By THERESE BOUDREAUX | THE CENTER SQUARE
Newly declassified intelligence documents indicate that Hillary Clinton, her 2016 presidential campaign managers, and a top member of a George Soros group plotted to fabricate the Trump-Russia collusion campaign to distract the public from Clinton’s email scandal.
Declassified by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, the 29-page “Durham annex” from 2023 chronicles the Office of Special Counsel’s (OSC) investigation into purported efforts by the Clinton campaign and its allies to falsely tie Russia’s cyber interference attempts during election season to Trump.
In its investigation, OSC uncovered emails that appeared to be sent by Leonard Benardo, senior vice president of Soros’ Open Society Foundations, to people involved in Clinton’s campaign. Soros is a billionaire funder of Democratic campaigns.
The emails appear to show that Benardo engaged in discussions with Julianne Smith, one of Clinton’s foreign policy advisors, about how to use reports of Russian interference in the election to Clinton’s advantage and Trump’s detriment. Benardo later told OSC he had no recollection of writing the emails.
In an email dated July 25, 2016, Benardo told an undisclosed person that “politicization is on the table” and that he and Smith had been discussing ways to create a story casting Trump as “an agent of influence” in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempts to undermine the election “in the interest of Donald Trump.”
“Julie [Smith] says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the FBI will put more oil on the fire,” Benardo wrote, indicating that Clinton’s campaign planned to use the FBI to push the story.
While the FBI established early on that Putin ordered “cyber influence operations” to undermine faith in the U.S. democratic process, it found no evidence that Putin interfered on behalf of Trump.
But former President Barack Obama and his senior advisors reportedly pressured the Intelligence Community to assert otherwise, according to documents declassified last week. Obama has denied the allegations.
The Clinton campaign’s goal, it appeared, was to divert Americans’ attention away from her email scandal, since “Hillary is hardly good-looking as far as credibility is concerned,” Benardo added.
Clinton served as Secretary of State under the Obama administration from 2009 to 2013, where she used a private email server for official agency communications, putting thousands of emails with sensitive or classified information at risk.
According to a follow-up email by Benardo dated two days later, Clinton personally approved of the plan to fabricate the Trump-Russia collusion.
“HRC approved Julia’s idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections. That should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level,” Benardo wrote.
“The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue. Say something like a critical infrastructure threat for the election to feel menace since both POTUS and VPOTUS have acknowledged the fact IC would speed up searching for evidence that is regrettably still unavailable,” he clarified.
Upon finding the emails, the Office of Special Council questioned Benardo, who told them he did not know who “Julie” referred to and he did not draft the emails “to the best of his recollection.”
Clinton, when questioned by OSC, said the plan she apparently approved “looked like Russian disinformation.” Campaign Chair John Podesta and other advisors each denied the validity of the emails and each called the emails “ridiculous.”
Smith was also interviewed and said she recalled neither drafting or receiving the emails nor proposing a plan to Clinton or other campaign leadership to try tying Putin to Trump. She also denied enlisting the FBI to further such efforts.
But OSC found that the verified communications between Smith and campaign advisors implied otherwise. The same day Benardo purportedly sent the email about how the FBI “will put oil on the fire,” Smith texted a Clinton campaign advisor and asked them to “see if [Special Assistant to the President and National Security Council member] will tell you if there is a formal fbi or other investigation into the hack?”
The Clinton campaign advisor, whose name is redacted, replied that the person in question “won’t say anything more to me. Sorry. Told me she went as far as she could.”
Ultimately, OSC determined that “it is a logical deduction that [redacted] Smith was, at a minimum, playing a role in the Clinton campaign’s efforts to tie Trump to Russia,” and that available evidence “supports the notion that the campaign might have wanted or expected the FBI or other agencies to aid the effort” via a formal investigation.
“In short, neither the Office nor [redacted] have been able to determine definitively whether the purported Clinton campaign plan [redacted] was entirely genuine, partially true, a composite pulled from multiple sources, exaggerated in certain respects, or fabricated in its entirety,” OSC concluded, adding that regardless, the entire affair was “concerning.”
As of Thursday afternoon, Clinton and her former campaign advisors have not responded to the Durham annex’s publication, despite outcry from Republicans. The Trump administration is presenting the report as the “smoking gun” confirming recent allegations that Obama, Clinton, and the Intelligence Community created a deliberate smear campaign to delegitimize Trump’s first presidency.
Based on the Durham annex, the Obama FBI failed to adequately review and investigate intelligence reports showing the Clinton campaign may have been ginning up the fake Trump-Russia narrative for Clinton’s political gain, which was ultimately done through the Steele Dossier and other means,” U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Thursday.
“History will show that the Obama and Biden administration’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies were weaponized against President Trump,” he added. “This political weaponization has caused critical damage to our institutions and is one of the biggest political scandals and cover-ups in American history.”
I hope everyone of these crooked, lying, conniving and evil scums go to prison for a very LONG time!! I even hope that George SOROS would end up in prison being he is the main leader of a lot of these evil actions!!!
It’s not too late to put Hillary in handcuffs and ankle chains. The old battle ax is nearing 80, but would still make a great mug shot for the Democrat Party in 2026 and 2028.
Hillary spoke a lot about some proverbial glass ceiling that needed to be broken, looks like she ignored the fact that she was throwing stones in her own glass house.
Good to see accountability coming for the corrupted illuminati bloodlines.
The declassified Durham report annex shows the special counsel set out to prove the ‘Clinton Plan’ emails were real but decided they were fakes made by Russian spies. It’s amazing to see people talking about those “emails” as if they were real. Can people read?
More distraction. The forever enemy of Clinton, Biden, Obama. What a joke. This will go nowhere, as usual. Fox News will focus on it 24 hours a day, as usual. Yaaawn!
Poor Matt- Facts are a distraction for you? Like it or not when you try to fool the American people and get caught, you have to pay the price. Let me guess, you think Biden was a competent and coherent president, don’t you?
The real distraction is that Hillary and the Rats tried to affect the election with false information to gain control of the government. That should be alarming to everyone. But hey, mail in voting and scare tactics work for them.
More than FOX news is looking at this. And it will not go away no matter how much you hope it will. This will very likely cost you and your failing Democratic Party in future election cycles.
It must be quite sobering for you to come to grips with the fact that your democratic hero’s: Clinton, Comey, Brennen, Clappper and a couple more treasonous politicians and other govt employees have been proven to be corrupt.
BURN BABY BURN
This is a cynical distraction. Epstein files.
It’s not a bombshell. We already knew what was happening. The real bombshell is that they’re admitting it now.
Who wudda known that Princess Pant-Suit would do such a thing?