Ex-FBI Attorney Suspended

January 16, 2021

The Michigan Attorney Discipline Board has imposed an interim suspension of a former FBI attorney for his guilty plea to a federal false statement offense.

Politico reported

Prosecutors are asking for a prison sentence for a former FBI lawyer who admitted altering an email sent to a colleague working on the investigation into alleged Russian influence on Trump campaign affiliates.

Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to a felony false-statement charge in August, soon after he became the only person charged in connection with the investigation Attorney General William Barr ordered last year into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. Barr earlier this week appointed the veteran prosecutor leading that review, Connecticut U.S. attorney John Durham, as a special counsel, empowering him to continue the investigation into President-elect Joe Biden’s term.

In his plea, Clinesmith admitted adding words to an email used to bolster the case for a surveillance warrant on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser. The alteration was one of a series of errors, omissions and inaccuracies identified by the Justice Department inspector general that sharply undercut the FBI’s treatment of Page, who was monitored from October 2016 until late 2017 under orders from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Clinesmith faces a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison, but is likely to be sentenced in accordance with federal guidelines that call for a term of zero to six months in custody in his case

His attorneys are asking that he be spared any prison time. They say he has suffered enough, with his career “in shambles” and his reputation ruined.

Prosecutors, on the other hand, are seeking a jail term of “at least” three to six months for Clinesmith, contending that his offense was so serious that he deserves incarceration.

(Mike Frisch)

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Bar Discipline & Process