Newly declassified FBI memos detail concerns, payments to Russia collusion informant

A key FBI informant in the widely-debunked Russia collusion case was paid nearly $1.2 million over three decades, was motivated in part by "monetary compensation," and continued snitching even after agents concluded he told them an inaccurate story about future Trump National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, newly declassified documents show.

The nearly 700 pages of once-secret documents, obtained by Just the News, were recently turned over by FBI Director Kash Patel to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan after President Donald Trump ordered them declassified at the start of his second administration.

They provide the most extensive portrait yet of former FBI informant Stefan Halper, a Pentagon consultant and academic who, along with retired British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, was used by bureau agents to build the Crossfire Hurricane case against Trump and his advisers during the end of the 2016 election and the beginning of Trump's first term in office.

The memos confirm Halper was the source of one of the most sensational bogus claims to land in the FBI's probe in summer 2016: that Flynn had left a 2014 foreign meeting alone with Russia scholar Svetlana Lokhova when he was a three-star general leading the Defense Intelligence Agency.

FBI agents ultimately deemed Halper's account to be "not plausible" and "not accurate", but the bureau proceeded to investigate Flynn, kept paying Halper and continued to vouch for his veracity as a confidential human source codenamed "Mitch," the memos show.

For instance, a March 2017 memo showed the FBI's Validation Management Unit wrote that it "assesses it is likely HALPER is suitable for continued operation, based on his or her authenticity, reliability, and control.”

That memo makes no mention in its unredacted portions of the concerns about the account Halper gave about Flynn and Lokhova, which were confirmed in a memo from William Barnett, the FBI agent who handled the retired Flynn’s case in 2016 and 2017.

Paid more than $1 million

The new FBI records also show Halper was paid $70,000 by the FBI between August 2016 and the start of February 2017 — a time period spanning his activation as an informant targeting the Trump campaign and then the 2016 election and Trump’s inauguration. The FBI records also showed that the bureau had paid Halper “$1,181,064.44” from 1991 into early 2017.

You can read the FBI's declassified records on Halper here:

Stefan Halper - Crossfire Hurricane Declassified Binder

Halper did not respond to a request for comment which Just the News made through his lawyer, Robert Luskin.

The “Crossfire Hurricane Redacted Binder” submitted to Congress and obtained by Just the News includes, among other things, slightly less-redacted versions of the tasking orders and debriefings of the two main confidential human sources, Halper and Steele. The new documents are certain to raise continued concerns in Congress about the FBI's management and validation of informants, an issue that has been repeatedly flagged by the Justice Department's watchdog.

FBI vouches for Halper after he fed false info on Flynn

The FBI’s Validation Management Unit (VMU) conducted a Human Source Validation Report (HSVR) on Halper in early 2017 — and although the declassified document remains heavily redacted, it reveals new information about the FBI’s continued expression of trust in Halper.

The VMU’s review from May 2013 to March 2017 and recommended that the FBI continue using Halper as a source despite FBI agents working the Flynn case determining that he had provided them incorrect information. It is not known whether Halper knew the information was bogus at the time.

“VMU recommends FBI New York continue to operate HALPER. VMU assesses it is likely HALPER will continue to contribute to the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program,” the FBI unit wrote. “While there have been serious handling issues noted in previous HSVRs, VMU did not locate similar issues during this period of review. VMU assesses HALPER has provided valuable information for FBI NY based on his or her unique access.”

The FBI document said Halper was primarily involved in reporting on “Counterintelligence” and secondarily involved in reporting on “Russia.”

“HALPER, code name MITCH, is being utilized to provide information on two initiatives dealing with Russia,” the FBI record states, although one of the initiatives remains entirely redacted. 

The other initiative was that Halper “has also provided information pertaining to the U.S. election involving Donald Trump’s close associates and their potential ties to the Russian government.” 

Vox parroted this explanation, saying the Trump administration told "a tale of politically motivated persecution of Trump. The argument rests on the distinction between an FBI counterintelligence investigation – an inquiry into a foreign power’s efforts to spy on the US government – and an FBI criminal investigation, which is an effort to investigate whether any federal laws were broken."

The FBI unit said: “VMU assesses it is likely HALPER is suitable for continued operation, based on his or her authenticity, reliability, and control.” The sections of Halper’s alleged authenticity, reliability, and control remain heavily redacted.

The bureau unit also contended that “during the period of review, VMU found no derogatory issues regarding MITCH’s reliability.”

But the FBI unit also admitted: “VMU notes there is no corroboration concerning MITCH’s reporting. Due to the singular nature of his or her access, VMU was unable to locate corroboration concerning MITCH’s reporting.”

Sections on collection requirements, threat issues, and key intelligence questions related to Halper all remain blacked out from public view. 

Motivated by money and ideology

The FBI also said in a declassified April 2017 report that Halper had started as a confidential human source (CHS) in December 2008 but then stopped in January 2011, and then reactivated as an FBI source again in March 2011. The bureau said that Halper had previously been “closed” because he had “violated instructions” but that “since the reopening, the CHS has complied with all instructions given to him by the FBI.” The bureau called Halper an “integral part” of Crossfire Hurricane.

The FBI said Halper’s “motivation” for providing information to the FBI was “monetary compensation” and “patriotism/ideology.” The FBI wrote: “CHS behavior has been excellent. The CHS has agreed to assist the case agent in the goals of the investigation. The CHS has devoted significant time and energy to assisting the FBI in its goals.”

When the FBI form asked if there was anything on Halper that “could reasonably be construed as derogatory, including any “statements made by the CHS.”  The FBI answered “none.” The “average CHS utility value” given to Halper by the bureau remains repeatedly blacked out.

DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz released a 2019 report concluding that "the FBI did not comply with the AG Guidelines' requirements and its own policies and procedures for managing long-term CHSs."

The new FBI records reveal that being a CHS for the bureau was quite lucrative for Halper. An FBI annual source report from April 2017 said Halper was paid $70,000 from March 2016 to March 2017 and had been paid $596,906.60 over the course of his many years as a confidential human source up to that point.

An FBI report from April 2017 showed Halper was paid $25,000 in January 2017 and $25,000 in February 2017, with the FBI saying that Halper “was an integral part of a close hold National Security Investigation. CHS has been transferred to a new Case Agent and the CHS’s focus will shift to other matters.”

A $5,000 FBI payment request document by Somma – dated Aug. 15, 2016 – said the payment was for “MITCH” and that it was for work done over a few days in August 2016: “CHS has been integral in the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE investigation. … Current payment is for CHS’s time assisting with the CH investigation.” There was also a $15,000 FBI payment request document – from Aug. 30, 2016 – which was submitted by Somma for work “MITCH” had done from mid-August to early September, with the FBI saying “CHS was integral in an operation against the subject of a sensitive investigation.”

Another FBI payment request document for $25,000 – dated Sept. 6, 2016 – was also for work “MITCH” had done from early to mid-September 2016. Somma said that it was “payment for services rendered on the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE / CROSSFIRE TYPHOON investigation.”

The previously unseen FBI records also include payment receipts signed by “Mitch” for $5,000 in August 2016 and $15,000 and $25,000 in August and September 2016.  Another FBI payment request document for $25,000 – dated January 5, 2017 – related to services Halper rendered from November 2016 to early January 2017. It included a signature by “Mitch” for receiving $25,000 from the FBI in February 2017 and was “payment for services rendered by the CHS during the captioned investigation.”

The FBI's confidential human source validation unit revealed that “FBI NY has paid MITCH $1,181,064.44 dating back to 1991.”

The Defense Department inspector general also previously revealed that the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment paid Halper $1.05 million for projects he allegedly did for them between May 2012 and September 2016. The Pentagon under Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in March that it was disestablishing the office.

Despite the efforts by the FBI and Halper, a two-year investigation by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller “did not establish” any criminal Trump-Russia collusion. In addition, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found huge flaws with the FBI’s investigation, including criticizing the “central and essential” role of a dossier in the FBI’s politicized surveillance of former Trump campaign associate Carter Page.

Halper — and the FBI — target Mike Flynn

At Cambridge University, Halper worked alongside MI6’s Sir Richard Dearlove and MI5 historian Christopher Andrew. Together, they founded and organized Cambridge Intelligence Seminars, including one in 2014 attended by Flynn.

CHS reports show Halper, an academic who long worked for the bureau as a trusted informant, was the original source of a story that Flynn had left a 2014 event in Cambridge, England, with the Russia scholar Svetlana Lokhova while he was still the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. It was also listed in FBI documents as part of the reason the bureau opened a counterintelligence probe of Flynn. The story was later leaked to the news media and became the focal point of a defamation lawsuit by Lokhova that was dismissed and affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

By January 2017, as Trump was about to take office, the FBI had exhausted all leads in the Flynn case, and the agents were prepared to shut down the probe, but they were overruled by superiors.

The FBI memos show Halper offered the Lokhova story during his first Russia collusion debriefing on Aug. 11, 2016, shortly after Donald Trump had accepted the Republican presidential nomination and days before the bureau opened an investigation codenamed Crossfire Razor focused on whether Flynn was wittingly or unwittingly aiding Moscow.

A number of “CHS Reporting Documents” from 2016 which were submitted by FBI special agent Stephem Somma showed that Somma repeatedly met Halper with Special Agent Benjamin Gessford and a yet-redacted Staff Operations Specialist (SOS).

"The CHS relayed an incident s/he witnessed when CROSSFIRE RAZOR (CR) spoke at the university. The CHS was unsure of the date, but noted that CR was still in his/her position within the USIC," the informant's report relayed to the bureau. Redactions that have now been lifted include a “writer’s note” that Flynn had spoken there on February 28, 2014.

"The CHS told the team that after CR spoke and socialized with [redacted] at dinner and over drinks, [redacted] got CR a cab to take CR to the train station to bring him/her to London,” the FBI records originally said, although the less-redacted version shows Halper claimed Flynn had socialized with university members and that it was university members who got him his car.

The event Flynn attended in 2014 was part of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminars.

"The CHS stated that a woman, Svetlana Lokhova, surprised everyone and got into CR's cab and joined CR on the train ride to London," the more heavily-redacted version of the report had added, with Halper claiming Lokhova had “latched” onto Flynn while at a redacted location, which is now known to have been Halper’s university.

"The CHS stated that s/he is somewhat suspicious of Lokhova as she has been affiliated with several prominent members of [redacted],” the original FBI record stated. The redaction there was that Halper said Lokhova was affiliated with prominent members of Halper’s university. “CHS believes that Lokhova's father may be a Russian oligarch living in London."

Lokhova connection unsubstantiated

One day later – Aug. 12, 2016 – the FBI brought Halper back for more debriefings and pressed him "to recall the incident" involving Lokhova. The memos suggest agents were clearly concerned by the allegation that a DIA director and three-star general was somehow unaccompanied on a foreign trip.

"The CHS was asked if s/he recalled if CR was alone during the presentation at the university or if CR was joined by a staff officer," the report said. "The CHS did not remember another officer with CR, but said that there was a representative from CR's organization there from a local military base."

Four days later – on Aug. 16, 2016 – documents show the FBI formally opened a counterintelligence investigation into Flynn as part of the Crossfire Hurricane probe into the now-disproven allegations of Trump-Russia collusion.

The documents make clear that Halper's allegations about the Lokhova encounter were included in the Flynn probe, and that the FBI checked U.S. and foreign intelligence databases on the Russian-born academic and "reported no derogatory information in its holdings." A former bureau official told Just the News, the FBI was favorably familiar with Lokhova because she had been cleared to work with the bureau's official historian while researching a book on Soviet-era spying.

The records state that early on agents asked Halper if he might "be able to meet with CR as part of the CHS' due diligence" and create "another opportunity for the CHS to address the [Russian Federation] ties to the Trump campaign." There is no evidence in the memos that Halper was able to meet with Flynn during the probe.

FBI agent William Barnett said agents checked Halper's claims of the Lokhova encounter with U.S. and foreign intelligence officials and came up empty. "Intelligence analysts did not locate information to corroborate this reporting," Barnett told prosecutors.

"BARNETT found the idea Flynn could leave an event, either by himself or [redacted] without the matter being noted as not plausible," the summary of the agent's interview stated. "With nothing to corroborate the story, Barnett thought the information was not accurate."

Barnett spoke with Justice Department investigators in 2020 and said Halper’s claims about Flynn were “potentially significant and something that could be investigated.” At the same time, the DOJ document said, “intelligence analysts did not locate information to corroborate” Halper’s allegations, and Barnett found the claims “not plausible.”

In a January 2017 document proposing the Flynn case close, the FBI recounted Halper’s claims and said the FBI “checked [redacted] name through available FBI databases for any derogatory information with negative results,” and “a formal [redacted] was submitted to [redacted] for any derogatory information.” The document stated that “[redacted] reported no derogatory information in its holdings.”

Since-fired special agent Peter Strzok stopped the FBI from closing its investigation into Flynn in early 2017.

Lokhova argued in her 2019 lawsuit against that Halper that he “embroiled an innocent woman in a conspiracy to undo the 2016 presidential election.” Halper through his lawyers scoffed at the claims as “meritless and profane” and “implausible conspiracy theories.”

In his debriefings as a cooperating witness with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Flynn also directly knocked down any suggestion of an untoward encounter with Lokhova as "ridiculous."

Flynn "did not have any other interaction with her during that trip, or on any other occasion," Flynn told prosecutors, according to an FBI report of the interview, and said he “walked back to the school’s hotel” after the dinner.

New details on the FBI’s relationship with Halper

The declassification move by Trump and Patel this week follows an executive order by the president in March, after his prior efforts to declassify the FBI’s Russiagate scandal records in the final days of his first term were thwarted by his own Justice Department in January 2021. It also comes after the Biden-era DOJ and the FBI under ex-Attorney General Merrick Garland and former FBI Director Christopher Wray each refused for four years to make the records public.

The FBI’s investigation targeting both the candidate and then-President Trump in 2016 and beyond began with ginned-up allegations of collusion between Trump and the Russian government, but Crossfire Hurricane was soon exposed as a ”Deep State” plot by politicized intelligence and law enforcement agencies to target Trump.

The newly-declassified FBI records provide further details on Halper’s relationship with the FBI.

The newly-released FBI documents said Somma and Gessford “met with the CHS regarding CROSSFIRE HURRICANE targets.” A document about the Aug. 16, 2016 meeting said Somma and Gessford met with Halper and “CHS was prepped for an operation regarding the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE investigation.”

Another FBI document – dated Sept. 5, 2016 – said Somma and Gessford met with Halper a few days prior, but that “due to the sensitivity of the investigation, the write-up is in the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE file.”

And another FBI document – dated Feb. 27, 2017 – detailed a Jan. 25, 2017 meeting between Somma and Halper at the Sofitel Hotel in the nation’s capital, where Halper was meeting with the subject of an investigation.

Another document from the bureau dated the same day detailed a meeting in Virginia on February 1, 2017, where “CHS discussed potential operations against the target of the investigation” and where Somma “also presented the CHS with $25,000 for CHS services.” 

The newly-disclosed FBI documents – one dated Mar. 1, 2017 and detailing a meeting which happened that day in Virginia – stated that “CHS informed SA Somma that he had been contacted by a reporter at the Wall Street Journal regarding Russian Influence at the CHS’s university. The reporter was following up on an article written earlier in the year about the same subject.”

A quarterly FBI report from June 2017 said Halper was “unavailable” during the recent timeframe and that the FBI didn’t have contact with him during the previous few months. Another quarterly FBI report from October 2020 said that “no statistical accomplishments have been claimed for this period” and that Halper was “being closed” as a source “at the direction of FBI HQ-Counterintelligence Division.”

Halper and Carter Page

The FBI’s Halper memos also show that, immediately after the FBI opened a Russia collusion probe at the end of July 2016, FBI agents pressed Halper for information on more than a half dozen Trump world figures, including Carter Page.

An FBI document from August 2016 shows Halper said he’d be willing to help the FBI with targeting Papadopoulos but, in a newly unredacted sentence, said that he wanted to meet with Papadopoulos first because, without knowing Papadopoulos, he worried Papadopoulos could be “thrown to the wolves” at his university.

"The main goal of the operation is to have CD [CROSSFIRE DRAGON / Carter Page] admit that he has direct knowledge of and is either helping coordinate or assisting the RF [Russian Federation] conduct an active measure campaign with the 'Trump Team,'" stated an Aug. 24, 2016 report detailing the FBI's interactions with Halper that week.

If the Page operation failed, the FBI "team would then change its posture and move forward with an operation against CROSSFIRE TYPHOON," the memos stated.

British ex-spy Christopher Steele had been hired by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to conduct his baseless anti-Trump research dossier, and Fusion GPS in turn had been hired by Clinton’s 2016 campaign by now ex-Perkins Coie lawyer Marc Elias.

A slightly less declassified version of the fourth FISA application against Page— released in January 2021 to Just the News — stated that Page, during his interaction with Halper, did not offer a direct rebuttal to claims he had met with senior Russians or played a role in changing the GOP platform to make it more favorable to Russia as alleged by Steele.

"On or about October 17, 2016, Page met with Source #2, which meeting the FBI consensually monitored and recorded," the FISA application read. "According to the FBI's review of the recorded conversation, Source #2 made general inquiries about the media reporting regarding Page's contacts with Russian officials.”

"Although Page did not provide any specific details to refute, dispel, or clarify the media reporting, he made vague statements that minimized his activities. Page also made general statements about a perceived conspiracy against him mounted by the media," the FBI told the court.

But the transcript of Page's conversation with Halper, also declassified and obtained by Just the News in January 2021, showed that Page did in fact directly deny all four of the main allegations made about him in the Steele dossier that supported the FISA application, including specific denials he had met with two Russian officials named Igor Sechin and Igor Diveychkin.

An unredacted “writer’s note” from the FBI in August 2016 says the bureau believed a July 2016 meeting between Halper and Page occurred on July 13, 2016, because that was the date Page left the UK and flew to the United States, according to an FBI records check.

FBI documents now also reveal the FBI was present on Halper’s property to monitor the conversation with Page.

Kevin Clinesmith, who worked on both the Hillary Clinton emails investigation and the Trump-Russia inquiry, pleaded guilty to falsifying a document during the bureau’s efforts to renew FISA authority to wiretap Carter Page, who was an adviser to President Trump's 2016 campaign.

Clinesmith admitted in August 2020 that he had falsely edited a CIA email in 2017 to state that Carter Page was “not a source” for the CIA when the agency had actually told the bureau on multiple occasions that Page had been an “operational contact” for the CIA. Horowitz said the third renewal application “again failed to disclose Page's past relationship with the other agency” because of Clinesmith’s actions. Clinesmith was not named in Horowitz's report, but it was clear he was the "Office of General Counsel attorney" who had been working with the Crossfire Hurricane team.

"The core lie is that I met with these sanctioned Russian officials, several of which I never even met in my entire life, but they said that I met them in July," the FBI transcript quotes Page as telling Halper during the Oct. 17, 2016 interaction at Halper's farm in northern Virginia.

Page was never charged with a crime as part of Mueller's investigation, which failed to establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, and Page has repeatedly denied being an agent for Russia.

The memos showed Halper followed FBI instructions and helped the FBI make recordings that clearly captured Page — unaware he was talking to an FBI informant — actually denying the key allegations against him. On the recordings, Page said that he had not met with two sanctioned Russians as Steele had alleged, that he had not played a role in modifying the Republican National Committee’s 2016 platform to help Russia, and that he was not involved with or aware of any effort by the Trump campaign to work with Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's emails.

Horowitz’s report made clear the conversation between Halper and Page took place on Oct. 17, 2016, or four days before the FISA warrant was approved by the FISA Court authorizing surveillance of Page, but these denials were never disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that approved a year of surveillance targeting the Trump campaign, and specifically Page.

Judge Rosemary Collyer, then the presiding judge over the FISA court, in December 2019 ordered an FBI review of every FISA filing that Clinesmith had ever touched following the release of Horowitz’s report that month on Crossfire Hurricane. The FISA court criticized the FBI’s handling of the Page applications as “antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above” and demanded corrective action from the bureau.

Halper’s “Friend” Peter Navarro

The declassified FBI documents on Halper shed some light on how the FBI source may have come close to getting a job in the first Trump White House despite quietly helping the FBI spy on Trump’s campaign.

The first August 2016 document detailing Halper’s meeting with the FBI shows the FBI had previously redacted the fact that Halper had called Peter Navarro a “friend.” Navarro was a trade advisor in Trump’s first term as well. The next day in August 2016, the FBI wrote that Halper considered contacting Navarro: “The CHS told the team that s/he was thinking of contacting Peter Navarro to inquire about the Trump campaign. The CHS mentioned that Navarro had approached her/him about joining the campaign in the past and that the CHS would be able to ask Navarro direct questions as well, since they are personal friends.”

The FBI records of a Halper meeting on Aug. 24, 2016 about an “Operational Plan for a CHS to meet with Crossfire Dragon” also now include unredacted details about the “CD/FBI CHS relationship” including Halper’s claim that he had been asked to join several recent U.S. presidential campaigns but had declined. 

It was reported by Axios in 2018 that, during the presidential transition after the 2016 election, “Navarro recommended Halper, among other people, for ambassador roles in Asia.” A White House official also told the outlet that “Halper visited the Eisenhower Executive Office Building last August [2017] for a meeting about China.” Halper was never hired by Trump.

Navarro told Fox News at the time that he was “dumbfounded” by Halper’s role in helping the FBI target Trump and that he felt “duped” by him: “I’ve met him a couple of times. He was in my film documentary. … He is quite eloquent. I just call him up and said want to do it. I went out to his place with my film crew. We shot it and then I subsequently saw him on two other occasions but that’s it. … I feel duped, yeah pretty much.”

Despite efforts by the FBI and Halper to dig up evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, it never emerged. 

A report by a new Justice Department special counsel, John Durham, concluded that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” 

The special counsel also said the "FBI ignored the fact that at no time before, during, or after Crossfire Hurricane were investigators able to corroborate a single substantive allegation in the Steele dossier reporting.”