I telegraphed a bit in this story from a few months ago that Special Prosecutor John Durham wasn’t approaching Clinesmith’s sentencing as the first of many dominos that might fall. But that doesn’t mean that Clinesmith was not valuable as a witness who could be extensively debriefed about both Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller Special Counsel’s Office.
To recap briefly, Clinesmith was an attorney — not a prosecutor — who worked to provide legal support and assistance to the FBI Agents and analysts working on Crossfire Hurricane. He was with the investigation from the very start and continued on the investigation after it was taken over by Mueller’s team.
In that time frame, June 2017, preparation was underway to seek a third renewal — for another 90 days — of the FISA electronic surveillance warrant obtained on Carter Page. The original warrant was obtained on October 22, 2016, and it had been renewed twice prior to June 2017.
In March 2017 Page’s name was leaked to the media as a former Trump campaign official who was suspected of being a Russian Agent, and that he had been under secret surveillance by the FBI for many months.