Don’t Believe NYT Russia Hoaxers’ Lies About The Durham Annex

New documents shedding light on the Trump-Russia collusion hoax dropped Thursday, and the corporate media are still running cover for the same chicanery they helped launder back in 2016. Especially dishonest is the spin from Russia hoax handmaiden Charlie Savage of The New York Times, who falsely claimed Thursday night that the previously classified annex to the Durham report said something it never actually said.

The 29-page annex is a byproduct of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the decision by Barack Obama’s intelligence agencies to investigate then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016, based in part on a collection of falsehoods commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign known as the Steele dossier. In his report, released in 2023, Durham found the FBI lacked justification for investigating Trump and spying on his campaign.

He also found that the Obama intel agencies had been made aware of intelligence suggesting Hillary Clinton planned “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference” by the Russians. In 2016, the Clinton campaign’s law firm commissioned the Steele dossier, which included salacious lies about Trump and Russia, and shopped it to the FBI, which then launched the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump. In his report, Durham blasted the agencies for falling for allegations of Trump-Russia collusion despite their foreknowledge that it could be a Clinton-engineered hoax.

The annex released Thursday includes Russian intelligence memos obtained by U.S. agencies that evidence Durham’s suspicion that Clinton had approved a plan to smear Trump. The Russians claimed to have obtained several emails from Soros executive Leonard Benardo, one of which said that “HRC [Clinton] approved Julia’s idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections.”

Savage Falsely Claims Durham Found Emails Were ‘Fakes’

If those emails were real — or even if U.S. intelligence in 2016 suspected they were real — it would be another nail in the coffin of the Russia hoax, because it would further indicate the Obama FBI opened an investigation into Trump while believing the claims about Trump-Russia collusion were a likely Clinton plant. It would mean U.S. intelligence willfully participated in the Clinton campaign’s plot to frame Trump, which, of course, is exactly what happened.

But that would look awfully bad for Charlie Savage, who has dutifully carried water for the Russia hoax for the past decade. So, in an article and accompanying post last night, Savage downplayed the emails and falsely claimed Durham had “decided they were fakes made by Russian spies.”

The problem is, that’s not what Durham concluded at all.

Durham certainly never said the emails were fabricated, and in fact said he couldn’t tell for sure. He said his office was unable to “determine definitively whether the purported Clinton campaign plan [intelligence] … was entirely genuine, partially true, a composite pulled from multiple sources, exaggerated in certain respects, or fabricated in its entirety.”

Moreover, Durham’s team interviewed U.S. intelligence personnel who were “well-versed” in the matter, and they testified that their “best assessment was that the Benardo emails were likely authentic.” Savage dismisses this because these interviews happened early in Durham’s investigation.

Durham also says that the CIA “prepared a written assessment of the authenticity and veracity of the above-referenced intelligence.” His description of their conclusion contains redactions, but it appears to say the CIA “stated that it did not assess that the above … memoranda … [were] the product of Russian fabrications.”

In his report, Durham also noted contemporaneous events that lent credence to the claim that Clinton had approved the plan. “On July 29, 2016 — three days after the purported approval of the Clinton Plan intelligence — Michael Sussmann and Marc Elias, the General Counsel to the Clinton campaign, met with Fusion GPS personnel in Elias’s office at Perkins Coie,” Durham noted. Fusion GPS was the firm that hired Christopher Steele to cook up the Steele dossier.

Also notable: Just days before the purported email alleging Clinton’s “approval” of the plan, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook was floating the claim to Jake Tapper that the Russians were meddling in the election “for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump” — which would become a central claim of the Russia collusion hoax.

Savage and his co-author and fellow Russiagate truther Adam Goldman rely heavily on two things to claim the purported Benardo emails are fake. First, they point to a line in the annex in which Durham says his “best assessment” is that the purported Benardo emails “were ultimately a composite of several emails,” which is obviously not the same thing as saying he thought the Russians completely made them up.

Second, they rely on denials from the Clinton campaign. But they also represent those inaccurately. Savage and Goldman say Benardo “told Mr. Durham in 2021 that he had never seen the message and did not write it.” If you actually read the annex, Durham says, “Benardo stated that, to the best of his recollection, he did not draft the emails” but that “the last sentence in the email … sounded like something he would have said.”

Intel Chiefs Took Memos Seriously at the Time

What damns Savage and Goldman’s revisionist reading the most, however, is the abundant evidence that Obama’s intelligence chiefs took the purported Benardo emails seriously when they became aware of them.

On Aug. 3, 2016, just days after receiving intelligence about the purported emails, CIA Director John Brennan “briefed President Obama, Vice President Biden, DNI Clapper, FBI Director Comey, and other U.S. officials” on the “intelligence received concerning the referenced plan by the Clinton campaign.” Brennan took handwritten notes about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on 26 July of a proposed plan from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.”

Comey also took the intel memos so seriously that he told Congress under oath the intelligence “was among the reasons” he unilaterally made the decision not to charge Clinton in relation to her email server scandal, rather than allowing Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch to make the decision. He cited the memos’ inclusion of allegations about Lynch — and how bad it would look if the memos leaked — as a reason he sidestepped her.

Testifying to Congress in December 2018, Comey said of the memo: “So far as I knew at the time, and still think, the material itself was genuine,” though he insisted that was a “separate question” from whether “what it said was accurate.”

In a follow-up question, Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee asked Comey if he had thought the memo “was conjured up by the Russians,” and Comey answered he had not.

Durham also notes that FBI General Counsel James Baker “did not dismiss the credibility” of the reports, unlike some of his FBI colleagues. Baker was “greatly concerned” about Lynch’s reaction to being briefed on the intel, a reaction he thought was suspicious.

The Real Scandal

This isn’t the first time Savage and Goldman have lied about Durham’s findings. Months before the Durham report became public, they claimed Durham had “failed to find wrongdoing in the origins of the Russia inquiry,” a claim that was demonstrably false. They even went so far as to rely on the attorney representing Stefan Halper, one of the “sources” of the Trump-Russia allegations who lied to the FBI, to attack Durham in 2023.

But whether the intel memos in the Durham annex were completely genuine, “composites,” or even fabrications, the immense skepticism Savage, Goldman, and their ilk devote to them is itself a giveaway. Nary a fraction of the same skepticism was applied to the Steele dossier’s baseless and salacious allegations about Trump, and yet the entire media rushed to advance that hoax.

Likewise in the FBI, shoddy claims about Trump were treated as credible and used to launch a bogus investigation despite their suspicious sourcing and poor vetting. Meanwhile, intelligence implicating Clinton was squirreled away, and apparently hidden from agents on the Crossfire Hurricane team investigating Trump, despite the fact that it cast substantial doubt on the credibility of the allegations of Trump-Russia collusion.

That is the scandal. And that’s why it’s so important to Savage and Goldman to downplay the damning Clinton plan intelligence.

Elle Purnell is the assignment editor at The Federalist. She has appeared on Fox Business and Newsmax, and her work has been featured by RealClearPolitics, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Independent Women’s Forum. She received her B.A. in government with a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @_ellepurnell.