THE RUSSIA PROBE STARTED WITH THE SPIES WHO MARKED ME

George Papadopoulos   Wall Street Journal  April 17, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-russia-probe-started-with-the-spies-who-marked-me-11555541531?mod=itp_wsj&mod=&mod=djemITP_h

The attorney general should question the three men known to have snooped on the Trump campaign.

I can tell Mr. Barr what I know from experience. There’s nothing to “think” about: The spying happened, and it happened to me. The real question is why it happened. What drove U.S. intelligence organizations during the Obama administration to use unvetted information and inconclusive spy operations against the Republican nominee and his staff?

During my time as an adviser to the Trump campaign, federal intelligence and law-enforcement organizations used operatives to contact me in person and by email on multiple occasions. Their goal? To discuss rumored coordination efforts with Russia and extract evidence of a collusion crime.

“Operatives” is a euphemistic term for these men. Spies is a more fitting label. One is Stefan Halper, a professor at the University of Cambridge who runs intelligence seminars and has ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. The Washington Post named him as the FBI informant who approached at least three members of the Trump campaign. Then there’s Alexander Downer, who had the lofty title of Australian high commissioner to the U.K. and was an adviser to the British private intelligence firm Hakluyt & Co. Finally there’s Joseph Mifsud, who taught at Rome’s Link Campus University, where many faculty members have ties to intelligence agencies.

These men spied on me. As spies, they hid behind the cloak of their public personas while trying to ferret out information about the campaign and Moscow, and prod me into corroborating their bad intelligence. Major newspapers have confirmed that Mr. Halper reported to the FBI and Mr. Downer reported to Australian intelligence. Mr. Mifsud’s handlers remain unidentified.

I have spent two years thinking about my bizarre interactions with these spooks. If Mr. Barr really wants to understand what happened, he needs to examine them and their motives. If he does, he will likely find three men and their government backers acting in concert to inflict damage on a U.S. presidential candidate whose views apparently scared the hell out of them.

What might have motivated these spying efforts? On the British side, Mr. Trump was a vocal proponent of Brexit, which was opposed by most of the British political establishment. Similarly, Mr. Trump had spoken out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that Australian politicians support.

In the U.S., Obama appointees James Comey at the FBI and John Brennan at the CIA were deeply rattled by Mr. Trump’s rhetoric about restoring relations with Russia. They were also hoodwinked by poorly sourced, unvetted reports from overseas, including the Steele dossier. Their agencies stitched together the reports to create the collusion narrative and open the investigation.

Mr. Barr may not be able to find a smoking gun that definitively proves Obama loyalists plotted to use specious allegations to wound a Republican candidate for president. But he won’t have to look very hard to confirm the existence of spy operations. Subpoenas for the spies who approached me would go a long way.

Mr. Barr could also investigate whether those operations crossed the bold line that separates a serious, apolitical investigation from paranoid prosecutorial overreach. The intelligence agencies and the spies they employed devised a conspiracy to create the appearance of a conspiracy.

I look forward to the attorney general’s findings.

Mr. Papadopoulos is a former foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign and author of “Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump.”