Walid Phares was electronically monitored for a 12-month period between 2017 and 2018, according to the Washington-based FBI agent who was assigned to investigate him as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia collusion probe.

As in Page's case, the bureau withheld evidence exonerating Phares from the court to secure surveillance authorization, according to newly declassified FBI documents.

"I had no idea any of this was happening," Phares told RealClearInvestigations in an exclusive interview Wednesday night. "This is shocking because they told my lawyer that I was only a 'witness' and that they just needed some information."

"But these were huge abuses that I can see now," he added. Phares said he intends to sue the FBI and Justice Department for damages.

The 68-year-old Lebanese American scholar said case agents and prosecutors grilled him for months, questioned his employer, and even went after his bank records. As a result, he said he lost his job at a university, his livelihood, and even his bank accounts and credit card after Wells Fargo canceled them.

"It was like a disaster for me financially and physically," he said. "I also lost my Fox News contract" as an expert on terrorism and the Middle East, which he had held since 2007.

Phares was not hired by the Trump administration, even though he had been expected to land a high-level foreign policy position. "They scared the agencies from me so I would have problems with [obtaining] a security clearance," he said.

'No Corroborating Facts'

Investigators could find "nothing" criminal on Phares during their probe, according to the lead case agent, and in fact, they concluded he was "honest." Yet Mueller's team continued to secretly spy on Phares—without providing the powerful federal spy court any of the exculpatory evidence that could clear Phares as required by law.

The agent told investigators in a separate 2020 internal FBI review that "there were no corroborating facts that tied Crosswind [the codename for Phares's case] to certain facts that we thought were originally true," according to a transcript of his testimony, released after more than five years of concealment.

He added that "nothing" collected from Phares's communications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, including phone messages and emails, "aided the investigation other than to prove the target was being honest with investigators," who had interviewed him repeatedly.