

Our friend intrepid investigative reporter Sara Carter posted a very insightful article on SaraCarter.com in which she disclosed that Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee sent a letter Wednesday to the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment’s director requesting detailed information on contracts provided to FBI informant Stefan Halper, who was spying on three of President Trump’s campaign aids during the 2016 election probe.

The Office of Net Assessment was intended to be an internal Pentagon thinktank, but during the Obama era it appears to have devolved into a source of corruption and off-the-books project funds.



For example, The Daily Caller News Foundation reported Long Term Strategy Group, whose president, Jacqueline Newmyer, is “best friends” with Chelsea Clinton received more than $11 million in contracts over the last decade from the highly secretive Department of Defense think tank, but to date, the group lacks official federal approval to handle classified materials, according to sensitive documents TheDCNF was allowed to review.

It is now thought that Department of Justice appointed prosecutor John Durham’s criminal probe of the spying on the Trump campaign has also expanded to the Office of Net Assessment. Known by its acronym ONA, the secretive office is run by Director James Baker, who has been in the role since being appointed by the Obama Administration in 2015.

Sara Carter reports that in the letter to Baker Grassley asks a litany of questions as to Halper’s role within ONA, his contracts, his foreign contacts and whether the FBI, or other agencies, used the ONA office to pay Halper for spying on Trump campaign personnel.

“Can ONA state for certain that Halper did not use taxpayer money provided by DoD to recruit, or attempt to recruit, sources for the FBI investigation into the now-debunked theory of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia,” Grassley asks Baker.

Baker could not be immediately reached for comment says Ms. Carter.

According to sources familiar with the matter and reported by Ms. Carter, Baker has also been questioned by Durham’s investigative team. Grassley has also been looking into the matter since early 2019, when he requested that the “DoD Inspector General (IG) review allegations of mismanagement by ONA contracts for political, improper or wasteful activities.” The Senator “later sought information about ONA contracting processes following a DoD IG audit of the program, which found that ONA could not provide sufficient documentation that Halper conducted all of his work in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. The Pentagon issued a corrective action plan for ONA in August.”

This is where Halper’s role with ONA “becomes highly suspicious and his contracts coincide with his spying on the Trump campaign,” said one former government official, familiar with the matter who was interviewed by Sara Carter.

Halper was an integral part of the FBI’s investigation in 2016 into short-term Trump campaign volunteer, Carter Page and George Papadopolous. Halper’s Cambridge Intelligence Seminar was also connected to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, when in April, 2014 Flynn, who was then head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was invited as a guest to London, England. Flynn would later be at the center of false stories accusing him of being a Russian asset and wrapping Russian born British academic Svetlana Lokhova into the false stories.

Lokhova, who recently spoke to The Sara Carter Show, said Halper did so because he is ‘the dirty trickster’ used to target, spy and spread disinformation in an attempt to target President Trump.

Now, here’s where Halper comes into play wrote Sara Carter. Halper garnered numerous contracts from the ONA totaling more than $1 million and many which coincide with the same timeline he was reporting on Trump aids to the FBI.

Grassley’s investigation, however, reveals that “reviews of Halper’s research proposals prompted criticism of the quality and necessity of his work product. Other contracts show that Halper listed a Russian intelligence official as a consultant for an ONA project.”

That Russian intelligence official is former Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Vyacheslav Trubnikov.

Here’s what’s important, you have to follow the timeline says Ms. Carter:

One of the contracts under question by Senator Grassley was “awarded in September 2015, Professor Halper lists former Deputy Foreign Minister for Russia, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, as a consultant and advisor to a paper delivered to ONA.”

Trubnikov is a known Russian intelligence officer, who was listed by Christopher Steele as a source in the now-debunked Steele dossier, which was used as a predicate to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil Trump Campaign adviser Carter Page.

It is unclear from the contracting officer file whether Professor Halper paid Trubnikov for his assistance in gathering information for this paper, or in what capacity Professor Halper interacted with Trubnikov during the course of performing work for this contract, wrote Ms. Carter.

Further, reports indicate that Halper offered George Papadopoulos $3,000 for assistance in completing an energy study and met Carter Page at a Cambridge conference. Senator Grassley says, “Given Professor Halper’s intelligence connections and government funding, it is reasonable to ask whether he used any taxpayer money in his attempt to recruit Trump campaign officials as sources.”

“Halper was also in contact with Page and another Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, raising questions about whether Halper used U.S. taxpayer dollars to seek connections with Trump campaign officials,” stated Grassley’s office according to Ms. Carter’s report.

Trubikov, we note, is the same source Steele alleged he used in his dossier that allowed the FBI to spy on Page.

It looks to us like, independent of the Durham investigation, Sara Carter’s reporting and Senator Grassley’s oversight investigation of ONA spending on questionable “research” contracts are slowly but surely putting Stephan Halper and his paymaster, ONA Director James Baker, in a corner. Sooner or later one of them is going to have to come clean about their role in the Obama administration’s spying on the Trump campaign. We can hardly wait to see who cracks first.