Clinton, Obama and Brennan: Origins of Russia Collusion Narrative

TOP LINE

There is a lot to unpack.  

This week, the long awaited John Durham Annex was declassified. You can think of the Annex as the last chapter in Special Counsel Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe which was led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller.

The records, uncovered by the new FBI Director Kash Patel, were found hidden away in a secret room at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.  Some of the documents were found in so-called ‘burn bags’ which hold classified materials before it’s destroyed by burning or shredding.

The Annex findings are further evidence the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was initiated by Hillary Clinton and her allies in 2016 to divert attention from Clinton’s growing email scandal.

The Durham Annex also reinforces earlier reporting that Clinton’s closest associates, including Sidney Blumenthal, were hacked, and Clinton’s unsecured personal server used for government business was likely breached as well.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is reasonable to wonder whether President Obama’s foreign policy ambitions were thwarted because America’s adversaries were reading Clinton’s emails in real time and knew his  intentions in advance.

DEEP DIVE

Released by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley who has spent years pushing for transparency, the 29 page Durham Annex is a 45 minute read.  It’s a lot to digest, and the redactions can make passages challenging.

https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/declassified_durham_annex_released_by_chairman_grassley.pdf

KEY POINTS

The Durham Annex focuses on a Memorandum in Russian, provided by the CIA, that purports to contain hacked emails from Clinton associates.  Durham interviewed government analysts who concluded the emails contained in the Memorandum “were likely authentic.”

Page 11 Email Alleges Hillary Clinton Approved Plan 

Annex: Leonard Benardo Email (Open Society Foundations/George Soros)

HRC approved idea "Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections" "...distract from her own missing email..."

Analysts well versed in "Sensitive Intelligence" collection stated their best assessment is that the emails in the Memorandum "were likely authentic."

"The Russians" had, in fact, "hacked" the emails.

In an October 2016 campaign video that was brought to my attention, Hillary Clinton alleges, with detail, that Trump is a Russian puppet. She makes the claim at least three times.

Listen to the first few minutes. It feels like Clinton has a lot of non-public information…

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to confidently make these serious allegations.

Page 15 Clinton Team Disputes Their Involvement

Clinton, her top aides John Podesta, Leonard Benardo (Open Society Foundation/ George Soros) Jake Sullivan (later President Biden’s National Security Adviser) and others called the Memorandum contents “ridiculous.”  

But Durham found "possible additional support…that the Clinton campaign was engaged in an effort or plan in late July 2016 to encourage scrutiny of Trump's purported ties to Russia..."

There is debate about the emails and whether they “were ultimately a composite of several emails” that were obtained through Russian hacking.

Page 18 President Obama, VP Biden And Others Knew

By August 3, 2016, three months before the election, the Obama Administration was briefed on the “Clinton plan.”

According to the Annex, President Obama, VP Biden, Clapper, Comey and others were briefed by then CIA Director John Brennan on the "intelligence received concerning the referenced plan by the Clinton campaign."

This dovetails with the "Brennan Notes" 'that were declassified in 2020 by John Ratcliffe then the Director of National Intelligence.  Ratcliffe is now CIA Director.

The Brennan notes describe “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.”

Writing to Congress in 2020, Ratcliffe said the Intelligence community “does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.”

Page 22 FBI Double-Standard Clinton Intelligence vs. Steele Dossier

According to the Annex, in August 2016, FBI outlined 4 reasons to discredit the Clinton plan to smear candidate Trump

• multiple layers of hearsay

• possible exaggeration

• possible editorialization

• potential translation errors from Russian

While the FBI under Director James Comey seemed to work overtime to shoot down the Clinton plan, Comey and his team used the unverified democrat funded opposition research, known as the Steele Dossier, to secure surveillance warrants for a Trump campaign aide.  The Dossier was also used in the 2017 intelligence assessment about Russian election interference. (We’ve discussed  in previous newsletters)

The Durham Annex states, “The FBI's assessment of the (Clinton plan) reports conflicts with that of the CIA, which as noted above, assessed the information not to be the product of Russian fabrication."

THE ROMANIAN HACKER

Most people don’t know this chapter in the Clinton email scandal…

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