Former FBI Lawyer Kevin Clinesmith to Plead Guilty in Falsifying Russia Probe Document

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith will plead guilty to falsifying a document as part of a federal probe into the origins of an investigation into potential Russian collusion in the 2016 election, Clinesmith's attorney said on Friday. Clinesmith will plead guilty on one account of making a false statement. Clinesmith admitted to changing an email involved in the surveillance warrant for former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page; he changed the email to suggest that Page had not been a government source in the past. Clinesmith's expected plea comes after the FBI admitted in January that two of the four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants that authorized surveillance of Page were invalid. Some voices from right-rated outlets interpret Clinesmith's guilty plea as evidence that the FBI has a political agenda against Trump. Some voices from the left point out that Clinesmith's plea does not necessarily mean that there is more evidence of an orchestrated surveillance of Trump's 2016 campaign, citing a 2019 Justice Department report which found no "documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced" the opening of the counterintelligence probe.