The Russia Probe Started With the Spies Who Marked Me

The attorney general should question the three men known to have snooped on the Trump campaign.

‘I think spying did occur,” Attorney General William P. Barr told a Senate subcommittee last Wednesday. He was speaking about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, as well as the resulting special-counsel investigation.

I can tell Mr. Barr what I know from experience. There’s nothing to “think” about: The spying happened, and it happened to me. The real question is why it happened. What drove U.S. intelligence organizations during the Obama administration to use unvetted information and inconclusive spy operations against the Republican nominee and his staff?

During my time as an adviser to the Trump campaign, federal intelligence and law-enforcement organizations used operatives to contact me in person and by email on multiple occasions. Their goal? To discuss rumored coordination efforts with Russia and extract evidence of a collusion crime.

“Operatives” is a euphemistic term for these men. Spies is a more fitting label. One is Stefan Halper, a professor at the University of Cambridge who runs intelligence seminars and has ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. The Washington Post named him as the FBI informant who approached at least three members of the Trump campaign. Then there’s Alexander Downer, who had the lofty title of Australian high commissioner to the U.K. and was an adviser to the British private intelligence firm Hakluyt & Co. Finally there’s Joseph Mifsud, who taught at Rome’s Link Campus University, where many faculty members have ties to intelligence agencies.

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