinner to be allocated to Page, given the number of dignitaries and distinguished attendees in town for what was billed as “a major international conference focusing on the 2016 U.S. presidential election and implications that this will have for future U.S. foreign policy.”
So, did Halper have a hand in extending an invite to Page for this private dinner gathering in order to forge a connection with the campaign advisor? He seems to have had the clout to make that call, as one of only ten Life Fellow faculty members of the college, an apparent substantial donor of Magdalene College, and a member of the college’s Buckingham Society, which is reserved to those who have arranged bequests to Magdalene.