Public records show Stefan Halper, the foreign policy expert “outed,” as an FBI informant that spied on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, was paid a large sum in 2016 for work he did for the Obama administration.
The Department of Defense paid Halper $282,295 on September 27, 2016 — just months before the 2016 presidential election — for work titled, “INDIA AND CHINA ECON STUDY,” says USASPENDING.gov, a website that tracks spending data for the U.S. government. This sum was one of two payments made to Halper for the job; the second, worth $129,280, was made on July 26, 2017. The record lists Halper’s “Period of Performance” as September 26, 2016 to March 29, 2018.
USASPENDING.gov shows the Department of Defense paid Halper a total of $1,058,161 for work between 2012-2018. The work designated for “India-China” study comprised nearly 40 percent of that compensation.
The contents of the work listed above are presently unknown.
Recent reports detailed Halper’s interactions with three members of the Trump campaign— Carter Page, Sam Clovis, and George Papadopoulos.
The New York Post writes:
Halper made his first overture when he met with Page at a British symposium. The two remained in regular contact for more than a year, meeting at Halper’s Virginia farm and in Washington, DC, as well as exchanging emails.
The professor met with Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis in late August, offering his services as a foreign-policy adviser, The Washington Post reported Friday, without naming the academic.
…
Days later, Halper contacted Papadopoulos by e-mail. The professor offered the young and inexperienced campaign aide $3,000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to London, ostensibly to write a paper about energy in the eastern Mediterranean region.
The Stanford and Oxford-educated Halper started his career in government in 1971 as a member of President Richard Nixon’s Domestic Policy Council and served as the Office of Management and Budget’s Assistant Director of Management and Evaluation Division between 1973-1974. The foreign policy expert worked assistant to all three of President Gerald Ford’s Chief of Staffs — Alexander Haig, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney — until 1977.
In March 2016, Halper told Sputnik News that he believed then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton would prove more effective than other candidates in maintaining the “special relationship” between the United States and Britain.
“I believe Clinton would be best for US-UK relations and for relations with the European Union. Clinton is well-known, deeply experienced and predictable. US-UK relations will remain steady regardless of the winner although Clinton will be less disruptive over time,” Halper told the Russian news outlet.