The FBI, already under fire for its handling of FISA warrants and confidential informants, is enduring more scrutiny as the Justice Department admits agents failed to disclose to a court that they had paid — to the tune of six figures — a white supremacist publisher for years to be an investigative source.
The admission came in a series of court filings this month in the case of Kaleb Cole, a Washington state man accused of being a member of the white supremacist group Atomwaffen and participating in an intimidation campaign against Jewish Americans and minority journalists. Cole has pleaded innocent and awaits trial.
Cole's lawyers filed a motion to suppress evidence gathered against their client on the grounds that the FBI had failed to disclose in a search warrant application that a publisher of extremist literature had been paid about $144,000 over 16 years to be an informant, including $82,000 for work in the case against Cole. The confidential informant (CI) also had an earlier felony conviction that wasn't disclosed, court records show.
The filings don't identify the informant by name but describe him as a publisher who "owns and operates a publishing company that distributes white supremacist writings."
"The CI began his long career as a professional informant in exchange for consideration regarding his sentence on a federal conviction for possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number and an unregistered silencer," Cole's lawyers argued in an Aug. 13 motion.
"The failure to include the information about the CI's incentives is made more egregious by the fact that the warrant application incriminated Mr. Cole based almost solely on the alleged observations of the CI," the lawyers added.