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A senior FBI official had a close relationship with dozens of journalists and accepted dinner tickets from White House correspondents

A senior FBI official had a close relationship with dozens of journalists and accepted dinner tickets from White House correspondents

 


The FBI’s top national security official had dozens of inappropriate meetings with reporters and accepted tickets from a reporter to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, interactions that FBI officials called “no -no” and “dangerous”.

Michael Steinbach, who served as executive assistant director of the FBI, did not report the gifts in his federal financial filings, according to an inspector general’s report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. He met regularly from 2014 until his abrupt retirement in February 2017 with 7 journalists and had contact with 21 others. His interactions with reporters overlapped with his work on major counterterrorism cases and Crossfire Hurricane, the ill-fated investigation into collusion between the 2016 Donald Trump campaign and Russia.

The report, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, is the latest example of a senior FBI official accepting gifts from journalists. Former FBI public affairs chief Michael Kortan received baseball game tickets and other freebies from CNN and New York Times reporters. Reporters also presented former Steinbach assistant Bryan Paarmann with a variety of gifts.

The FBI prohibits employees from accepting gifts from a “prohibited source”, a category that includes journalists without prior authorization. FBI officials told the inspector general that informal meetings like Steinbach’s could “cause a lot of trouble” within the bureau.

“You never know what can be said. You don’t know under what conditions it can be said. So it can lead to a lot of problems,” an FBI official told the inspector general’s office.

Steinbach is not accused of leaking classified or sensitive information, but the inspector general’s report details numerous conversations he had with reporters about breaking news. The watchdog also determined that reporters gave gifts to Steinbach “because of his official positions at the FBI.”

Steinbach eagerly requested invitations to posh media industry soirees, such as the Broadcast Correspondents’ Dinner and the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Gala. According to the surveillance report’s text messages and emails, on March 25, 2015, Steinbach began soliciting an anonymous reporter for tickets to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Steinbach attended the following year’s event and an afterparty, according to the report. Steinbach did not disclose the gift, which was valued at $300.

Steinbach’s host is unidentified, but text messages show him joking with a reporter from another outlet about his attendance at the gala.

“I put you on the map and now you’re cheating on me with [reporter’s first and last name]?” a CNN reporter wrote to Steinbach in April 2016.

“I kept waiting for my invitation from you,” Steinbach replied.

The CNN reporter is unidentified, but Steinbach did one of his only TV interviews in February 2015, with CNN’s Pamela Brown.

Steinbach in an email after dinner thanked his host. “Thank you for hanging out with us last night,” Steinbach wrote in an email titled “Great Night.” He told the reporter he would “love to have a drink” sometime in the future.

It is not known where the journalist worked, but some news organizations have policies prohibiting journalists from giving gifts to their sources. The Los Angeles Times, for example, prohibits staff members “from accepting or giving gifts to news sources, potential news sources, or those who seek to influence coverage.”

Steinbach is one of many officials who worked under former FBI Director James Comey to break FBI guidelines. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired in 2018 after the Inspector General discovered he had lied in October 2016 to internal investigators about allowing leaks to the media about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. Peter Strzok, who oversaw the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, was fired after anti-Trump text messages were found on his FBI cellphones.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment. Steinbach, who is now head of fraud prevention at Citi, did not respond to a request for comment.

Sources

1/ https://Google.com/

2/ https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/dangerous-top-fbi-official-had-close-relationship-with-dozens-of-journos-accepted-tickets-to-white-house-correspondents-dinner/

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