Friday, A former FBI lawyer received a 12-month probation sentence and 400 hours of community service. Kevin Clinesmith’s sentence was the minimal consequence for pleading guilty to “altering an email that he used to apply for a FISA warrant against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page” reports National Review.
Clinesmith pleaded guilty to “one count of making a false statement within both the executive branch and judicial branch of the U.S. government.” A kid stealing candy from a candy store would receive harsher punishment, especially for a crime that “carries a maximum term of imprisonment of five years and a fine of up to $250,000.”
But alas; commit a federal crime against former President Donald Trump and your punishment is to do a couple of hundred hours of nice things for people. In a court filing last month, Special Counsel John Durham asked for Clinesmith to receive a mere six-month jail term.
Durham’s suggestion was “between the middle and upper end’ of the recommended sentence for the crime of making false statements in writing.” On August 19, Clinesmith pleaded guilty to changing a June 2017 email originally sent to him by the CIA, which he forwarded to the FISA Court. Clinesmith tried “to make it seem as though the agency did not consider Page an intelligence source, though Page had served as an ‘operational contact’ for the agency from 2008 to 2013.”
According to Clinesmith, “at the time I believed the information I was providing in the email was accurate, but I am agreeing that the information I inserted into the email was not already there.” U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg concluded Clinesmith had undermined the integrity of the FISA Court. “Courts all over the country rely on representations from the government, and expect them to be correct” said Boasberg.
