Senator Chuck Grassley on Thursday released a declassified appendix from Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation, revealing foreign intelligence reports that anticipated the FBI’s role in promoting the Trump–Russia collusion narrative before the official launch of Crossfire Hurricane in July 2016.
The annex cites foreign sources linked to George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. According to the document, internal emails accessed by Russian state hackers suggested that Open Society Eurasia director Leonard Bernardo foresaw a campaign to tie Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin, with involvement from groups like CrowdStrike and ThreatConnect and amplification by major U.S. media outlets. Bernardo allegedly predicted the FBI would later “put more oil into the fire.”
The document also indicates that the Clinton campaign approved efforts to spread the Russia narrative to distract from Hillary Clinton’s private email scandal, with one memo attributing this directive to campaign adviser Julianne Smith. According to the annex, foreign sources reported that campaign-linked data would be laundered through “technical cutouts” before being used by intelligence-linked actors.
Communications reviewed by the Durham team show that the Clinton campaign anticipated or sought assistance from the vice president’s office, the FBI, or other intelligence agencies, including the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), to support that effort.
The appendix, declassified in coordination with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and FBI Director Kash Patel, includes a notation that the emails were deemed “likely authentic” by interviewed FBI personnel. Some emails were reportedly obtained from servers the Russian government claimed to have compromised.
Grassley described the revelations as evidence of “one of the biggest political scandals and cover-ups in American history,” and called for further transparency regarding the intelligence community’s handling of the information.
