BREAKING: Investigators are taking a closer look at former DOJ official David Laufman, who until now has flown under the radar despite major connective tissue in the Russiagate conspiracy, including:
— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) July 24, 2026
-- Sitting in on Hillary's July 2016 interview
-- And then the following month,…
BREAKING: Investigators are taking a closer look at former DOJ official David Laufman, who until now has flown under the radar despite major connective tissue in the Russiagate conspiracy, including:
-- Sitting in on Hillary's July 2016 interview
-- And then the following month, signing off on the unpredicated FARA investigations of 4 Trump advisers
-- And then signing off on the baseless Carter Page FISA surveillance
-- And then signing off on the baseless Walid Phares FISA wiretap
-- And then in 2019, acting as the go-between for "whistleblower" Eric Ciaramella and his lawyer pals Bakaj and ZaidThe enemy within.....
Newly released documents reveal the FBI never had even preliminary evidence of a Trump campaign conspiracy with Russia, and instead used a rarely enforced statutory relic – the Foreign Agents Registration Act – as the legal rationale for opening investigations in 2016-2017 and surveilling Trump campaign aides.
On July 31, 2016, the FBI opened a counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign’s alleged ties with Russia – nicknamed Crossfire Hurricane – not under espionage conspiracy laws but under FARA.
The next month the FBI opened four separate FARA cases into people associated with the Trump campaign. Two other FARA cases were added the next year. Only one involved an individual with connections to Russia: Carter Page.
The recently disclosed documents, which surfaced thanks to declassification efforts, court filings and FOIA lawsuits, reveal that the initial target of the probe – then-Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos -- was suspected of working for Israel, not Russia. Other FARA cases involved alleged ties to Turkey (Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn), Ukraine (campaign manager Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates) and Egypt (Trump Mideast adviser Walid Phares).
All six sensitive cases were approved through the Justice Department’s counterintelligence and export control section, run at the time by former Justice official David Laufman.
Before the flurry of Trump-related cases, only three people had been found guilty of violating the seldom-enforced law since 1966. Passed in the run-up to World War II to curb Nazi propaganda, FARA mainly requires people to fill out a two-page form disclosing work on behalf of a foreign entity.
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