Less than a week after Stefan Halper was outed as the FBI informant who infiltrated the Trump campaign, public records reveal that the 73-year-old Oxford University professor and former U.S. government official was paid handsomely by the Obama administration starting in 2012 for various research projects.

A longtime CIA and FBI asset who once reportedly ran a spy-operation on the Jimmy Carter administration, Halper was enlisted by the FBI to spy on several Trump campaign aides during the 2016 U.S. election. Meanwhile, a search of public records reveals that between 2012 and 2018, Halper received a total of $1,058,161 from the Department of Defense.

Stefan Halper

Halper's contracts were funded through four annual awards paid directly out of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA). Established as the DoD's "internal think tank" in 1973 by Richard Nixon (whose administration Halper worked for), the ONA was run by foreign policy strategist Andrew Marshall from its inception until his 2015 retirement at the age of 93, after which he was succeeded by current director James H. Baker.

One of the four DoD awards Halper received

Halper's most recent award was noted recently by Trump supporter Jacob Wohl, which piqued the interest of internet researchers who continued the analysis.

Award ID Recipient Name Start Date End Date Amount Awarding Agency HQ003416P0148 HALPER, STEFAN 9/26/2016 3/29/2018 $411,575 Department of Defense HQ003415C0100 HALPER, STEFAN 9/24/2015 9/27/2016 $244,960 Department of Defense HQ003414C0076 HALPER, STEFAN 7/29/2014 7/31/2015 $204,000 Department of Defense HQ003412C0039 HALPER, STEFAN 5/30/2012 5/29/2013 $197,626 Department of Defense (h/t ProHeat) According to the Website USASPENDING.gov, the payments to Halper are for "RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES (2012)," "RESEARCH AND STUDIES - THE YEAR 2030, (2014)", "RUSSIA-CHINA RELATIONSHIP STUDY. (2015)," and "INDIA AND CHINA ECON STUDY (2016)." The most recent award to Halper for $411,575 was made in two payments, and had a start date of September 26, 2016 - three days after a September 23 Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff about Trump aide Carter Page, which used information fed to Isikoff by "pissgate" dossier creator Christopher Steele. The FBI would use the Yahoo! article along with the unverified "pissgate" dossier as supporting evidence in an FISA warrant application for Page. Halper approached Page during an election-themed conference at Cambridge on July 11, 2016, six weeks after the September 26 DoD award start date. The two would stay in contact for the next 14 months, frequently meeting and exchanging emails. He said that he first encountered the informant during a conference in mid-July of 2016 and that they stayed in touch. The two later met several times in the Washington area. Mr. Page said their interactions were benign. -New York Times And as the Daily Caller reports, Halper used a decades-old association with Paul Manafort to break the ice with Page. Page noted that in their first conversation at Cambridge, Halper said he was longtime friends with then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort. A person close to Manafort told TheDCNF that Manafort has not seen Halper since the Gerald Ford administration. Manafort and Page are accused in the Steele dossier of having worked together on the campaign’s collusion conspiracy, but both men say they have never met. -Daily Caller Spying on Page after the election... The second installment of Halper's 2016 DoD contract is dated July 26, 2017 in the amount of $129,280 - around three months before the FISA warrant on Carter Page was set to expire following repeated renewals signed by Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and a federal judge. On July 28, he emailed Page with what the Trump campaign aide describes as a "cordial" communication, which did not seem suspicious to him at the time. In the email to Page, Halper asks what his plans are post-election, possibly probing for more information. "It seems attention has shifted a bit from the 'collusion' investigation to the ' contretempts' [sic] within the White House and, how--or if--Mr. Scaramucci will be accommodated there," Halper wrote. con·tre·temps

1. An unforeseen event that disrupts the normal course of things; an inopportune occurrence.

2. An argument or dispute: "another France-versus-England contretemps" (Rob Hughes). The email to Page was sent on the same day former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci reportedly went on a "vulgar tirade" against then-White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Perhaps sensing an opportunity to find out if Page was still "on the inside," Halper may have reached out to find out what he knew. Halper then invites Page to his Virginia farm, telling the former Trump adviser "Be in touch when you have the time. Would be great to catch up." Reporters keep asking me about my interactions with Prof. Halper.

I found all our interactions to be cordial.

Like this email I received about a year after I first met him.

He never seemed suspicious.

Just a few scholars exchanging ideas.

He had interests in policy, and politics. pic.twitter.com/D5SKkvN2Bx — Carter Page, Ph.D. (@carterwpage) May 20, 2018 July 2017: Two days after receiving a payment from the federal govt, Stefan Halper emailed Carter Page asking about internal White House staff pic.twitter.com/Fy17FwEwgk — Jack Posobiec🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) May 20, 2018 Halper's July 28 email to Page - sent two days after the second portion of his contract kicked in, suggests that the espionage operation against Trump associates was still active seven months into the new administration.

It's entirely possible of course that Halper was conducting legitimate research for the Obama administration while also participating in an FBI/DOJ spy operation on the Trump campaign.

Halper was outed as the FBI's "informant" last Friday following weeks of speculation, after the New York Times and Washington Post published easily identifiable information about the U.S. citizen and Cambridge professor. Their reports matched a March 25 article by the Daily Caller detailing Halper's outreach to several low-level aides to the Trump campaign, including Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and a cup of coffee with campaign co-chair Sam Clovis.

These contacts are notable, as Halper's infiltration of the Trump campaign corresponds with the two of the four targets of the FBI's Operation Crossfire Hurricane - in which the agency sent counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and others to a London meeting in the Summer of 2016 with former Australian diplomat Alexander Downer - who says Papadopoulos drunkenly admitted to knowing that the Russians had Hillary Clinton's emails.

Alexander Downer, George Papadopoulos

Downer - the source of the Papadopoulos intel, and Halper - who conned Papadopoulos months later, are linked through UK-based Haklyut & Co. an opposition research and intelligence firm - founded by three former British intelligence operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations pay huge sums.

Downer - a good friend of the Clintons, has been on their advisory board for a decade, while Halper is connected to Hakluyt through Director of U.S. operations Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has co-authored two books. (h/t themarketswork.com)

Alexander Downer, the Australian High Commissioner to the U.K. Downer said that in May 2016, Papadopoulos told him during a conversation in London about Russians having Clinton emails. That information was passed to other Australian government officials before making its way to U.S. officials. FBI agents flew to London a day after “Crossfire Hurricane” started in order to interview Downer. It is still not known what Downer says about his interaction with Papadopoulos, which TheDCNF is told occurred around May 10, 2016.

Also interesting via Lifezette - "Downer is not the only Clinton fan in Hakluyt. Federal contribution records show several of the firm’s U.S. representatives made large contributions to two of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign organizations."

Following Halper's doxxing, President Trump called for an official investigation by the Department of Justice - which Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein assigned to the office of the Inspector General, headed by Michael Horowitz.

I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2018

We look forward to the Inspector General's findings.