A House Republican Tuesday unmasked one of the five FBI investigators cited in the recently released inspector general’s report for expressing anti-Trump and pro-Clinton sentiment in work-related instant messages.
The previously unnamed FBI official — “FBI Attorney 2” — is Kevin Clinesmith, according to House Oversight Committee member Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), who revealed their identities over the objection of the FBI during a hearing on the IG’s findings.
Another figure, “Agent 5,” was previously identified as Sally Moyer, but her lawyers disputed that and Meadows later said it wasn’t her.
Clinesmith was assigned to the bureau’s Hillary Clinton email investigation, according to the IG’s report, and also later worked as a top lawyer on the Trump-Russia investigation and the special-counsel probe.
Clinesmith sent a number of pro-Clinton, anti-Trump political messages over the FBI’s computer system, which the report said “raised concerns about potential bias” that may have impacted the investigation.
Meadows said Clinesmith was among five FBI officials Justice Department IG Michael Horowitz referred for investigation after additional anti-Trump messages surfaced.
All five worked on the Clinton case, accounting for one-third of the 15 who were assigned to the investigation. One was Peter Strzok, who was kicked off the special-counsel team last year and escorted from the FBI headquarters building Friday as part of internal discipline proceedings. He and his mistress, Lisa Page, who left the bureau last month, also supervised the Trump-Russia investigation.
The IG report said Page texted Strzok in August 2016, after Trump won the GOP presidential nomination, fretting, “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”
“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok replied.
Horowitz testified that the FBI was withholding the names of the other rogue agents from Congress and the public because “they work on counterintelligence” and can’t be exposed.
But Meadows argued that other agents for the FBI’s office of legal counsel, and are no longer in “counterintelligence,” as the FBI claimed.
“They don’t work in counterintelligence,” Meadows said in an exchange with Horowitz. “If that’s the reason the FBI is giving, they’re giving you false information, because they work for the general counsel.”