Politicized coverage of Russian hoax wrecked life, scholar says

FPI / January 21, 2020

A Russian-born British scholar who was caught up in the Trump-Russia hoax is suing FBI informant Stefan Halper and several media outlets who she said spread malicious lies about her.

Svetlana Lokhova told investigative journalist Sara Carter that she was used as a target of opportunity by the FBI in an attempt to discredit former national security adviser Michael Flynn in the hoax investigation aimed at President Donald Trump.

In the Jan. 20 The Sara Carter Show <a href="https://saraacarter.com/podcasts/">podcast</a>, Lokhova refers to Halper as “the dirty trickster.”

Lokhova said that she was caught up in the investigation after Halper utilized her brief encounter with Flynn at a dinner in 2014 at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar.

The corporate media, which by all appearances were willing and eager participants in the "Russia investigation", shown by to a hoax by each of the probes, published several erroneous and inaccurate articles about her and Flynn which turned her life upside down, Lokhova told Carter.

Lokhova has filed numerous lawsuits in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. She is seeking more than $25 million in damages from Halper, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and MSNBC.

The numerous lies spread about her and the toll that the entire fiasco has taken on her family financially is why she intends to keep on fighting, Lakhova said.

In the interview with Carter, Lokhova called on the Department of Justice to examine Halper’s financial trail that began at the Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon. This, she says, will expose the Russia hoax origins.

“So you have 17 intelligence agencies in the United States with an $80 billion budget you have thousands if not tens of thousands of trained people working for your intelligence services and, yet, they seek out this complete outsider (Halper) right he’s not a trained investigator,” she says, describing the 74-year-old Halper.

“He’s somebody whose known…has a history of being involved in every single scandal for over forty years,” said Lokhova. She says Halper’s money trail is the answer.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, in a letter to the Department of Defense last year, demanded answers on Halper’s contracts and the Office of Net Assessment (ONA). Grassley sent the request after a Pentagon Inspector General investigation discovered that the ONA failed to conduct appropriate oversight of the contracts.

“The committee is currently reviewing information received recently from the Pentagon, in response to Grassley’s request,” Taylor Foy, a spokesman for the committee, told Carter. Foy confirmed Grassley is continuing to investigate the matter.

According to the DoD Inspector General’s report the ONA Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs) “did not maintain documentation of the work performed by Professor Halper or any communication that ONA personnel had with Professor Halper; therefore, ONA CORs could not provide sufficient documentation that Professor Halper conducted all of his work in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. We determined that while the ONA CORs established a file to maintain documents, they did not maintain sufficient documentation to comply with all the FAR requirements related to having a complete COR.”

Free Press International