Kevin Clinesmith went to prison for falsifying a FISA application to spy on Trump's campaign.
Now a second FBI agent – one who touched every major get-Trump operation for a decade – just got caught doing something worse.
Kash Patel already fired him and the question is whether anyone goes to prison.
Crossfire Hurricane Agent Signed a FISA Warrant His Own Team Said Was Built on Lies
His name is Walter Giardina, and if you haven't heard of him, that's by design.
Giardina wasn't on the fringes of the Deep State's war on Donald Trump – he was at the center of it.
According to Sen. Chuck Grassley's office, based on whistleblower reporting, Giardina's fingerprints are on Crossfire Hurricane, Arctic Frost, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, the targeting of Dan Scavino, Roger Stone, and Peter Navarro, and the arrest of Navarro at Reagan National Airport in 2022.
That's not a career. That's a decade-long mission.
Last month Grassley released an FD-302 – a formal FBI interview summary – detailing what happened inside Mueller's office when the team debated whether to seek a fourth FISA surveillance warrant on Walid Phares, Trump's Fox News counterterrorism analyst and 2016 campaign Middle East advisor.
Two FBI agents said no.
Agent Andre Khoury argued the team was getting everything it needed from a cooperating target and that more surveillance was unnecessary.
A second unnamed agent went further, documenting on the record that the facts underlying the entire investigation had fallen apart – that the FBI had found "nothing confirming Crosswind received a large money payment and nothing confirming Crosswind had a meeting in another country."
Crosswind was the FBI's internal codename for Phares.
That unnamed agent called the fourth FISA warrant "the most egregious" misconduct he'd witnessed on Mueller's team.
Both agents who pushed back – Khoury and Murphy – were removed from the investigation.
Giardina stayed. Then he signed the FISA application as case agent.
FBI Perjury and the Woods Procedures: Why Giardina's FISA Signature Could Mean Criminal Charges
When an FBI agent signs a FISA application, he's not just putting his name on a form.
He's declaring under penalty of perjury that the information inside is "true and correct" and that the FBI has reviewed the application for accuracy under the Woods procedures – the internal verification process Congress created to prevent exactly what Mueller's team did.
Giardina signed that document after two colleagues had put their objections on the record.
He signed it after Kevin Clinesmith – later convicted of falsifying a document in the Carter Page FISA – had killed a subordinate agent's corrections before they reached the DOJ.
The agent's account is direct: "I sent these edits to Kevin Clinesmith, who said, 'We can't send this to DOJ.'" Clinesmith then ran a meeting with Justice Department officials and argued the application language was "broad enough to cover the differing perspectives." Giardina vouched for it anyway.
The Carter Page case is the documented precedent. The DOJ Inspector General found the FBI made 17 significant misstatements to the FISA court across the Page applications – and those findings still didn't put a single FBI agent in prison. Clinesmith got probation.
What makes the Phares case more prosecutable is that the FBI's own agents put their objections in writing in real time, before the warrant was signed. That paper trail didn't exist in the Page investigation. It exists here.
Kash Patel Fired Giardina in 2025 and the FBI Whistleblower Evidence Is Already on Grassley's Desk
Patel fired Giardina in August 2025.
Firing isn't accountability. It's housecleaning.
Separate whistleblower allegations detailed in Grassley's letters go further than the FISA signature: Giardina told colleagues the bogus Steele Dossier was "corroborated as true," openly stated his personal animus toward Trump and his motivation to investigate him, and wiped his assigned laptop outside of established protocol – conduct the DOJ Inspector General received as a potential records destruction referral.
The unnamed FBI agent in the FD-302 spelled out exactly what investigators need: a copy of the final FISA application, the predication document, and reporting from two other U.S. government agencies that directly contradicted what Giardina certified as true under oath. Grassley has already requested those documents from Patel.
Phares was never charged with a crime. Mueller's team closed the investigation in 2019. He told RealClearInvestigations he had no idea he was being wiretapped for a year – the FBI told his lawyer he was just a witness.
A Fox News counterterrorism analyst who advised two Republican presidential campaigns was surveilled for twelve months based on allegations the FBI's own agents said were disproven.
The man who swore under penalty of perjury that those allegations were true and correct kept his badge for six more years.
Patel has the evidence, the authority, and the documented road map. Firing Giardina was the easy part. Handing the case to prosecutors is what accountability actually looks like.
Sources:
- Margot Cleveland, "New Release: FBI Agent Deeply Involved In Get-Trump Lawfare May Have Crossed Criminal Line," The Federalist, April 20, 2026.
- Paul Sperry, "FBI Misled Court To Spy on Second Trump Campaign Adviser," RealClearInvestigations, March 20, 2026.
- Beth Brelje, "Senate Judiciary Expands Probe of Hidden, Or Destroyed FBI Docs," The Federalist, June 6, 2025.
- Senate Judiciary Committee, "Grassley Investigates 'Prohibited Access' Files at FBI," press release, June 5, 2025.
