#FBI agent used fake name during Russia probe

President Trump’s 2016 campaign associate Carter Page claims in a new lawsuit that an FBI agent used a fake name during interviews — another potential breach of protocol in the FBI’s Russia investigation.

Page, an energy industry consultant who worked in Russia before joining Trump’s campaign as an adviser, alleges “unlawful spying” in a lawsuit filed Friday against federal agencies and officials.

Page says FBI agent Stephen Somma introduced himself as Steve Holt during five interviews.

Former FBI agent James Gagliano, who worked 25 years at the bureau, including in supervisory roles, told The Daily Caller that he had “never heard of an FBI agent going undercover as a different FBI agent” and “I’d never have authorized it.”

The FBI did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

Page was surveilled under warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The FBI’s warrant applications included information from opposition research financed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

The Justice Department inspector general last year found “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in documents submitted by the FBI to the FISA court and a former FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty in August to falsifying records to the court.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. Page never was charged with a crime.

Trump routinely invokes the FBI’s treatment of Page as evidence of improper and allegedly politically motivated conduct against his campaign.

Trump last week pardoned his former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was seeking to withdraw a guilty plea for lying to two FBI agents, including disgraced anti-Trump official Peter Strzok, about the content of his post-election calls with Russia’s ambassador.

Republicans said transcripts of those calls, released in May, indicate there was nothing improper about the underlying content of Flynn’s talks, which were made with the knowledge of other Trump transition officials.

In Flynn’s case, former FBI Director James Comey publicly acknowledged he skirted standard protocol by sending agents including Strzok to interview Flynn days into Trump’s administration without informing the White House counsel’s office. Senior Justice Department leaders also were cut out of the decision, which then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said frustrated her.