RUSSIAGATE
UPDATE: A newly released 29-page secret Appendix to the Durham report
reveals even more damning evidence that the Russiagate affair was a
stitch-up from the get-go.
Edgar J. Hoover FBI headquarters in Washington. (David Gaines, Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0)
By Ray McGovern
Special to Consortium News
Small wonder that the Deep State tried to keep under lock and key the explosive appendix to Special Counsel John Durham’s anemic May 2023 report on the Russiagate “scandal.” Sen. Charles Grassley, head of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, made it public on Thursday and it became the latest revelation in July to blow open the real scandal behind Russiagate.
It’s small wonder, too, that when Kash Patel won Senate approval to be F.B.I. director, former C.I.A. Director John Brennan, former F.B.I. Director James Comey, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper “lawyered up.” Clapper told CNN colleague Caitlin Collins last week he’d been lawyered up with “perpetual attorneys, since I left the government in 2017.”
But the trio will need more than clever lawyers. Grassley has awoken to what his Oversight Committee is supposed to do – such as oversee the Department of Justice. Better late than never. In 2021, Grassley displayed his own anemia when he plaintively called the DOJ “the Department of JUST US”.
Grassley was lamenting that F.B.I. lawyer Kevin Clinesmith got a slap on the wrist after falsifying a FISA Court application to eavesdrop on Trump associate Carter Page, who was supposed to have been the lynchpin of Russia-Trump “collusion.” But Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s $32 million, two-year investigation found no such “collusion.”
Out of the Burn Bag; Onto the Front Burner
Kash Patel sworn into office as director of the FBI by Attorney General Pamela Bondi in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 21, 2025. (White House)
It had long been clear that Patel, given the breadth of his earlier experience investigating “Russiagate”, knew “where the bodies were buried” – and, not least, could identify the bodies of very senior miscreants still walking around free.
Reportedly, he had some luck in finding a secret room at F.B.I. headquarters that contained burn bags filled with thousands of Russiagate-related documents revealing evidence that incriminated the top gurus of the Deep State. (It’s a wonder why they weren’t burned).
Among these documents was a particularly damning 29-page secret Appendix to the not-so-thorough-yet-four-year-long investigation by Special Counsel Durham, appointed by Trump’s first-term Attorney General William Barr in May 2019 to look into the origins of the Russiagate mess.
(Burn bags commonly are simply paper bags containing classified documents to be burned, shredded, or otherwise destroyed beyond recognition. Deep State miscreants were rather careless. Remember, they were convinced Mrs. Clinton was going to win.)
Durham’s Appendix burst, so to speak, into the media Thursday, the day after the burn-bag story broke on Wednesday. But not before The New York Times obliged Clapper and Brennan the same day with a Guest Essay titled “Let’s Set the Record Straight on Russia and 2016” – an apparent attempt to pre-empt the damage from Durham’s Appendix.
It is a hard thing to do. Within a day of the discovery of the Appendix, Grassley on Thursday asked the F.B.I., C.I.A., and others to declassify it, which was done before the ink was dry on the Clapper-Brennan piece.
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Among other things, the Appendix reveals that President Barack Obama intended to scuttle any F.B.I. investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s mishandling of classified information. And it is replete with evidence that the Clinton campaign, with the help of “special services” were hatching plots to falsely connect Trump to Russia.
The following three observations are drawn from Sen. Grassley’s Key Findings from the Durham Appendix. (We strongly recommend reading the whole Appendix. We include below salient excerpts from the full text.)
• During the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information [about alleged Russian interference] through the F.B.I.-affiliated…technical structures… in particular, the Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect companies, from where the information would then be disseminated through leading U.S. publications.
• Julie [Julianne Smith] says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-[DNC] convention bounce. [See below for the lurid detail.]
• It is a logical deduction Smith was, at a minimum, playing a role in the Clinton campaign’s efforts to tie Trump to Russia. And the communications Durham reviewed certainly lends some credence that such a plan existed. [NOTE: Yes, the same Julianne Smith whom President Joe Biden appointed U.S. Ambassador to NATO.]
The Full Text (Short Excerpts)
Hillary Clinton at a campaign rally in Tempe, Arizona, November 2016. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The text of the Appendix dwells largely on information coming from memoranda prepared by Russian intelligence. These Russian memoranda analyzed the take from Russian hacking of communications sent by two senior members of the Open Society Foundations (formerly known as the Soros Foundation).
A few appetizing nuggets from the Appendix itself:
• Barack Obama sanctioned the use of all administrative levers to remove possibly negative effects from the F.B.I. investigation of cases related to the Clinton Foundation and the email correspondence in the State Department. [Revealed by WikiLeaks].
• Based on information from [DNC head] Wasserman-Schultz, the F.B.I. does not possess any kind of direct evidence against Clinton, because of their timely deletion from the email servers.
• The political director of the Hillary Clinton staff, Amanda Renteria, regularly receives information from Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the plans and intentions of the F.B.I.
Again, quoting from the Appendix:
“In late July 2016 the F.B.I. received a report that summarized certain hacked emails allegedly sent by Leonardo Bernardo of the Open Society Foundations.
The translated [Russian] draft memorandum stated in relevant part:
According to data from the election campaign headquarters of Hillary Clinton obtained by the U.S. Soros Foundation, on 26 July 2016 Clinton approved a plan of her policy adviser, Juliana (sic) Smith to smear Donald Trump by magnifying the scandal tied to the intrusion by Russian secret services in the pre-election process to benefit the Republican candidate.
As envisioned by Smith, raising the theme of Putin’s support for Trump to the level of an Olympics scandal would divert the constituents’ attention from the investigation of Clinton’s compromised electronic correspondence. …”
A ‘Crimes Report’ Filed
The Durham Appendix notes that the C.I.A. sent the F.B.I. an investigative referral regarding “the purported Clinton campaign plan” to tie Trump to Russia. Investigative referrals are widely known as “Crimes Reports.” U.S. intelligence agencies are required by statute to file a Crimes Report with the Department of Justice, when an unauthorized disclosure of classified information (or another potential federal crime) is believed to have occurred.
Had someone leaked, or was someone about to leak the Russian information on the “purported Clinton anti-Russian campaign plan”? I don’t know. In any case, a Crimes Report was filed – perhaps because more than one intelligence agency was involved; the content was so explosive; and it seemed necessary to work out a common response, just in case; and to brief those with “a need to know”.
Two months later, responding to a Senate Judiciary Committee request, then Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe wrote the following:
• In late July 2016, U.S. 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. …
• According to his handwritten notes, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the ‘alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.’
• On 07 September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to F.B.I. Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding ‘U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.'”
Shocked?
Strzok testifying to U.S. House Judiciary Committee on July 12, 2018 on F.B.I. probe in to 2016 election. (House Judiciary Committee/YouTube)
It hardly needs saying that neither F.B.I. Director Comey nor the equally infamous F.B.I. official Strzok could have been shocked at the information Russia had acquired and the conclusions drawn by Russian intelligence. Comey and Strzok knew chapter and verse – and all the footnotes.
Recall that Strzok, a veteran F.B.I. counterintelligence agent leading the probe into alleged Russian interference, told his F.B.I. lawyer/lover later of his reluctance to join the Mueller investigation: “My concern is that there’s no big there there.” Nor was there any there there then (summer 2016). Few knew more about that than Comey and Strzok.
Nothing to worry about because most Americans had been conditioned to believe the Russians are “almost genetically driven” (as Clapper testified) to do all manner of bad things. So who would believe the Russians that they didn’t interfere? And if someone with access to the truth dared to leak to mainstream media,it would be highly unlikely that the media would give him/her air or ink. In such circumstances who would take such a big risk?
Not surprisingly, there has been no additional information about the investigative referral/Crimes Report.
Coincidence?
July 26, 2016: The timing may be coincidence, but on the same day Mrs. Clinton reportedly endorsed the big push to tie Trump to Russia, David Sanger and Eric Schmitt of The New York Times co-authored an article titled: “Spy Agency Consensus Grows That Russia Hacked D.N.C.”
“WASHINGTON: American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have ‘high confidence’ that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.”
Sanger and Schmitt have won Pulitzers for regurgitating what the C.I.A. and F.B.I. whisper in their ears. I have a bitter, war-of-aggression memory of Sanger one day stating as flat fact seven times that “Weapons of Mass Destruction” were in Iraq. That article, co-authored with Thom Shanker, appeared on July 29, 2002 as Dick Cheney and George Bush Jr. began browbeating Congress to authorize the unprovoked attack on Iraq.
Don’t Fret; We’re Still Here
Some of us got Russiagate right, and we are pledged to stay at it. Actually, one of us got it right on day one. That would be Consortium News favorite, Patrick Lawrence (whom The Nation fired for exposing the lie about “Russian hacking” of those embarrassing DNC emails).
Patrick let it all out in a column at Salon.com after watching some of the chicanery at the 2016 Democratic Convention. Strangely, the day he let loose was the same day that now-Ambassador Julianne Smith got the bright idea to blame the Russians – July 25, 2016 – and sold it to Mrs. Clinton the following day.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a C.I.A. analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).