FBI sent undercover investigator to meet with Papadopoulos in 2016: report

[mystery-ak]

FBI sent undercover investigator to meet with Papadopoulos in 2016: report
By Zack Budryk - 05/02/19 01:42 PM EDT

The FBI in 2016 sent an investigator posing as a research assistant to meet with George Papadopoulos as part of its probe into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, according to The New York Times.

The woman, who went by the name Azra Turk, reportedly met with Papadopoulos, then a Trump campaign adviser, at a London bar where she asked him about whether the campaign was working with Moscow.

The previously unreported episode comes amid growing scrutiny over the FBI's actions toward President Trump's 2016 campaign. Trump has repeatedly accused the FBI of spying on his campaign, an allegation Attorney General William Barr has said he plans to look into.

The report also comes as the Justice Department's inspector general is expected to wrap up its probe into the FBI's actions during the campaign sometime this summer.

more
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/441839-fbi-sent-undercover-investigator-to-meet-with-papadopoulos-in-2016

[mystery-ak]

 F.B.I. Sent Investigator Posing as Assistant to Meet With Trump Aide in 2016
Adam Goldman, Michael S. Schmidt and Mark Mazzetti
3 hrs ago

WASHINGTON — The conversation at a London bar in September 2016 took a strange turn when the woman sitting across from George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, asked a direct question: Was the Trump campaign working with Russia?

The woman had set up the meeting to discuss foreign policy issues. But she was actually a government investigator posing as a research assistant, according to people familiar with the operation. The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.

The American government’s affiliation with the woman, who said her name was Azra Turk, is one previously unreported detail of an operation that has become a political flash point in the face of accusations by President Trump and his allies that American law enforcement and intelligence officials spied on his campaign to undermine his electoral chances. Last year, he called it “Spygate.”



The decision to use Ms. Turk in the operation aimed at a presidential campaign official shows the level of alarm inside the F.B.I. during a frantic period when the bureau was trying to determine the scope of Russia’s attempts to disrupt the 2016 election, but could also give ammunition to Mr. Trump and his allies for their spying claims.

more
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fbi-sent-investigator-posing-as-assistant-to-meet-with-trump-aide-in-2016/ar-AAAOePQ

[Sanguine]

"The decision to use Ms. Turk in the operation aimed at a presidential campaign official shows the level of alarm inside the F.B.I. during a frantic period when the bureau was trying to determine the scope of Russia’s attempts to disrupt the 2016 election..."

That might fly if they had let the candidate know that they thought his campaign was being targeted.  Tellingly, they didn't.