Could this have been Peter Strzok's "insurance policy"? Or is this idea too crazy to have ever been considered, let alone put into operation?

FBI whistleblowers tell Washington Times reporter Kerry Picket that James Comey himself quarterbacked a "honeypot" operation against the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. According to testimony given late last year, Comey had two female FBI agents working undercover in what looks more like a foreign-intel operation. Given that the target was the political campaign of a major-party nominee, this would be perhaps the worst scandal in FBI history, and that would be saying something.

If it's true, that is:

The off-the-books investigation, launched in 2015 by FBI Director James B. Comey, was revealed by an agency whistleblower in a protected disclosure to the House Judiciary Committee last year and first reported exclusively by The Washington Times in October.

In the intelligence community, a honeypot commonly refers to an undercover operative, usually a woman, who feigns sexual or romantic interest to obtain information from a target.

The whistleblower said two female FBI undercover employees infiltrated Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign at high levels and were directed to act as “honeypots” while traveling with Mr. Trump and his campaign staff.

The Times has learned that the bureau, now led by Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, is looking for those once-undercover employees under Mr. Comey’s direction.

Full disclosure: Kerry is an old friend of mine and a hard-nosed reporter. The question here isn't Kerry's credibility but that of the sources behind the report. Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary proof, and this claim is very extraordinary. 

First off, 'honeypot' operations do not exist in a law-enforcement paradigm. That is an espionage strategy, one normally associated with hostile regimes and their intelligence apparatus rather than US or Western agencies. These operations are an endless source of fodder for Hollywood; Red Sparrow did it well in 2018, and Anna did it much less well the year after that. In the past 15 years, we have seen two notable examples in real life: Anna Chapman and Maria Butina, both of whom were eventually returned to Russia.

The Butina case may actually have some relevance. Will readers remember that former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne accused Comey in 2019 of trying to get him to sleep with Butina as part of a counter-intelligence probe? That seemed bizarre at the time too, and apparently went nowhere. Byrne fled overseas after making the claim:

Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne said Thursday that the FBI directed him in the summer before the 2016 election to pursue a “romantic relationship with Maria Butina,” the Russian woman who was accused of seeking to win influence in powerful Republican circles at the behest of her country’s government. …

Byrne’s story, as told to CNN anchor Chris Cuomo on “Cuomo Prime Time,” and in earlier interviews broadcast on Fox Business News and Fox News, also includes allegations that top officials in the Obama administration, including James Comey, the former FBI director, approved of the bureau’s requests of him.

Before that, the Department of Justice cut a deal with Butina to avoid a trial. That's not unusual in espionage cases, as trials can expose sources and methods that put intelligence officers and operations at risk. But it can also keep other issues from being exposed, such as how the participants might have been exploited and for what purposes.

That's also not unusual either, and the FBI has a legitimate charter to conduct domestic counter-espionage. There's no law against honeypot ops in that context (to my knowledge), although it would be presumably out of character for US domestic counter-intel strategies. However, that's only true when deployed to combat foreign intel operations. If the FBI used its counter-intelligence authority to target a presidential candidate or campaign, that goes well beyond its authority. And if Comey participated in it, then serious charges could result for him and anyone else who participated in it.

All of the above except for the claims of leakers/whistleblowers is just speculation, however. It's not even clear how a honeypot operation aimed at the Trump campaign would have worked, especially in relation to any actionable law enforcement efforts. The only real gain that could have been made would have to been identification of Russian intel operatives (which turned out to be nonsense), and/or to get dirt on Trump and others to use for leverage later. If that's what Comey had in mind, it didn't work either -- Trump fired him, and Robert Mueller ended up debunking Russia-Collusion-Gate.

In other words, the entire idea would have been nuts. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but it does mean that it will take a lot of evidence before we should be convinced it did. And at least we have people in positions of authority at the DoJ and FBI who will want to get to the bottom of it, and who won't have any incentive to cover up anything that might have taken place.

One final thought: This is yet another example of why Congress should divorce the FBI from domestic counter-intelligence and focus the bureau on its law-enforcement mission. The combination corrupted the FBI during J. Edgar Hoover's long reign, and the power of both combined in one office presents too much temptation for another Hoover to emerge. Domestic counter-intelligence can be run by a separate agency under the ODNI umbrella with coordination as necessary to DoJ.