In 2016, Obama’s FBI sent a “sexy bottle blonde” to flirt with a then-Trump campaign advisor in hopes of uncovering a connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump, The New York Times reported on Thursday.
The “honeypot” has been identified by her alias, Azra Turk, a curvaceous blonde who posed as a research assistant and met with low-level Trump aide George Papadopoulos at a London bar in September 2016.
Obama spy ring
Turk is the second spy exposed as part of the FBI’s counterintelligence operation targeting the Trump campaign. Cambridge University Professor Stephen Halper was outed in May 2018 as a veteran CIA and FBI informant who interfaced with at least three junior Trump campaign affiliates: Papadopoulos, Carter Page, and Sam Clovis.
Papadopoulos was introduced to Turk through Halper, who lured the young foreign policy analyst to London by offering him $3,000 to write a research paper on Mediterranean Sea energy issues. Testifying to Congress in a closed-door hearing last year, Papadopoulos described Turk as a “beautiful young lady” who seemed eager to trade sex for information regarding the campaign’s ties to Russia.
Turk “never explicitly said I will sleep with you for this, but her mannerisms and her behavior suggested that she was flirtatious, and she was very open to something like that if I ended up providing what she wanted, whatever that was,” Papadopoulos told members of Congress.
“A fantasy’s fantasy”
The then-30-year-old campaign official recalled additional details of his interactions with Turk in his tell-all book, Deep State Target, published in March. Posing as Halper’s research assistant, Turk texted Papadopoulos shortly after he arrived in the British capital.
“Let’s meet for a drink. I’m looking forward to meeting you,” she wrote. After meeting Turk in person for the first time, Papadopoulos realized that her text message was “suggestive.”
“It was definitely suggestive,” he remembered. “Azra Turk is a vision right out of central casting for a spy flick. She’s a sexy bottle blonde in her thirties, and she isn’t shy about showing her curves — as if anyone could miss them. She’s a fantasy’s fantasy,” he wrote.
It didn’t take long for Turk to start grilling her subject about the Trump campaign. “She wants to know: are we working with Russia? ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ I say with a nervous laugh — her question is creepy,” he recalled.
But Turk “keeps pushing,” Papadopoulos said, grabbing his arms and telling him in broken English that he is much more handsome in person than his photos suggest. “I’d love to hear more about the campaign,” she said, telling the young energy consultant that he does “important work.”
“It is such a fascinating subject. How is Trump going to win? How can he beat Hillary Clinton?” Turk asked, clearly fishing for her mark to reveal a Russian connection. Convinced that he was dealing with a foreign spy, Papadopoulos quickly paid for his drinks and left.
FBI? Or CIA?
Papadopoulos retweeted a link to The Times report after it was published on Thursday. “I agree with everything in this superb article except ‘Azra Turk’ clearly was not FBI,” he wrote on Twitter. Indeed, FBI officials aren’t typically tasked with overseas spy operations.
“She was CIA and affiliated with Turkish intel. She could hardly speak English and was tasked to meet me about my work in the energy sector offshore Israel/Cyprus which Turkey was competing with,” he added.
Investigating the investigators
Reacting to the news of a second named spy from the Obama administration, Trump re-election campaign manager Brad Parscale said: “There is a word for this in the English language: Spying. Democrats and their media friends have expressed horror at the term, but there is no other way to describe it: The FBI spied on the Trump campaign in 2016.”
Attorney General William Barr told Congress last month that he thought “spying did occur” against the Trump campaign, and that he planned to investigate the “genesis” of the FBI probe that was later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller. Meanwhile, Justice Department Inspector Gen. Michael Horowitz is conducting an internal investigation of his own, looking into the early Russia investigation to determine if the FBI was operating a politically-motivated spy ring
“As President Trump has said, it is high time to investigate the investigators,” said Parscale.
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