Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign, and if so, what was the goal of their operation?
The answer, according to a parade of pundits, politicians, and former officials, was no, the FBI didn’t “spy” on the Trump campaign. They were simply "employing standard tradecraft associated with any counterintelligence operation".
They were using the “least intrusive method” to try to protect the Trump team from "Russian spies attempting to gain access and leverage influence" over the campaign officials.
But there are legitimate questions here.
If the FBI was trying to use the least intrusive method to conduct their counterintelligence duty to protect the Trump campaign from Russian intelligence attempts to infiltrate, influence, entrap, compromise, or recruit Trump campaign officials, why didn’t they have the wily Halper deliver the appropriate warnings to Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and Sam Clovis during his private meetings with them?
Halper had already gone through the trouble of setting up the meetings using his cover as an American professor with similar interests and affiliations as his targets, and he presumably employed all of the appropriate tradecraft he’d practiced over the years as a source for CIA and FBI in ensuring the meetings were adequately secure, private, and cover-consistent.
So why not take advantage of all of that tradecraft and deliver the message directly to them, instead of running a glorified, drawn out, hit-and-miss elicitation exercise on them?
The people who are defending these engagements as "completely appropriate" are also telling us that the FBI did it this way to help defend these men from "Russian agents".
http://thefederalist.com/2018/05/25/ridiculous-say-fbis-spying-trying-protect-trump-campaign/
