Kevin E. Clinesmith is a lawyer, D.C. Bar No. 984265, admitted November 2007. The statement of offense and the D.C. Court of Appeals opinion in In re Kevin E. Clinesmith, 21-BG-18, put him in the FBI Office of General Counsel as assistant general counsel, National Security and Cyber Law Branch, from July 12, 2015, to September 21, 2019. He was assigned legal support on Crossfire Hurricane, including FISA applications. That is the defendant Judge James E. Boasberg had in front of him.
Official/court finding: on August 19, 2020, Clinesmith pleaded guilty before Boasberg (video) to one false-statement count, 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(3). The Department of Justice said he altered a June 15, 2017, OGA/CIA liaison email by adding “not a source” — the statement of offense uses “and not a source” — and forwarded it to an FBI supervisory special agent. The SSA used that writing on the fourth FISA application targeting Individual #1, publicly reported as Carter Page. The count is the altered email. It is not a standalone count titled FISA fraud. Maximum five years.
Boasberg sentenced him on January 29, 2021: 12 months’ probation and a $100 special assessment. Judgment was entered February 2, 2021. The government’s sentencing memorandum (RECAP Doc. 22) asked for a sentence inside the 0–6 month guideline range. The court gave probation. Fox News and NPR reported 400 hours of community service. This site treats the 400 hours as widely reported, not as a line independently parsed from the signed judgment PDF.
The same judge had been on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court since May 2014 and was its presiding judge from January 2020 to May 2021 — including on the day of the sentence. CNN reported that overlap. He sentenced the FBI lawyer whose altered email had gone into a FISA application while he ran that court. The appointment dates are on this file’s FISC-term post.
News reporting, not a hosted transcript: CNN and Law.com’s National Law Journal wrote that Boasberg called the conduct an “inappropriate shortcut” and said he did not believe Clinesmith was attempting an end he knew was wrong. Sophie Mann at Just the News and Conservative Treehouse wrote the probation result. Those pieces are reporting or commentary. The docket is the finding. This page does not invent a coordination, a handshake, or a second crime by the judge.