House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, (r) joined by committee counsel Robert Parmiter on the House subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, Nov. 18, 2015. (Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press)
(…) Much of the questioning of Moffa was done by Robert Parmiter, the chief counsel for the Republican staff on the Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee. He asked Moffa about August 2016 text messages between Moffa and FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was putting together a meeting to discuss the initial organization of the investigation. Even at that early date, Strzok specified that they needed to discuss the use of “CHS” and “liaison.”
Parmiter asked about the acronym CHS: “What does that stand for?”
Moffa replied: “Confidential human source.”
When Parmiter asked Moffa whether Christopher Steele was a CHS, Moffa went off the record to confer with his bureau-provided counsel, Robert Sinton. When they came back on the record, Moffa answered the question: “Yes.”
That was merely confirmation of what had been known for some time — that Christopher Steele was an official informant expecting to be paid by the FBI for his dossier information. Moffa also confirmed that Steele’s status as a CHS had eventually been revoked. Moffa had been at a meeting where “closing” Steele as a Confidential Human Source was discussed, but Moffa declined to answer questions about what Steele did to lose his CHS status.
Steele was hardly the only CHS used in the FBI’s investigation. It has been widely reported that a retired Cambridge professor, Stefan Halper, was a CHS — we’ve all been lectured not to use the word “spy” in describing him.
And now the New York Times has put in print what was long suspected, that the woman Halper presented to George Papadopoulos as his “assistant” was actually something else altogether. “Azra Turk” was an FBI asset sent across the Atlantic with a mission to get incriminating information out of Papadopoulos. It’s not clear whether she counted as a CHS herself, or whether she was an “investigator” with some other official status at the bureau.
So the question remains: Other than the woman whose cover name was Azra Turk (and whose official position may or may not have been as a CHS), were Steele and Halper the only Confidential Human Sources used against the Trump campaign? It doesn’t appear so.
Moffa was asked in the closed-door Capitol Hill interview, “How many CHSs did you have working on this investigation at the time?”
Moffa again conferred with his counsel off the record.
“Okay,” he replied, back on the record. “So I legitimately do not know the total number of CHSs. That’s an operational side decision, but I also don’t want to imply to you that I don’t — I’m not aware of any CHSs, right. So that’s what we were just talking about. But I legitimately can’t tell you the overall number that are engaged. I just don’t know it.” (Read more: National Review, 5/3/2019)