Priestap joined the
Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1998, and he was appointed as assistant director of the
FBI Counterintelligence Division in 2015. In this role, he opened the
Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign's potential collusion with
Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Priestap ensured that an FBI informant and an FBI investigator would meet with
George Papadopoulos during Donald Trump's
2016 campaign. After arriving September 15, 2016, in London, Papadopoulos met in a private London club with a United States citizen and
FBI informer
Stefan Halper, who was a
Cambridge professor, and a female posing as Halper's female research assistant who had invited Papadopoulos for drinks. The research assistant was an
FBI investigator with the
pseudonym Azra Turk but Papadopoulos stated that he believed that she "was
CIA" with ties to "
Turkish intel" and was tasked to learn about his work in the
Energy Triangle which involves
Cyprus-
Greece-
Israel, and competes with the interests of
Northern Cyprus and
Turkey.
British intelligence was informed of the FBI FARA case on Papadopoulos and did not halt the FBI's operation from being conducted on the soil of the
United Kingdom where
GCHQ could assist with the FBI in the FARA case involving Papadopoulos but the GCHQ gave no comment about its role according to a May 2, 2019,
New York Times article. Priestap will not comply voluntarily to set before the Senate committee investigating criminal activity by the FBI. Priestap retired from the FBI in April 2019. ==References==