Update: Just a few hours after President Trump “hereby demanded” that the DoJ investigate whether or not the “FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump campaign for Political Purposes,” Axios’ Jonathan Swan reports that Justice has confirmed a probe has begun. DoJ’s Sarah Isgur Flores:

“The Department has asked the Inspector General to expand the ongoing review of the FISA application process to include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with the Russian agents who interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

As always, the Inspector General will consult with the appropriate U.S. Attorney if there is any evidence of potential criminal conduct.”

The Deputy Attorney General issued the following statement:

“If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action.”

The liberal media is in full panic, meltdown mode, exclaiming that Trump has “interfered” with the investigation…

And The New York Times...”…in ordering up a new inquiry, Mr. Trump went beyond his usual tactics of suggesting wrongdoing and political bias by those investigating him, and crossed over into applying overt presidential pressure on the Justice Department to do his bidding, an extraordinary realm where past presidents have hesitated to tread…

Legal experts said such a presidential intervention had little precedent, and could force a clash between the sitting president and his Justice Department that is reminiscent of the one surrounding Richard M. Nixon during Watergate, when a string of top officials resigned rather than carry out Nixon’s order to fire a special prosecutor investigating him.”

“I can’t think of a prior example of a sitting president ordering the Justice Department to conduct an investigation like this one,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

“That’s little more than a transparent effort to undermine an ongoing investigation.”

And The Deep State is furious… (or worried they’re about to get busted)

Not everybody is so concerned…

*  *  *

President Trump is officially requesting that the Department of Justice investigate whether or not the “FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump campaign for Political Purposes,” as well as whether “any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama administration.” He will make this demand official on Monday.

On Saturday, Trump called for the DOJ to “release or review” a cache of documents that will allow Congressional investigators to get to the bottom of revelations that the FBI sent an informant to infiltrate the Trump campaign.

Never missing a beat, the NYT’s Maggie Haberman was quick to ask rhetorically “and if the answer is no, will White House accept it?”

Meanwhile, another rhetorical question came from across the ideological aisle, when Nick Short mused that “Maybe it’s time some “reporters” start asking Obama what he knew & when he knew it? After all, former FBI Director Comey briefed National Security Council Principal’s about Carter Page in “late Spring 2016.” This was a counterintelligence investigation, not criminal, Obama knew.”

We look forward to the answers.

As a reminder, the informant, identified as 73-year-old University of Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, a U.S. citizen living in London who approached four campaign aides during the 2016 US election for purposes of espionage on behalf of the FBI, according to reports last week in the New York Times and Washington Post.

es·pi·o·nage

noun

1. the practice of spying or of using spies, typically by governments to obtain political and military information.
   

   synonyms:

   spying, infiltration;

Halper – a longtime FBI and CIA asset whose former father-in-law was former Deputy CIA Director Ray Cline, notably got caught spying on the Carter administration during the 1980 election, “reportedly under the direction of former CIA Director and then-Vice-Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush,” according to The Intercept.

The plot involved CIA operatives passing classified information about Carter’s foreign policy to Reagan campaign officials in order to ensure the Reagan campaign knew of any foreign policy decisions that Carter was considering. –The Intercept

How did we get to Stefan Halper again?

August 22, 2017, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson told Congressional investigators that former MI6 spy Christopher Steele said the FBI had corroborated parts of the salacious and unverified “Trump-Russia’ dossier with “a human source from inside the Trump organization.“

March 25 of this year, the Daily Caller exclusively reported that Cambridge professor Stefan Halper had met with Trump aide George Papadopoulos and “two other campaign advisers,” including Carter Page. In September 2016, Halper contacted Papadopoulos and lured him to London for work on a foreign policy paper for the sum of $3,000. Halper reportedly asked “George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?” The Trump aide reportedly told Halper he didn’t know anything about them, and the topic was dropped.

May 8, a fierce battle between House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) and the DOJ’s Rod Rosenstein over the cache of documents detailing the “human source” came to a head, after The Washington Post reported that Nunes had been denied access to the intelligence – which had already been seen by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The White House agreed with the DOJ that the materials were too hot to give Congress – and “could risk lives by potentially exposing the source, a U.S. citizen who has provided intelligence to the CIA and FBI.”

May 9, the DOJ reversed course, allowing Nunes and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) to receive a classified briefing on the documents (not the documents themselves, as Trump referred top in his tweet).

May 10, journalist Kimberly Strassel, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, penned an op-ed in the WSJ in which she said she knew who the informant was.

May 11, journalist Paul Sperry noted an entry in Stefan Halper’s Wikipedia page that read “He has been exposed as a CIA and M-16 spy behind the FBI Russiagate investigations of the Trump Campaign and is an informant to the Mueller Special Prosecutor investigation” – which was quickly taken down.

Sperry also tweeted “In summer 2016, Brennan with his FBI liaison Strzok, along with help from Kerry @ State, were trying to set Russian espionage traps for minor players in the Trump campaign through cultivated intel assets.”

May 15, the Daily Caller reported that Congressional investigators were reviewing Glenn Simpson’s August 2017 testimony regarding the “human source from within the Trump organization.”

May 16, the New York Times revealed that “at least one government informant met several times with Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos.” The Wednesday report also disclosed the existence of “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” – the FBI’s code name for their early Trump-Russia investigation, which they say originated after the Australian diplomat Alexander Downer told authorities that the Trump aide bragged in May 2016 that he knew the Russians had Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Given Sperry’s tweet above, it strongly suggests that then-CIA Director John Brennan, FBI agent Peter Strzok and Secretary of State John Kerry were working with the informant (Halper) to set “Russian espionage traps” for members of Trump’s campaign as part of Operation Crossfire Hurricane.

Finally, on Friday, May 18, the Washington Post and New York Times published reports which don’t mention the informant’s name, but included enough detail to easily identify him as Halper even without the Daily Caller‘s article from March.

For example, The New York Times describes the informant as “an American academic who teaches in Britain,” who “made contact late that summer with one campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos.” While The Post reports “For years, the professor has provided information to the FBI and the CIA.”

These descriptions corroborate the March report ofrom the Daily Caller which described Halper as a “Cambridge professor with connections to the CIA” who contacted Papadopoulos “Two months before the 2016 election.”

Halper has ostensibly been a spook for decades – enlisted by the FBI in the summer of 2016 to spy on members of the Trump campaign. As such, he was probably sweating bullets on November 9, 2016 – the day Hillary was supposed to have won the election.

Meanwhile, the MSM seems to be splitting hairs over the definition of “spy” and “informant,” as they are trying to sell the FBI/DOJ spy operation as simply “helping” Trump by looking out for pesky Russian moles his campaign.

At the end of the day, according to all accounts – the US Intelligence community was categorically, by definition, spying on the Trump campaign no matter how hard the MSM tries to spin things.

And now we wait to see if the DOJ will hand over those documents…