A previously undisclosed undercover operation was reportedly ordered by James Comey immediately after Trump announced his candidacy
Former FBI Director James Comey personally authorized the use of undercover agents, known as “honeypots”, to infiltrate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, according to an agency whistleblower. The secret operation was described by the insider as an attempt to uncover wrongdoing within Trump’s team.
The operation was directly overseen by Comey and launched in June 2015 without any official record being created in the FBI’s database, according to a whistleblower report submitted to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
At the time, Trump had just announced his first presidential campaign and neither he nor anyone on his campaign team was suspected of any crimes. Despite this, Comey ordered two “honeypot” agents to infiltrate Trump’s campaign with the goal of obtaining incriminating information from advisor George Papadopoulos, the report alleges.
A “honeypot” agent is typically an attractive woman who uses a sexual or romantic relationship to gather intelligence from a target.
Comey’s operation took place a year before the FBI’s ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged contacts with Russia, which later expanded into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year ‘Russiagate’ probe. According to the whistleblower, the honeypot operation was kept secret to avoid detection by the US Justice Department’s inspector general, who later concluded that Comey intentionally lied when submitting evidence to obtain a warrant to surveil Trump’s campaign.
Papadopoulos was eventually questioned by the FBI and in 2017 pleaded guilty to making false statements to agents regarding his alleged contacts with Russia the year before. He served 12 days in federal prison in 2018, and has since claimed that he was entrapped by FBI agents posing as Russians with damaging information on Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.
He complained about sloppy FBI agents “dropping information in my lap that I did not want regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails in the hands of the Russians” during the Crossfire Hurricane probe, and claimed to have been targeted by at least one “honeypot” beforehand. However, Papadopoulos believed that the woman was working for the CIA and “affiliated with Turkish intelligence,” he stated in 2019.
The operation was canceled when a newspaper obtained a photograph of one of the agents and was about to publish it, the whistleblower claimed. The FBI allegedly contacted the newspaper claiming that the woman in question was an informant, not an agent, and would be killed if the photo was released, successfully preventing its publication. One of the agents was then allegedly transferred to the CIA to ensure she would not be available as a potential witness.
“The FBI employee personally observed one or more employees in the FBI being directed to never discuss the operation with anyone ever again, which included talking with other people involved in the operation,” the report states.
The Judiciary Committee told the Washington Times that it “plans to look into” the report. Trump fired Comey in 2017, describing him as a “liar” and a “slimeball.”