Durham annex proves Russiagate was a coordinated smear



Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) last week declassified a 29-page document known as the Durham annex. Its publication has received remarkably little attention from major media outlets, despite containing one of the most significant intelligence disclosures since the origins of the Russiagate investigation.

The Durham annex is not conjecture, analysis, or political spin. It is a collection of sensitive intelligence reports, internal memos, and declassified emails compiled by the intelligence community and withheld from public view for years under the pretext of “source protection.”

The Durham annex reveals that the FBI ignored evidence in 2015 and 2016 suggesting that foreign governments were attempting to collude not with Trump, but with Clinton.

The declassified document offers a clearer view of what many Americans have long suspected: that the narrative surrounding Trump-Russia collusion was not only politically motivated but deliberately constructed by the Clinton campaign, facilitated by sympathetic actors within U.S. intelligence agencies, and ultimately endorsed by senior members of the Obama administration.

This trove of documents does not merely reinforce existing criticisms of the FBI’s conduct during the 2016 election. It provides evidence that the Clinton campaign approved a strategy to discredit Donald Trump by promoting a false association with Vladimir Putin. And it does so using intelligence collected from foreign surveillance of American political actors — surveillance that the CIA deemed credible enough to brief President Barack Obama directly.

The cover-up unraveled

Central to the Durham annex is a source codenamed “T1” — a foreign intelligence asset who intercepted Russian cyber-espionage activity targeting American entities, including George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, the Clinton campaign, and U.S. think tanks. The reports T1 relayed to U.S. intelligence included detailed assessments of internal American political strategy. In effect, T1 was watching Russian spies watch us — and reporting back.

T1’s identity remains classified, but strong circumstantial evidence points to a Dutch intelligence source. The Netherlands reportedly gained access to Russian cyber operations as early as 2014. Regardless of who provided it, U.S. agencies treated the intelligence from T1 as credible.

Then-CIA Director John Brennan quickly briefed President Obama, Vice President Biden, FBI Director James Comey, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Those briefings included memos indicating Hillary Clinton had personally approved a plan to tie Donald Trump to Russian election interference.

One memo, dated 2016 and reportedly obtained through Russian surveillance of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, outlined a Clinton campaign strategy: “Smear Donald Trump by magnifying the scandal” over Russia’s preference for Trump. That memo laid the groundwork for the Trump-Russia collusion hoax now known as Russiagate.

Intelligence running Clinton’s interference

The CIA labeled the intelligence “sensitive” and credible. The FBI rejected it. Agents claimed it relied on hearsay, appeared exaggerated, and might have suffered from translation errors.

That kind of skepticism might seem reasonable — if the FBI had applied the same scrutiny to the Steele dossier. Instead, they accepted that now-debunked document without verification and used it to justify surveillance warrants.

The inconsistency runs deeper than analysis. The Durham annex reveals that the FBI ignored evidence from 2015 and 2016 showing that foreign governments weren’t courting Trump — they were cozying up to Clinton.

One memo, written before Trump even announced his candidacy, described a foreign intelligence operative preparing to meet with a Clinton associate to discuss a “plan.” The operative was acting on direct orders from a foreign head of state.

RELATED: The Russia hoax and COVID lies share the same deep-state fingerprints

Photo by Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic

The precise content of the plan is redacted, but the FBI’s field office viewed it as serious enough to request a FISA warrant. That request, however, was left to “languish in limbo” by senior FBI officials, who subsequently warned Clinton in a defensive briefing.

Frayed trust, no accountability

The documents suggest a coordinated operation — one in which political, bureaucratic, and media institutions aligned to discredit a political opponent using information they had strong reasons to believe was false. The CIA deemed the intelligence worth a presidential briefing. The FBI discarded it. The media ignored it. And Clinton operatives implemented it.

This is not merely a scandal of partisan excess. Nearly 10 years after the first Hillary Clinton email leaks, and eight years after Trump’s unexpected victory, we are only now beginning to see the scope of institutional complicity in the Russiagate deception. The political cost may never be fully calculated, but the institutional damage — to the FBI, to the intelligence community, and to the trust of the American people — is already done.

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The case against Clinton, Brennan, and Comey is stronger than ever



By now, most politically literate Americans understand that the Steele dossier — the infamous, much ballyhooed collection of 2016 opposition research memos — was either reckless fantasy or deliberate defamation. But what many still don’t grasp is how that discredited document could become central to criminal charges against Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and John Brennan.

They pushed it. They knew better. And now a case is building.

The dossier’s known falsity

On July 28, 2016, CIA Director John Brennan briefed top Obama administration officials — including President Obama, FBI Director James Comey, Vice President Joe Biden, and National Security Adviser Susan Rice. Brennan reported that the Clinton campaign intended to frame Donald Trump by blaming Russian interference on him. This strategy, he explained, aimed to distract from revelations that the Democratic National Committee had rigged its primary against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

If the dossier was a cartoonish act of election interference, then its creators and knowing advocates should face prosecution.

At the same time, the FBI Special Agent Michael Gaeta alerted his superiors that ex-British spy Christopher Steele was compiling a salacious dossier on behalf of Clinton’s campaign. Brennan passed this intelligence to the FBI as a criminal referral.

So what did Clinton, Brennan, and Comey do with that knowledge?

Clinton approved and oversaw the media blitz. Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri and Clinton herself pushed the Russia-Trump collusion narrative exhaustively to the press and to DNC delegates — statements that were knowingly false.

That alone opens the door to criminal charges: false statements to federal officials and the press to advance an operation built on fabricated intelligence.

Brennan’s role in spreading a lie

Brennan, for his part, played both sides. He privately briefed White House officials about the hoax but reportedly gave false information to legislators like Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who used it to smear Trump publicly.

Despite knowing the dossier was unverified, Brennan insisted it had “the ring of truth” and fought to attach it to the January 6, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment as “Annex A.” In May 2023, Brennan denied to the House Judiciary Committee that he pushed the dossier’s inclusion. That claim was contradicted by a December 2016 email he wrote. Lying under oath about that decision could carry criminal consequences.

Comey’s FISA cover-up

Then-FBI Director James Comey didn’t just accept the hoax. He institutionalized it.

Comey approved the October 2016 FISA warrant applications that relied on the Steele dossier. He failed to inform the court that Steele’s work was a Clinton campaign product. Deputy Director Andrew McCabe tried to downplay the dossier’s origins in the FISA applications — and it’s hard to believe Comey was shut out of the discussion.

In December 2016, Obama ordered the professionally prepared honest draft of the ICA to be changed to include a discussion of Vladimir Putin’s alleged “hack and leak” program to assist Donald Trump in the election.

Brennan and Comey knew of this ordered change and later inserted the dossier’s summary into the ICA. They knew that at least that portion of the assessment was false, especially since many of Steele’s sources were themselves tied to the Kremlin.

Put simply: They pushed Kremlin-fed lies to frame Trump — under the pretense of exposing Kremlin interference.

The Russian cast behind the dossier

The dossier’s roots tell the real story.

Fusion GPS, led by Glenn Simpson, contracted Steele while simultaneously working for Russian oligarch Denis Katsyv — who wanted to roll back the Magnitsky Act. Simpson also helped orchestrate the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting involving Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. While promising dirt on Clinton, Veselnitskaya’s real mission was lobbying against Magnitsky sanctions.

Steele, meanwhile, had previously worked for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. His key source? Igor Danchenko, a Brookings Institution analyst who had tried bribing U.S. officials for classified information and claimed ties to “Putin’s Rasputin” Vladislav Surkov and Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin.

Danchenko’s supporting cast in his “peeing prostitutes” fraud included Russian PR agent Charles Dolan and Olga Galkina, a former Russian state media operative who bragged to friends ahead of the election about landing a job in Clinton’s State Department.

RELATED: The Russia hoax and COVID lies share the same deep-state fingerprints

Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

Mueller made it worse

Shockingly, Robert Mueller’s special counsel office hired Danchenko, approved $200,000 in payments to him, and requested another $346,000 — while giving him access to sensitive U.S. intelligence operations against Moscow. That’s how far the collusion hoax went: Federal law enforcement paid a likely Russian operative to help “investigate” Russia.

Then there’s Susan Rice’s January 2017 memo, which confirmed that Comey planned to withhold Russiagate intelligence from the incoming Trump administration. Comey even memorialized his secretive maneuvering against Trump in five classified memos — personal notes meant to serve as a post hoc CYA roadmap.

Mueller’s team adopted many of the dossier’s core themes, particularly the “Putin hack and leak” narrative — despite clear technical evidence that the DNC data was downloaded internally, not hacked externally.

No expiration date on treason

Fortunately, Brennan’s 2023 testimony — potentially perjurious — could extend the statute of limitations. That gives Justice Department investigators more time to piece together a conspiracy that stretches from the Clinton campaign to the FBI and CIA and all the way to the Oval Office.

And all of it can be traced back to Steele’s dossier, a cynical exercise that dwarfs any prior American political scandal. If the dossier was a cartoonish act of election interference, it follows that its creators and knowing advocates should face prosecution. The dossier was more than another media smear against Donald Trump. It was a coordinated disinformation operation built on Russian sources, laundered through federal agencies, and weaponized against a sitting president.

If that isn’t criminal, what is?

Docs: Russia Had Intel That Obama Was Protecting Hillary From Email Investigation

Newly declassified documents show Russia had intelligence that then-President Barack Obama was trying to make Hillary Clinton’s email scandal go away in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley released on Thursday the declassified appendix to Special Counsel John Durham’s 2023 report. The Durham report vindicated President Donald Trump and others […]

'Great victory' for free speech: Pro-Trump influencer convicted over memes talks vindication with Glenn Beck



An appeals court on Wednesday overturned the felony conviction of a pro-Trump social media influencer who was facing prison time for posting satirical memes on Twitter.

Douglass Mackey, also previously known online as Ricky Vaughn, joined "The Glenn Beck Program" on Thursday to share his reaction to the recent decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

'Unfortunately, it's not part of the sweeping constitutional ruling that we wanted, but nevertheless, it's a great victory.'

After battling the charges for four and a half years and facing a seven-month prison sentence, Mackey told Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck, "Only faith can get you through it."

— (@)

During the 2016 election, Mackey posted memes on his Twitter account, which he told Beck had about 10,000 followers. He noted that he previously had an account with over 60,000 followers, but it was suspended before he made the posts referenced in the Biden Department of Justice's case against him.

"Save time," the posts read. "Avoid the line."

It included instructions on how to "vote from home" for then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton via text message.

The posts received only about 100 likes, according to Mackey.

Beck stated, "You have to be a nincompoop to believe this [meme is real]."

RELATED: Appeals court tosses out Biden-era conviction of social media troll for election interference

Photo by JEWEL SAMAD/AFP via Getty Images

Despite what some would argue was a clear satirical post, Mackey was convicted in 2023 of conspiracy against rights for attempting to interfere with Americans' right to vote in the 2016 election.

Mackey shared the details of his arrest with Beck.

"Four FBI agents knocked on my door at 7 a.m., and that was seven days after Joe Biden was inaugurated," he said. "They said, 'Are you Douglass Mackey? We have a warrant for your arrest.' The first words out of my mouth were, 'For what?'"

"At the time, I wasn't even on Twitter. But back in the 2016 election cycle, I tweeted thousands of times. So I had no idea. But I did know that once they make you an enemy that it's like, 'Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime,'" Mackey continued. "I was very curious to see what they had cooked up."

Chief Judge Debra Ann Livingston, one of the three judges on the appeals court panel, found that prosecutors' evidence was "inadequate to show his knowing participation in a conspiracy."

While prosecutors claimed that 4,900 unique phone numbers texted the number provided in Mackey's meme, 98% received an automated reply informing them that Clinton's campaign was not affiliated with the post, Livingston noted.

"The government presented no evidence at trial that Mackey's tweets tricked anyone into failing properly to vote," the judge wrote.

RELATED: Critics ask whether DOJ will give Jimmy Kimmel the Douglass Mackey treatment for 'election interference'

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

Mackey called the case "a total humiliation" for the Biden DOJ.

He expressed some disappointment that the appeals court's decision was not a "sweeping" constitutional victory.

"These appellate courts, once they come to a conclusion on, let's say, one of the grounds, they don't rule on all the other grounds," Mackey explained. "Unfortunately, it's not part of the sweeping constitutional ruling that we wanted, but nevertheless, it's a great victory."

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