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.

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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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President Donald Trump acknowledged on Friday that former President Barack Obama is likely to dodge accountability for his role in the Russian collusion hoax on account of the U.S. Supreme Court's July 1, 2024, immunity for official acts ruling in Trump v. United States.

Trump suggested, however, that the high court's ruling "doesn't help the people around him at all" — an allusion to those Obama cabalists who hatched, then perpetuated the Russian collusion hoax on the American people.

The FBI has, for instance, launched a criminal investigation into ex-CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey for perjury and potentially other crimes related to the Trump-Russia hoax. Former DNI James Clapper indicated he would "lawyer up" after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard referred damning documents detailing the genesis of the hoax's manufacture under Obama to the Department of Justice.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe hinted Sunday that twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton might also face the music over her apparent hand in what Gabbard has referred to as an alleged "treasonous conspiracy."

Quick recap

Ratcliffe ordered a review in May of the "procedures and analytic tradecraft employed" when drafting the January 2017 intelligence Community Assessment, a document created at Obama's urging that served as the cornerstone of the Russian collusion hoax and set the stage for arrests, impeachments, and years of politically expedient smears.

Late last month, Ratcliffe released the findings of that review, noting that there were "multiple procedural anomalies" in the production of the January 2017 ICA, including "a highly compressed production timeline, stringent compartmentation, and excessive involvement of agency heads."

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The memo noted further that the Obama administration sacrificed analytical soundness in the interest of "narrative consistency."

More has since been revealed about the genesis of the hoax thanks in part to Gabbard's publication of a damning House Intelligence Committee majority staff report.

The previously classified House report confirmed that: the ICA was a work of fiction drawn up by the Obama administration with the aim of kneecapping the democratically elected Republican president; credible evidence available in January 2017 contradicted the narrative advanced in the ICA; and that contrary to Brennan's suggestion in public and sworn testimonies, the Steele dossier — a political opposition research report paid for in part by the Clinton campaign — was included in the ICA.

Clinton might take another tumble

Ratcliffe suggested on Sunday that additional documents link Clinton to the development of the Russian collusion hoax.

"Part of what came out last week was about how John Brennan, Clapper, Comey, they all pushed the known-fake Steele dossier into intelligence community assessments and as the basis for Crossfire Hurricane and all that," he told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo. "But what hasn't come out yet, and what's going to come out, is the underlying intelligence that I have spent the last few months making recommendations about final declassification — and sent that to the Department of Justice. That will come out in the John Durham report classified annex."

'US intelligence intercepted Russian intelligence talking about a Hillary Clinton plan.'

The first Trump DOJ authorized federal prosecutor John Durham in 2019 to explore the origins of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI's investigation into the supposed Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

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Durham, who was elevated to special counsel in December 2020, found that:

  • the FBI utilized "raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence" to open the investigation into the Trump campaign but did not follow the same standard when approaching alleged election interference in relation to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign;
  • the FBI “did not and could not corroborate any of the substantive allegations" made in the Steele dossier of lurid accusations against then-candidate Donald Trump;
  • "neither U.S. nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation"; and
  • the FBI used the unvetted and unverified Steele reports just days after their receipt "to support probable cause in the FBI’s FISA applications targeting [Carter] Page, a U.S. citizen who, for a period of time, had been an adviser to Trump."

While a 306-page unclassified report detailing these and other conclusions was released in May 2023, there was a 29-page classified appendix that the public never saw.

A White House source confirmed to Blaze News that "the CIA is declassifying that report in the name of transparency."

The CIA director told Bartiromo, "In the summer of 2016, U.S. intelligence intercepted Russian intelligence talking about a Hillary Clinton plan — a Hillary Clinton plan to falsely accuse Donald Trump of Russia collusion; to vilify and smear him with what would become known infamously as the Steele dossier."

'They conspired against the American people.'

"This intelligence was so explosive that John Brennan briefed President Obama, Vice President Biden, Jim Clapper, James Comey, the entire national security team, telling them about this Hillary Clinton plan," said Ratcliffe. "That was in August of 2016 and yet it wasn't until more than four years later, in October of 2020, when I found after an exhaustive search John Brennan's handwritten notes and the underlying intelligence behind it that revealed exactly what happened."

Rather than expose the "Clinton plan," which is taken up at length in the Durham report, the Obama administration apparently used it as a framework.

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Citing notes from Brennan, which Ratcliffe declassified in 2020 while serving as DNI, the Durham report indicated that intelligence agencies "obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking of the Democratic National Committee."

The report emphasized the Clinton plan intelligence was relevant for two reasons:

  • "first, the Clinton plan intelligence itself and on its face arguably suggested that private actors affiliated with the Clinton campaign were seeking in 2016 to promote a false or exaggerated narrative to the public and to U.S. government agencies about Trump's possible ties to Russia"; and
  • second, "the Clinton plan intelligence had potential bearing on the reliability and credibility" on the materials provided and funded by the Clinton campaign and/or the DNC used by the FBI when seeking FISA warrants and taking other investigative steps.

According to the Durham report, there was no evidence that the FBI disclosed the contents of the Clinton plan intelligence to the attorneys working on the FISA matters related to Crossfire Hurricane, to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or to numerous individuals working on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Ratcliffe indicated on Sunday that the declassified Durham report appendix will show 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."

The CIA director noted on Sunday that Clinton, like Brennan and Comey, testified on the subject under oath in recent years, and that "much of that testimony is, frankly, completely inconsistent with what our underlying intelligence that is about to be declassified in the Durham Annex, what that reflects."

Ratcliffe hinted at legal consequences for Clinton, noting, "Pam Bondi does have a strike force. It is a different Department of Justice, a different FBI, and an opportunity to look at how these people really did conspire to run a hoax, a fraud on the American people and against Donald Trump’s presidency."

The Department of Justice declined to comment.

"There is no doubt in my mind that the people that we just talked about conspired. They conspired against President Trump. They conspired against the American people," added Ratcliffe.

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