Kevin Clinesmith is the former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to falsifying a 2017 CIA e-mail related to the bogus Russian collusion investigation launched by the FBI against Donald Trump and some of his aides. Clinesmith’s criminal deception deprived the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of accurate information critical to its determination of whether to renew its electronic surveillance authorization against former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. The Department of Justice requested a jail sentence for Clinesmith of up to 6 months. Instead, Clinesmith received a slap on the wrist and words of sympathy from Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, an Obama nominee. Judge Boasberg also happens to be the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that Clinesmith had a hand in misleading.
U.S. Attorney John Durham (Youtube screen capture/Fox News)
Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to probation on Friday for altering an email about former Trump aide Carter Page’s relationship with the CIA. District Court Judge James Boasberg ordered Clinesmith to receive 12 months of probation and perform 400 hours of community service, a sentence far more lenient than the three to six months in prison sought by John Durham, the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut.
Clinesmith, who was an assistant general counsel in the FBI’s cyber law branch, pleaded guilty on Aug. 19, 2020 to altering a June 2017 email he received from a CIA employee regarding Page. The CIA employee wrote that Page had been
Rep. Devin Nunes and other Republicans blasted the probation sentence with no prison time for ex-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to fraudulently altering a CIA email during the FBI’s flawed pursuit of surveillance against former Trump campaign associate Carter Page.
WASHINGTON - A former FBI lawyer was sentenced to probation on Friday for altering an email the Justice Department relied on in its surveillance of an aide