Thread by @benrileysmith

THREAD

Stefan Halper was a Cambridge Uni professor, a former White House insider teaching political science.

But in 2016 he was something else - an FBI informant secretly recording Trump advisers.

His story is pretty crazy. It’s ep4 of our podcast: playpodca.st/crossfire

Halper is a veteran of Republican politics. He served 3 of the party’s presidents - Nixon, Ford, Reagan.

He lived through Watergate from inside the bunker. He switched into academia and in the early 2000s moved to Cambridge.

Halper has past intel connections. His first father in law was a famed US intel figure. He also used to be on the FBI’s books.

In the summer of 2016, as the FBI scrambled to investigate Trump-Kremlin ties, they reached out to the well-connected Halper.

The FBI’s decision to commission Halper to make approaches for them was one of the most controversial choices of the probe.

It involved an outsider using subterfuge to ask questions of members of a live presidential campaign. Ie, high risk stuff.

Halper got to three Trump campaign figures. All 3 agreed to talk to me for this podcast.

@carterwpage - then a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser

@GeorgePapa19 - likewise

Sam Clovis, then national co-chair of the campaign.

Page was the 1st person Halper approached. They’d already met at a conference so Halper had an in.

They would meet 4 times when Halper was in his FBI role. Each time Halper was recording the chat.

Page talked to me twice, discussing Halper mid-last year. He said they chatted about Russia but didn’t go into details.

At that point (before a lot more info on Halper came out) Page was reluctant to apportion blame to Halper, saying he wanted proof.

Sam Clovis, the national co-chair on the campaign - a pretty senior post - met Halper next.

They shared coffee in Washington after Halper reached out. Clovis said nothing controversial was discussed. But he is spitting mad at Halper’s actions...

Clovis alledges it was an attempt to compromise the Trump campaign so he could be denied if elected.

“What they tried to do was nothing short of attempting to overturn the results of a duly conducted election and that is a despicable, shameful set of events.”

Papadopoulos’s involvement is the most wild. He was lured to London by Halper, offered $3000 to write a policy paper.

In fact it was a sting. 3-person FBI team joined Halper, hoping to get Pap talking about Russian links. Halper was recording, again.

They met in the Travellers Club, a gentleman’s club off London’s Pall Mall. They got G&Ts. Then Halper started asking qus.

“Trump and you are involved in a conspiracy, right? You are helping Trump in a conspiracy, right?” per @GeorgePapa19.

Papadopoulos was alarmed.

“Your survival mechanism kicks in at that point, because you understand you're in danger in a particular situation” he told @Telegraph.

“I felt in danger... Not physical danger, of course, but I felt that this person was trying to cause some harm.”

We know all the Halper chats were fed back to the FBI. Snippets of transcripts were in the FBI internal watchdog’s report on the probe.

Halper has never been named by the FBI. But details from the report make clear he is the ‘source’ described.

Halper hasn’t spoken since he was named in press and is no longer with Cambridge. He declined to comment a few times.

But a Halper friend I talked to mounted a defence. He didn’t “penetrate” the Trump camp. The FBI called and he answered.

He was a “loyal American citizen”.

If you want to hear the full story (rather than the precis above) then would be delighted if you click and have a listen.

There’s some dramatic music, the three Trump figures in their own voices and a trip to the Travellers Club. Link👇👇

playpodca.st/crossfire