A number of key documents related to the “manufactured” Russiagate scandal are still heavily redacted or not yet declassified years later, despite efforts by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, among others, to make information about the start of the Trump collusion investigation public.
As President Donald Trump’s administration continues to release individual documents, here is some of the information that is still outstanding.
Durham annex released
FBI Director Kash Patel reportedly found thousands of sensitive Russigate-related documents hidden away in what he described as a secret room at the bureau, and among them was an annex to a special counsel report that the Trump administration declassified this week.
BONGINO SAYS HE FOUND FBI ROOM WITH HIDDEN COMEY-ERA EVIDENCE
Patel turned over the trove of documents to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who ultimately released the annex on Thursday. The now-declassified annex to former special counsel John Durham’s final report on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation provided more detail about intelligence suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s campaign planned to enlist the FBI in a plot to tie Trump to Russian election activities.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe is expected to declassify underlying intelligence, including the annex, used in Durham’s investigation.
RUSSIAGATE DEFINITIVE TIMELINE: HOW NEW INTELLIGENCE DOCUMENTS FIT IN
In the summer of 2016, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed then-President Barack Obama on intel that Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, was concocting a scheme to tie Trump, her election opponent, to Russia.
Ratcliffe, as director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, declassified Brennan’s handwritten notes, which documented that meeting. Former FBI Director James Comey and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were also at the Brennan-Obama briefing.
JAMES COMEY AND JOHN BRENNAN UNDER INVESTIGATION BY DOJ FOR TRUMP-RUSSIA INQUIRY
According to the heavily redacted meeting minutes, on July 28, 2016, Brennan’s briefing disclosed a plan from one of Clinton’s campaign foreign policy advisers “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.” Clinton approved the plan, Durham found. The annex, declassified on Thursday, described how an operative at a George Soros-led foundation also helped develop the plan.
On Sept. 7, 2016, the CIA forwarded an investigative lead, referring the intelligence about Clinton’s plan to the FBI for appropriate action. The memorandum, containing many redactions, mentioned “an exchange” discussing Clinton’s plan to tie Trump to Russia “as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”
Clinton thumb drives
The rapid release of records is exposing how top Obama administration officials advanced discredited Trump-Russia narratives during the 2016 presidential election while simultaneously neglecting to take procedural investigative steps against Hillary Clinton based on, in some instances, far more credible allegations.
On July 23, Grassley and Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to Patel requesting that the FBI fully investigate “untapped information” they said the bureau ignored in its investigation of Clinton’s usage of a private email server for official communications as secretary of state.
Their request is a follow-up inquiry in response to the FBI’s recent declassification of an appendix, known as the “Clinton annex,” to the Justice Department inspector general’s June 2018 report reviewing the department’s handling of the Clinton email investigation. The annex’s release earlier this month was the result of Grassley’s yearslong efforts to obtain the then-classified appendix.
FBI IGNORED KEY EVIDENCE IN CLINTON EMAIL INVESTIGATION, DOJ WATCHDOG REVEALS
According to the newly declassified Office of Inspector General findings, this “unevaluated material” that the lawmakers are seeking, concerning hacked State Department data, has been stored within several thumb drives inside a northern Virginia offshoot office of the FBI’s Washington Field Office since 2018.
The “vast majority of this data has never been reviewed by the FBI, including for counterintelligence purposes,” the watchdog report found, due to sensitivity concerns at the time pertaining to the disclosure of potentially privileged victim information.
In the letter addressed to Patel, Grassley and Crawford said the FBI, under the direction of Comey, “shockingly” overlooked evidence in the agency’s possession, even though department officials acknowledged in memorandum drafts that analyzing the thumb drives was necessary to conduct a “thorough and complete investigation” and “assess the national security risks” associated with Clinton’s server use.
“Literally, an entire collection of data, including ‘reports purporting to analyze or characterize intercepted U.S. communications’ and information concerning ‘cyber intrusions into U.S. entities’ were simply swept away into the dark confines of history – until now,” the lawmakers told Patel. “We refuse to allow this dereliction of duty to continue, and trust that your leadership will immediately seek to rectify this oversight by prior DOJ and FBI leadership.”
KASH PATEL PREVIEWS NEW RUSSIAGATE INFORMATION WILL PROVIDE ‘ACCOUNTABILITY’
Grassley and Crawford urged that the material at issue be “immediately dug out from hiding and properly assessed” in order “to correct this historic investigative and national security failure.”
“The revelations contained in the declassified OIG appendix are at the heart of why the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) became distrusted by so many under your agency’s prior directors: a failure to impartially conduct its law enforcement and intelligence mission,” they wrote.
Senate Intelligence Committee report
The massive Senate Intelligence Committee report, now regarded as Russiagate gospel among establishment Democrats, still contains walls of redactions spanning a considerable percentage of the 1,313-page publication.
Democrats are suddenly citing the congressional committee’s report, which was about Russian election activities at large, not specifically the targeting of Trump, to affirm their Trump-Russia collusion claims.
SENATORS STAND BY 2016 RUSSIA ELECTION MEDDLING REPORT DESPITE GABBARD’S CLAIMS
The bipartisan panel found “extensive” Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race.
Much of the report remains redacted five years after the fifth and final installment was released.
For instance, in Volume 5: Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities, the Senate Intelligence Committee introduced a new allegation suggesting that Russian-Ukrainian operative Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate of Trump 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort, “may have been connected” to the Russian military intelligence’s hack and leak of Democratic Party material. However, the report’s discussions on the matter were redacted.
PAUL MANAFORT CONCEDES HE GAVE TRUMP CAMPAIGN POLLING DATA TO THE RUSSIANS
Manafort’s involvement is “largely unknown,” according to the redacted report, but “two pieces of information…raise the possibility of Manafort’s potential connection to the hack-and-leak operations.” Details of said information were also redacted.
FISA warrants targeting Carter Page
In 2018, the FBI publicly released heavily redacted copies of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants targeting former Trump adviser Carter Page. The document, spanning 412 pages, included the initial October 2016 surveillance application along with three 90-day renewals, all approved for spying on Page.
To date, all four FISA warrant applications and accompanying approvals remain riddled with redactions. Blocks of information were still blacked out in 2020 iterations of the FISA filings provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of the panel’s FISA abuse investigation. At the time, DOJ officials said the submissions contained “minimal redactions.”
FBI DIRECTOR ADMITS: YES, SURVEILLANCE OF CARTER PAGE WAS ILLEGAL
Also in 2020, a judge denied legal efforts to compel additional declassification of the Page documents. Plaintiffs in the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit unsuccessfully sought further FISA disclosures, including complete versions of 21 redacted pages.
Ultimately, the DOJ concluded that there was insufficient evidence to authorize the extended electronic surveillance of Page.
According to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order, the DOJ assessed that two of the FISA applications involved “insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power” and that court authorizations for the pair of warrants “were not valid.”
Aside from one guilty plea ending in probation for a former FBI lawyer, no one has been held accountable for the FBI’s misconduct in the FISA process, particularly the unlawful surveillance of Page using misleading and error-filled applications. Who else was involved in the surveillance scheme is a pressing question long in need of an answer.
FBI Christopher Steele files
Key elements of the FBI Christopher Steele debriefing document, which was declassified during Trump’s final full day of his first term, remain out of view behind redactions, such as the British ex-spy’s descriptions of a “particular sub-source in greater detail.”
DOJ INSPECTOR GENERAL FINDS 17 ‘SIGNIFICANT ERRORS OR OMISSIONS’ IN CARTER PAGE FISA APPLICATIONS
Previously released FBI interview notes detailing the bureau’s discussion with Steele and his business partner back in 2017 are also still redacted at pertinent parts. In 2020, Grassley publicly shared a slightly less redacted version of the notes, but many of the withholdings persisted.
Buried below were significant, paragraph-length redactions related to Russian analyst Igor Danchenko, the “primary sub-source” for Steele’s dossier, and how the anti-Trump dossier was assembled and accordingly disseminated.