She went on to point out that the DOJ and FBI “outright hid critical information from a congressional investigation.” Strassel then cited Speaker Paul Ryan’s press conference after the material was released Thursday, in which he “bluntly noted that Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes’s request for details on this secret source was ‘wholly appropriate,’ ‘completely within the scope’ of the committee’s long-running FBI investigation, and ‘something that probably should have been answered a while ago.’”

“Translation: The department knew full well it should have turned this material over to congressional investigators last year, but instead deliberately concealed it,” she wrote. “The bureau already has some explaining to do. Thanks to the Washington Post’s unnamed law-enforcement leakers, we know Mr. Nunes’s request deals with a ‘top secret intelligence source’ of the FBI and CIA, who is a U.S. citizen and who was involved in the Russia collusion probe.”

“When government agencies refer to sources, they mean people who appear to be average citizens but use their profession or contacts to spy for the agency. Ergo, we might take this to mean that the FBI secretly had a person on the payroll who used his or her non-FBI credentials to interact in some capacity with the Trump campaign,” Strassel continued. “This would amount to spying, and it is hugely disconcerting. It would also be a major escalation from the electronic surveillance we already knew about, which was bad enough.”

“I believe I know the name of the informant, but my intelligence sources did not provide it to me and refuse to confirm it,” Strassel concluded. “It would therefore be irresponsible to publish it. But what is clear is that we’ve barely scratched the surface of the FBI’s 2016 behavior, and the country will never get the straight story until President Trump moves to declassify everything possible. It’s time to rip off the Band-Aid.”

It’s truly disturbing how little we know about the FBI’s surveillance of Trump and those around him. Who do you think the informant could be? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.