More evidence of FBI misconduct in Trump related investigations

 Washington Examiner:

One of the FBI agents who led the investigation into debunked Alfa-Bank claims in 2016 remains under review for allegedly concealing exculpatory information from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court during the Trump-Russia investigation.

Curtis Heide, who worked at the Chicago field office in 2016 when it handled the Alfa-Bank investigation, was also doing work at that time on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, specifically related to Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos. He admitted while giving testimony Tuesday at the Michael Sussmann trial that the FBI is reviewing whether he intentionally withheld potentially exculpatory information related to the investigation.

Heide, an FBI veteran of 16 years, testified that he began temporary duty assignments in the nation’s capital in January 2016, working on a number of election-related matters.

Specifically, Heide said he did work to support the Midyear Exam investigation — what he described as “the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email matters."

Heide said he was asked to come back later in 2016 to help with the initial efforts of Crossfire Hurricane, which he called “the Trump campaign and the Russian matter." Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation did not establish any such criminal coordination or conspiracy.

He testified there was still an administrative investigation at the FBI related to Crossfire Hurricane — specifically into actions taken by himself and others. He said the allegation against him was “not identifying exculpatory information related to one of the Crossfire Hurricane investigations.”

When Durham prosecutor Jonathan Algor asked if he had intentionally withheld exculpatory information from the case team, Heide said under oath he had not done so.

Heide said the allegation was related to what the FBI calls “consensual recordings” and statements used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application, with exculpatory information not being properly divulged to the FISA court.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz determined that in the first Page FISA application, the FBI omitted recorded statements from September 2016 by Papadopoulos “denying that anyone associated with the Trump campaign was collaborating with Russia or with outside groups like WikiLeaks in the release of emails.” The DOJ watchdog concluded that in the three renewal applications, investigators omitted Papadopoulos “denying that the Trump campaign was involved in the circumstances of the DNC email hack” during an October 2016 conversation.

...

I get the impression that some of the FBI officials really wanted to believe the crap about Trump that Hillary Clinton and other Democrats were pushing.  They were willing to entrap Trump official sin process crimes to try to make a case. 

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