An FBI agent who oversaw both the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server and alleged collusion between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia was in the U.K. at the same time that important events — which we were told prompted the “surveillance” into Trump’s campaign — were going on. This would normally be a coincidence, but for some reason, the government didn’t want us to know that this agent was overseas at this particular time.
The revelations come after Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) released the private testimony between Edward William Priestap, who was the assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division between 2015 and 2018, and congressmen and their staff.
One particular tidbit from this interview was recently highlighted by Real Clear Investigations (RCI) (full disclosure: my former employer). Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) asked Priestap if he traveled overseas and where he went. Whenever Priestap answered where he went, the answer was redacted by government officials in the official transcript. RCI’s Eric Felten wondered sarcastically what “exotic destination” Priestap could have travelled to that would need to be redacted.
The answer, Felten found, was London. While government censors redacted the location from Priestap’s testimony, they did not redact it in text messages between FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Strzok texted Page on May 4, 2016 that he needed to write a memo but didn’t “know that Bill will read it before he gets back from London next week.”
Why was Priestap in London at this time? He “went to meet with a foreign partner, foreign government partner.” Felten explains:
In other words, almost certainly British intelligence. Not exposing our British partners has been the Justice Department’s justification for locking up secrets about the beginnings of the Trump investigation. The redactions try and fail to hide that Priestap met repeatedly with his British counterparts in 2016.
Just before Priestap traveled to London in the spring of 2016, Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud told Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos about the Russians having “dirt” on Clinton. Papadopoulos then allegedly relayed this gossip to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer a week later. Both of these events occurred in London.
As Felten points out, The New York Times claimed Australian officials “did not pass on this new information for two months.” Felten also notes that “it is more than passingly curious that Priestap kept going to London when these significant events were occurring.”
When Jordan asked Priestap why he went to London a second time in the spring of 2016, the ex-FBI official just kept saying, “I’m not a liberty” to discuss the matter.
“If Priestap could have answered ‘no’ without perjuring himself, he could have quickly put this matter to bed,” Felten wrote. “His ‘I’m not at liberty’ answers strongly suggest that the Trump-Russia investigation was exactly what his second trip to London was about.”
This could change the timeline about when the investigation began, or at least call into question how eager the FBI under the Obama administration was to spy on Clinton’s rival campaign. A young staffer says he was told by someone that the Russians have “dirt” on Clinton and the FBI immediately sends a top agent out to investigate? That’s some thin pretext.