WASHINGTON—The investigation into claims of a secret communications channel between Donald Trump and Russia was not triggered by the Department of Justice (DOJ), despite the document memorializing the investigation stating it was, an FBI agent testified on May 24.
The electronic communication on the probe, dated Sept. 23, 2016, says the FBI received a referral of information from the DOJ.
“In that referral, the Department of Justice provided the FBI with a whitepaper that was produced by an anonymous third party,” the form says.
That was a “mistake in our paperwork,” Curtis Heide, a lead agent in the FBI’s Chicago office at the time, told the federal court in Washington on Tuesday.
The DOJ’s Office of Inspector General alerted Heide to the error, the agent said, calling it a “typo.”
“They brought it to my attention and asked if it was accurate,” Heide said. Officials in the Chicago office “may have conflated the [FBI’s] office of general counsel with the DOJ,” he claimed.
The watchdog’s office did not pick up the phone or return a voicemail. The FBI declined to comment. The DOJ did not return an inquiry.
The testimony came during the trial of Michael Sussmann, who, while representing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016, handed over white papers and thumb drives with data allegedly supporting the narrative in the papers to James Baker, an FBI lawyer.
The data did not support the narrative, which is that the Trump Organization had a secret backchannel with Russia’s Alfa Bank, according to the FBI and the CIA.
The document on the opening of the investigation did not mention Sussmann or any other source besides the DOJ and the anonymous third party.
Prosecutors say Sussmann produced the information with the assistance of Rodney Joffe, another client who had been promised a position in the government if Clinton won the 2016 election; and researchers with the Georgia Institute of Technology.
By John Haughey and Zachary Stieber
