Trump shares AOC opponent's conspiracy theory about FBI lawyer set to plead guilty in Russia probe

Kevin Clinesmith has been investigated for his role in authorising the wiretap of former Trump adviser Carter Page

As a former FBI lawyer prepared to plead guilty in a case related to the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia, the president retweeted a video from a fringe candidate celebrating the case as the demise of the “deep state”.

Wednesday will see Kevin Clinesmith enter his plea in a federal court, where he is charged with falsifying a key document in the early stages of the FBI investigation into contacts between Russian agents and Donald Trump's 206 campaign.

Specifically, Mr Clinesmith’s actions relate to the investigation into former campaign adviser Carter Page, in which he doctored a 2017 email from the CIA to obscure the fact that Mr Page had previously been cleared as a CIA source, thereby helping obtain clearance for a secret wiretap.

Mr Clinesmith’s case has become a cause célèbre for conservatives who view the original Russia investigation as a politically motivated witch-hunt based on a false premise.

Many of Mr Trump’s allies and supporters view the falsified email as proof that a conspiracy of biased law enforcement bureaucrats fabricated or exaggerated allegations of Russian collusion in order to bring down the president.

Mr Trump himself has repeatedly made this same assertion. And in the hours before Mr Clinesmith’s court appearance, he retweeted a video from Antoine Tucker, a write-in Republican candidate in the safely Democratic New York seat held by progressive leader and Republican bête noire Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In the video, Mr Tucker shows a clip from Fox News describing Mr Clinesmith’s alleged crimes, then lights a cigarette to address the camera.

“You see?” he says. “This is about the deep state, new world order, trying to take over America.

“Right then and there, you just saw it. The FBI’s lawyer is pleading guilty to falsifying documents which allowed these people to illegally investigate not only Carter Page, not only General Flynn, but Donald Trump. His children, his family, his assets, and it was the Democrats that did this s**t.

“And they knew they were lying, and the whole entire time, everything they f***ing did, the millions of dollars they used with Mueller and the investigation and all this bulls**t, was bulls**t. That’s what that means.

“These motherf***ers are going to jail. Make sure you write my name in. Let’s have a victory party together.”

Mr Tucker has previously described himself as a “supporter” of QAnon, a sprawling conspiracy theory movement united around the idea that Donald Trump is secretly waging a war against an elite satanic cabal of child abusers and traffickers.

Mr Trump has retweeted Mr Tucker before, along with various supporters of QAnon and other conspiracies or far-right movements.

Meanwhile, separately from Mr Clinesmith’s charges, the US Senate Intelligence Committee this week released an extensive report detailing myriad contacts between Mr Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian agents.

Because it does not contain specific allegations of collusion, many Republicans have presented the report as exonerating Mr Trump and his colleagues. Democrats, on the other hand, have pointed to the report’s findings that various Trump associates presented “grave counterintelligence threats” and that the Kremlin’s agents “were capable of exploiting the transition team’s shortcomings” – and probably did.