I don’t usually venture into politics on this blog, but every now and then an item pops up that has a ridiculously close relationship to what I’ve been working on, so here goes.
I ran across the following item while sipping my morning coffee today. Yesterday, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, claimed that the president acted as an FBI informant in the Epstein matter “to try to take this stuff down.” Are you sure about that, Mike? Is that something you really want to claim about your guy? Here’s why that might not be the brag you think it is: an FBI informant is often someone who is involved in a criminal enterprise who, with the assistance of the FBI, decides to remain in that criminal enterprise while providing the FBI with information about the ongoing membership and activities of the enterprise. See the problem, Mike? Very much looking forward to your telling us what you actually meant when you called POTUS an FBI informant.
Mike’s a lawyer as he likes to remind us, so he probably knows what an informant is and does. In this instance it sounds as if he’s speaking from some inside knowledge that is not currently available to the public because . . . oh, yeah, now I remember.
Well, given what I’ve learned about FBI informants over the past few years, I’d love to know the following: Who was the president’s handler at the FBI? Was the president given TECI (Top Echelon Criminal Informant) status? Was the president paid for the information he provided? If so, how much? How long did the president serve as an informant? What FBI files evidence the president’s debriefing? Who was present at those debriefings and where did they take place? What were the results of those debriefings from a prosecution standpoint? What, if any, criminal activity did the FBI choose to ignore because of the president’s value as an informant?
I did a quick search this morning. My book about Greg Scarpa, a TECI informant for the FBI who was paid handsomely for his information for about 25 years, contains the word “informant” in some variation 139 times. That’s simply to say that I have developed some familiarity with the concept of an FBI informant. Based on that familiarity, I’m not sure that claiming the president was an FBI informant is the conclusive exculpatory evidence Mike Johnson seems to think it is.
