FBI suffers another black eye, admits it hid payments to informant in white supremacist case
The revelations come at a sensitive time for the FBI and Director Christopher Wray, who has insisted widespread problems revealed about the bureau’s conduct in the now-discredited Russia collusion case have been fixed even as new revelations of misconduct come to light.
By John Solomon Updated: August 29, 2021 - 11:47pm
FTA
The FBI, already under fire for its handling of FISA warrants and confidential informants, is enduring more scrutiny as the Justice Department admits agents failed to disclose to a court that they had paid — to the tune of six figures — a white supremacist publisher for years to be an investigative source.
The admission came in a series of court filings this month in the case of Kaleb Cole, a Washington state man accused of being a member of the white supremacist group Atomwaffen and participating in an intimidation campaign against Jewish Americans and minority journalists. Cole has pleaded innocent and awaits trial.
Cole’s lawyers filed a motion to suppress evidence gathered against their client on the grounds that the FBI had failed to disclose in a search warrant application that a publisher of extremist literature had been paid about $144,000 over 16 years to be an informant, including $82,000 for work in the case against Cole. The confidential informant (CI) also had an earlier felony conviction that wasn’t disclosed, court records show.
The filings don’t identify the informant by name but describe him as a publisher who “owns and operates a publishing company that distributes white supremacist writings.”
“The CI began his long career as a professional informant in exchange for consideration regarding his sentence on a federal conviction for possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number and an unregistered silencer,” Cole’s lawyers argued in an Aug. 13 motion.
“The failure to include the information about the CI’s incentives is made more egregious by the fact that the warrant application incriminated Mr. Cole based almost solely on the alleged observations of the CI,” the lawyers added.
You can read that filing here:
motiontosuppressCalebCole.pdf
A week later, the Justice Department admitted agents had mistakenly omitted the information, but argued the search warrant would have been approved anyway before the informant’s information had been corroborated.
“Although the defense is correct that certain potential impeachment information about the informant was not included in the affidavit, that omission is hardly fatal,” the DOJ said. “The omitted information was limited to the fact that the informant was well compensated by the FBI over a 16-year period, and was convicted of a firearms crime over 15 years ago.”
Mistaken or intentional?
To quote the infamous Hitlery Rod-ham Clintoon, ‘What difference at this point does it make?’
Not that I think that is the case.
When the FBI starts using time-stamped videotaping of interviews instead of two agents writing down what they think was said after the interview is over, then I will believe that the FBI is interested in actual justice.