Ex-FBI lawyer gets no prison time for altering Carter Page email

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to altering an email that was used to justify the surveillance of a campaign aide to former President Donald Trump, has received no prison time.

Clinesmith on Friday was sentenced to 12 months probation by U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, but he will not have to serve any time in prison, Politico reports. He pleaded guilty to altering an email that was used to obtain a warrant to conduct surveillance on Carter Page, former Trump campaign aide, according to Axios.

Clinesmith has acknowledged that he altered the email in 2017 to say that Page was "not a source" for the Central Intelligence Agency. "The statement, passed along as the FBI was applying for a third extension of surveillance of Page, made Page's actions seem more suspicious by downplaying his past cooperation with the CIA," Politico writes.

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"At the time, I believed that the information I was providing in the email was accurate," Clinesmith previously said at a hearing, per The New York Times. "But I am agreeing that the information I inserted into the email was not originally there, and I inserted that information."

Clinesmith is the only person who has faced charges stemming from an investigation into the Trump-Russia probe's origins conducted by special counsel John Durham, Politico notes. According to The Associated Press, the judge on Friday said that "this conduct is the only stain on the defendant's character that I've been able to discern."