Newly declassified evidence suggests FBI conspired with Clinton to legitimize Russiagate allegations

Americans are about to get another jolt from declassified Russiagate evidence, this time showing the Obama administration had intelligence as far back as summer 2016 that Hillary Clinton approved an operation to manufacture a fake Russia scandal to harm Donald Trump and the FBI would "fully participate in the plan," officials told Just the News.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who has spent years fighting to declassify the intelligence gathered from a foreign enemy and delivered to Obama, is set to release the bombshell information as early as Thursday in the form of a declassified copy of an appendix to Russia Special Counsel John Durham's final report from 2023.

A source directly familiar with the new evidence but who declined to be named told Just the News that it "shows that FBI officials knew of a Clinton campaign plan to create a fake narrative that Donald Trump was conspiring with Russia to hijack the election" and to distract from the classified email scandal that was hurting her campaign during the 2016 election.

"In fact, there’s evidence that needs to be fully vetted that foreign enemies believed that the FBI would fully participate in the plan," the source said.

CIA Director: Even foreign governments knew "what Clinton was up to"

The source's description closely matches comments that CIA Director John Ratcliffe made over the weekend about the document he helped declassify that showed the foreign enemy's intercepted intelligence on the Clinton campaign. Her campaign asserted that the FBI would legitimize Clinton's false Russia narrative by investigating the allegations included in a Clinton campaign-funded dossier written by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.

"What that intelligence shows [...] is that part of this was a Hillary Clinton plan, but part of it was an FBI plan to be an accelerant to that fake Steele Dossier, to those fake Russia collusion claims by pouring oil on the fire, by amplifying the lie and burying the truth of what Hillary Clinton was up to," Ratcliffe told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. 

It has been known for years that then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama in summer 2016 about CIA-obtained intelligence indicating a foreign enemy had intercepted Clinton's Russia hoax plan.

Brennan's own notes of his conversation with Obama and other top officials described the foreign enemy intelligence as having captured "alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on 26 July of a proposal from one of her [campaign] advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services."

A subsequent CIA referral to since-fired FBI Director James Comey — declassified in 2020 — shows that the CIA believed Clinton's false narrative would suggest Trump and Russian hackers were hampering U.S. elections, and that Clinton's end goal was "distracting the public from her use of a private email server."

Durham’s 2023 report revealed that “the Intelligence Community received the Clinton Plan intelligence in late July 2016” and that then-CIA Director John Brennan soon alerted top Obama administration officials including Obama, Comey, then-Vice President Joe Biden, and others. But Durham found that, rather than seriously investigating this alleged Clinton scheme, the Obama administration's intelligence and law enforcement apparatus pushed forward on the baseless Trump-Russia collusion saga regardless.

The soon-to-be-declassified appendix from Durham is anticipated to reveal that the FBI was expected to embrace the Clinton campaign dirty trick. The appendix is also expected to show internal Clinton campaign communications indicating the plan to carry out the hoax as described in the intercepts, the source said.

According to Durham’s public report, the purported scheme by Clinton was allegedly approved on July 26, 2016 — smack-dab in the middle of the 2016 Democratic convention nominating Clinton for president. The Durham report also noted that the approval of the Clinton Plan occurred the exact same day that Australian diplomat Alexander Downer -- a Clinton supporter -- provided the U.S. government a months-old tip about Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos — with Downer’s tip being cited as the predication to launch Crossfire Hurricane at the end of July 2016.

False claims coordinated, shaping the narrative

It appears undeniable at this point that the Clinton campaign engaged in a lengthy and coordinated effort to tie Trump to Russia during the 2016 election, a strategy Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri would later detail at length in a post-election opinion piece in The Washington Post. 

That editorial never mentioned Clinton’s role in generating the false Steele Dossier and Alfa Bank claims in the first place.

Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn hired Steele in 2016. Elias has testified he was aware of Fusion’s plans to have Steele brief reporters on his anti-Trump research during the 2016 contest, met with Steele during the 2016 contest, and periodically briefed the campaign about the findings from Fusion and Steele.

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said in 2017 that he had authorized Elias to hire a firm to dig up dirt on Trump’s connections with Russia and said Elias periodically briefed the Clinton campaign about the dirt that Fusion (and therefore Steele) had claimed to have dug up.

Testimony from Durham’s investigation also showed that a key part of the implementation of the plan to tie Trump to Russia — pushing the false Alfa Bank claims to the media — was personally approved by Clinton. Clinton would tout the baseless allegations in multiple tweets on Halloween 2016, only to be amplified by an anti-Trump legacy media.

Top Clinton campaign officials have denied the existence of any such scheme, but Durham’s report is replete with emails and texts from Clinton campaign foreign policy advisers echoing the exact same themes tying Trump to Putin.

Obama, Biden, and Comey knew about the "Clinton Plan" intel early on

The special counsel's report also said that “the official who initially received the information [on the Clinton Plan intelligence] immediately recognized its importance, including its relevance to the U.S. presidential election, and acted quickly to make CIA leadership aware of it.” Internal CIA materials show that Brennan “personally received a copy of the [Clinton Plan] intelligence.”

Durham wrote that, when interviewed, "Brennan generally recalled reviewing the materials but stated he did not recall focusing specifically on its assertions regarding the Clinton campaign's purported plan. Brennan recalled instead focusing on Russia's role in hacking the DNC.”

Durham said Brennan's handwritten notes reflect that Brennan briefed Obama, Biden, Comey, and others in the summer of 2016 regarding the "alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on 26 July of a proposal from one of her [campaign] advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services." This is exactly what the Clinton campaign had planned to do.

Brennan’s lawyer, Kenneth Wainstein, had told Durham in 2022 that “Director Brennan became aware of intelligence that Hillary Clinton had allegedly approved a plan to generate a narrative associating Donald Trump with Russian security services' efforts to interfere with the election. Director Brennan shared this information at a National Security Council meeting, and the CIA shared it with the FBI via a transmittal memo.”

Brennan also stated that he created a "Fusion Cell" inside the CIA to focus on alleged Russian meddling after meeting with President Obama and other White House personnel, during which Brennan and the President discussed intelligence relevant to the 2016 presidential election as well as the potential creation of an inter-agency fusion cell.

Durham’s report said the Clinton Plan intelligence may have prompted Brennan’s creation of the fusion cell, saying that “email traffic and witness interviews conducted by the Office reflect that at least some CIA personnel believed that the Clinton Plan intelligence led to the decision being made to set up the Fusion Cell.”

Lawmaker: "Attempt to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power"

The Clinton Plan intelligence was not provided to the Justice Department attorneys working on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act matters related to Crossfire Hurricane, nor was it disclosed to the FISA court.

Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told Just the News on Wednesday night that she first referred members of the intelligence community and FBI for prosecution over Russigate in 2018 as a freshman lawmaker, but that the new evidence has convinced her even more that there was a criminal conspiracy to block the transition of power to Trump in 2017 and then to keep him from winning elections going forward.

"They actually thought, in reality, that Hillary Clinton was going to win (in 2016)," she said. "....So then what do they do? They get hysterical, you know, all of a sudden, Donald Trump wins. Nobody expected that. And then Obama calls them all together and says, We got to figure out a way to use this. And you know, really what it is. It was a calculated effort to try to obstruct the President of the United States to as Liz Cheney and the J6 committee and all the Democrats like to project on us, as they would say, an attempt to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power."

Key FBI officials from whom the Clinton Plan intelligence was hidden later told Durham that they were upset by this concealment and that they should have seen it in 2016. Many FBI personnel involved with Crossfire Hurricane had never seen the Clinton Plan intelligence until Durham’s team showed it to them, and “some expressed surprise and dismay upon learning of it,” the report found.

Now-former FBI General Counsel James Baker also told Durham “that he had neither seen nor heard of the Clinton Plan intelligence or the resulting Referral Memo prior to his interview.” Baker said that “had he known of it during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, he would have viewed in a different and much more skeptical light” both the Steele Dossier and the Alfa Bank claims.

Elements of conspiracy laid out

Bobby Charles, a former federal appeals court clerk, assistant Secretary of State and congressional investigative lawyer, told Just the News that any suggestion that the FBI was complicit in helping Clinton's campaign spread the false Russia collusion narrative needs to be investigated and, if proven, prosecuted as a fraudulent effort to obstruct an election or stop Trump from succeeding as president in his first term, something perhaps not seen since the pre-Civil War era in American history.

"This transcends public corruption. This was an attempted takedown of the United States government," said Charles, who is running as a Republican for Maine governor in 2026. 

"I think we now have indications that this was a genuine conspiracy," he added. "A conspiracy is an inchoate crime, a real and fundamentally prosecutable crime."

"And when you talk about trying to take down a country, and you see a former president, a former Secretary of State, a candidate involved in this, John, there is no historical precedent for this. Pre-Civil War is just about as close as you can get," he added.

In unison, Clinton, campaigners call the allegations "ridiculous" 

Clinton herself was asked about the Clinton Plan intelligence, and told Durham’s team in an interview that it was "really sad" but "I get it, you have to go down every rabbit hole." She said that it "looked like Russian disinformation to me; they're very good at it, you know."

Clinton campaign foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan told Durham’s team that he had not seen the intelligence reporting before and had no reaction to it other than to say, “That’s ridiculous.” Durham said that “Sullivan could not recall anyone articulating a strategy or ‘plan’ to distract negative attention away from Clinton by tying Trump to Russia, but could not conclusively rule out the possibility.”

Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta told Durham that the claims were “ridiculous” and denied the campaign was involved in any such “plan.” Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri also called it “ridiculous.”