Spygate (conspiracy theory)

rdf:langString Spygate (conspiracy theory)

rdf:langString Spygate is a conspiracy theory promulgated by President Donald Trump in May 2018 that the Obama administration had put a spy in his 2016 presidential campaign for political purposes. On May 17, 2018, Trump tweeted: "Wow, word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI "SPIED ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN WITH AN EMBEDDED INFORMANT." In that tweet, he quoted Andrew C. McCarthy, who had just appeared on Fox & Friends repeating assertions from his own May 12 article for National Review. Trump made more assertions, without providing evidence, on May 18 and May 22–23, 2018, adding that it was done in an effort to help Trump's rival, Hillary Clinton, win the general election. He said the supposed spy, later identified as professor Stefan Halper, was paid a "massive amount of money" for doing so. In the middle and second half of 2016, Halper, a longtime confidential source for U.S. intelligence, began working as a secret informant for the FBI, targeting three Trump campaign advisers separately in a covert effort to investigate suspected Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. However, as of May 2018, the Trump administration had produced no evidence that Halper had actually joined the Trump campaign or any politically motivated surveillance of the campaign. On June 5, 2018, Trump further alleged that a counterintelligence operation into the Trump campaign had been running since December 2015. The House Intelligence Committee, then in Republican control, concluded in an April 2018 report that the FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign did not begin until late July 2016, while the February 2018 Nunes memo written by Republican aides reached the same conclusion, as did the February 2018 rebuttal memo by committee Democrats. Whether the use of the FISA warrant, which permits investigators to collect archived communications well prior to the issuance of the warrant, includes the December 2015 date remains partially classified. Political commentators and high-ranking politicians from both sides of the political spectrum have dismissed Trump's allegations as lacking evidence and maintained that the FBI's use of Halper as a covert informant was in no way improper. Trump's claims about when the counterintelligence investigation was initiated have been shown to be false. A December 2019 Justice Department Inspector General report "found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any [Confidential Human Sources] within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign." Spygate is similar to but distinct from Trump's March 2017 assertion that President Obama "had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower," which the Trump Justice Department stated was untrue in September 2017 and October 2018 federal court briefs. It is also part of Trump's larger list of spying allegations against the Obama administration.