learn what was going on between the russians and the campaign. they wanted to have a government investigator, someone who was trained, someone who could collect evidence, someone who could testify at a trial, to be on the ground for this operation as one of their informants made these contacts. and it just shows the extent of it. now, people on the right will say, look, this is just the latest example of the spying, that they would go so far as to put an investigator on the ground in this type of situation. from the bureau s perspective, the bureau would say, look, this gives us eyes and ears and gives us some oversight. this means our informants aren t just out there freelancing, there are folks that can keep a watch on this and make sure it doesn t go off the rails. but what it is is a picture into what counterintelligence looks like, something that we don t see a lot but we have learned so
policy adviser. now here is the magic of a campaign. listen to what the president says to the washington post editorial board 19 days after that. george papadopoulos, he s an oil and energy consultant, excellent guy. excellent guy, michael. is this kind of freelancing, the name salad we just read aloud, common? no. i don t think it s common. i don t think it s common as other campaigns would function. but i think what you re talking about gets at the question in the mueller report about the trump campaign. was the trump comparison disorganized, it allowed people like george papadopoulos who had had sort of weird connections to different foreigners, particularly these russians, people talking about russian emails, into the inner circle of the campaign? was it because it was so atypical that they were able to be on foreign policy advisers to
one previously unreported detail of an operation that has become a political flashpoint. the decision to use ms. turk in the operation aimed at a presidential campaign official shows the level of alarm in the fbi during a frantic period when the bureau was trying to determine the scope of russia s attempts to disrupt the 2016 election but could also give ammunition to trump and his allies for their spying claims. you may recall in april, attorney general barr made headlines after saying this on capitol hill. i think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. i m not talking about the fbi necessarily. but intelligence agencies more broadly. so you re not you re not suggesting, though, that spying occurred? i don t well, i guess you
terms of who actually is the source that comes in there. i think the important point is there was a person put in there because they were trying to figure out in terms of this counterintelligence investigation, it s a defensive counterintelligence investigation, they re trying to find out did the russian government actually penetrate into a presidential campaign. they need to make sure that is not happening. so you re going to take this maneuver for sure. michael, people want to know what the trump campaign was like. we read from the mueller report. papadopoulos contacted trump campaign manager corey lewandowski via linkedin, as one does, and emailed campaign official michael glassner about his interest in joining the trump campaign. on march 2 of 2016, papadopoulos sent glassner another message reiterating his interest. glassner passed on word of papadopoulos s interest to another campaign official who notified papadopoulos by email that she had been told by glassner to introduce pa
much about since the 2016 campaign. clint watts, does this sound, does this look familiar to you? yes, this would be exactly what i would expect in the counterintelligence investigation. if you think about it from the bureau s perspective, they watched widespread hacking go on for pretty much a year at this point. they think it s russia but they re not sure. they have a tip from the australian government that they re emailing with people inside the campaign. they had interviewed carter page before, he shows up again inside the campaign. the other one is you see aggressive social media influence from russia and you see wikileaks dumping emails out there. the other point that s critical is you need to put an agent into this environment for a few reasons. one, they may have to go testify later on as part of this investigation if something