James Baker: Light On Informants And The "Russia" Investigation

It has long been known that the FBI used informants or assets ("confidential human sources" in bureaucratese) in attempts to "lure" persons associated with the Trump campaign into incriminating statements. These "lures" took place both in the United States and abroad (OCONUS, Outside the Continental US). Interestingly, we know from the text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that the FBI was seeking approval for the use of the "OCONUS lures" already in late 2015, well before Trump had won the GOP nomination and also before Carter Page and George Papadopoulos had joined the Trump campaign. Nevertheless, as soon as Page and Papadopoulos joined the campaign in late March or April, 2016, the FBI swung into action with their informants to target these two. All this is now well known, and it seems notable that the FBI's interest was already focused on Republicans rather than Democrats with ties to Russia and Ukraine.

This knowledge takes on greater importance going forward when we examine the new information to be gleaned from a NYT article yesterdays (h/t/ CTH), in which we learn, all the way at the end, that IG Michael Horowitz has launched an investigation into one of those FBI informants, Stefan Halper: