“There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Barack Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew that was false,” Gabbard said at the White House on Wednesday, noting that she was not making any specific charging recommendations. “That’s a great question for Attorney General Pam Bondi,” she told the Washington Examiner.

The materials, including the Wednesday release of the 2020 House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Majority staff (HPSCI) report, which was previously classified, underscore how federal law enforcement and intelligence officials applied dramatically different standards in their treatment of the two 2016 presidential candidates. Clinton benefited from what officials called “deference” in light of her political status, while the Trump campaign faced aggressive surveillance based on unverified intelligence claims, fast-tracked into public and legal channels just months before his first Inauguration Day.

“The Russia hoax will go down as one of the most troublesome events in U.S. history. A President of the United States was falsely accused, and a nation had to endure lies fabricated by rogue personnel within their own intelligence community,” said HPSCI Chairman Rick Crawford (R-AR).

These newly declassified materials, combined with the findings of special counsel John Durham in 2023, offer evidence that former President Barack Obama’s top officials advanced narratives tying Russia to Trump that had virtually no basis in reality.

The following exhaustive timeline lists key events during the start of the Trump-Russia investigation, including events marked in red, representing the new information pulled from the most recent materials declassified by the Trump administration. This timeline was compiled from a Washington Examiner review of the House Intelligence Committee’s declassified report, the DNI emails and draft ICA declassified by Gabbard, the “lessons learned” review released by the CIA, the Mueller report, the Durham report, court filings, DOJ inspector general documents, the Senate Intelligence Committee report, and news archives.

May 10, 2016

George Papadopoulos, a volunteer foreign policy adviser on the Trump campaign, meets with an unnamed Australian diplomat as well as then-Australian High Commissioner to the U.K. Alexander Downer at a tavern in London and, casually over drinks, “suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist” the Trump campaign “with the anonymous release of information” that would damage Clinton and Obama, according to the Durham report. Papadopoulos would go on to say that, one month earlier, a professor named Joseph Misfud had told him the Russians had “thousands of emails” containing “dirt” on Clinton. Misfud, who the DOJ said only took an interest in Papadopoulos because of his links to the Trump campaign, has since disappeared, and speculation has long swirled about why Misfud targeted Papadopoulos and how Misfud knew about the hacked emails at that time.

July 5, 2016

Then-FBI Director James Comey makes a televised statement announcing the FBI will recommend no charges in the Clinton email inquiry, while also noting that Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” with classified material.

This same day, Christopher Steele provided the first installment of what became known as the Steele dossier to an FBI agent with whom he had previously worked on an unrelated case.

July 21, 2016

A former FBI informant tells an FBI agent in a New England field office that the DNC and another unnamed individual have hired an investigative firm to look into Trump’s dealings with Russia. This appears to be the first time the FBI is made aware of a Democratic plot to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia.

July 22, 2016

WikiLeaks releases the first batch of emails stolen from DNC servers in what authorities would come to believe was a cyberattack by Russia.

July 26, 2016

Hillary Clinton approves a proposal from one of her campaign foreign policy advisers to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services,” according to intelligence reviewed by Durham. The CIA receives this intel within days, although CIA and FBI officials ensure it is concealed from agents working the Trump-Russia investigation.

The same day, Australia provides information to the U.S. Embassy in London about Downer and the unnamed Australian diplomat’s tavern conversation with Papadopoulos back in May. However, Special Counsel Robert Mueller would later conclude that Papadopoulos never communicated that information to anyone on the Trump campaign and had no involvement in or knowledge of Russian election activities other than the hearsay of what Misfud told him in March and April 2016. Nonetheless, this becomes the sole basis on which Crossfire Hurricane is opened. 

July 31, 2016

Peter Strzok, then deputy assistant director in the FBI’s counterintelligence division, writes the memo formally opening the Russian collusion investigation. Strzok says he was directed to do this by then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

August 1, 2016

One day later, FBI leadership orders the bulk of the corruption investigation into the Clinton Foundation to be closed. Agents later said the directive to do so came from Comey, who cited an “undisclosed counterintelligence concern” that he ultimately never revealed.

August 2, 2016

Strzok interviews the two Australian diplomats who said they heard George Papadopoulos suggest back in May that Russia had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

Notably, the FBI had already opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation before speaking to the very sources on which the case was predicated. During the interview, the Australians cautioned Strzok and another FBI agent that Papadopoulos had been vague and offered no specifics, casting doubt on the seriousness of his claims. Nonetheless, as Durham later noted, “shortly thereafter, the FBI opened full investigations of Papadopoulos, Carter Page, General Michael Flynn, and Paul Manafort.” Those individuals appear to have been selected because each had a history of links to Russia, not because the FBI had any other evidence of collusion or their specific involvement. 

August 3, 2016

Then-CIA Director John Brennan briefs Obama on Russian election activities, along with a larger group in the White House Situation Room, including Comey and then-Vice President Joe Biden. Brennan tells Obama about the intel that Clinton is planning to create a scandal tying Trump to Russia.

August 8, 2016

Strzok and Lisa Page, then an FBI lawyer on the Russia investigation, privately assure each other they can prevent Trump’s election. “[Trump’s] not going to become president, right? Right?!” Page writes to Strzok. “No. No, he’s not,” Strzok replies. “We’ll stop it.” 

Strzok is the lead investigator on Crossfire Hurricane.

August 19, 2016

Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, resigns amid media reports and leaks scrutinizing his ties to Russia.

August 20, 2016

The FBI directs a confidential human source to contact Carter Page to try to extract information from him. During the conversation, Page says he has never met Paul Manafort, which significantly undercuts a Steele dossier allegation that Page and Manafort were working together as the masterminds of the collusion scheme.

September 2, 2016

As intelligence agencies coordinate on the creation of an intelligence community assessment related to Russian election threats, an FBI intelligence analyst sends an email to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence saying that the FBI is “uncomfortable” with saying that “Russia does intend to disrupt our elections” and asking for language about Russia’s motivations to be “softened” in a draft document, according to emails declassified by Gabbard earlier this month. The FBI analyst said the bureau did not want to “mislead the reader to believe that the IC currently has information indicating Russia has a known intent to influence the elections.” The message suggests that intelligence officials did not fully believe Russia was trying to meddle in the election with the intent to hurt or help any specific candidate, weeks after the first DNC emails were leaked.

September 7, 2016

CIA officials send a formal referral to the FBI’s Comey and Strzok regarding the Clinton campaign’s proposal to create a scandal tying Trump to Russia.

September 12, 2016

Intel agencies circulate an intelligence community assessment draft that does not find that Russia has an intent to help Trump in any way. “We judge Russia has conducted cyber and intelligence operations that suggest that it has potential interest in disrupting the U.S. presidential election,” this assessment says. “The Kremlin’s cyber penetration of a U.S. political party’s servers and the timing of the probable subsequent leak of stolen data suggest that Russia is motivated to exploit the period surrounding the U.S. presidential election…For example, Putin might simply wish to make the U.S. electoral process appear illegitimate or to undermine the legitimacy of the President-elect, in order to strengthen Moscow’s hand.” Crucially, the FBI and the NSA recorded dissent in this assessment from the judgment that Russia was behind the summertime leaks of Democratic emails. “FBI and NSA, however, have low confidence in the attribution of the data leaks to Russia,” this September assessment says. “They agree that the disclosures appear consistent with what we might expect from Russian influence activities, but note that we lack sufficient technical details to correlate the information posted online to Russian state-sponsored actors.”

September 13, 2016

A website linked to Russia, DCLeaks.com, publishes hacked emails from Colin Powell in which the former Republican secretary of state had in June called Trump a “national disgrace.”

The intelligence community is later criticized in the House Intelligence Committee’s now-declassified report for omitting this leak from its post-election assessment that Russia aspired to help Trump win, as the release of emails that embarrassed Trump fits the intel community’s original consensus that Putin simply wanted to disrupt American politics, not benefit a particular side.

September 14, 2016

Undercover FBI agents arranged the first of several meetings with Papadopoulos this month, during which they tried to draw him into admitting things about Russia. The following day, the FBI arranges for Papadopoulos to meet with one of its confidential human sources, who is also secretly recording Papadopoulos. 

Papadopoulos repeatedly denies knowing anything about the source of Wikileaks, and he emphatically denies anyone on the Trump campaign is working with the Russians, which he says would be “illegal” and constitute “treason.”

“This was arguably the most significant information the FBI had gathered after approximately six weeks of investigative effort to evaluate the information it had received from Australia,” Durham wrote. “Yet the FBI chose to discount the information and assessed it to mean the opposite of what was explicitly said.”

September 19, 2016

The first six Steele reports formally reach the Crossfire Hurricane team. Although Steele and the firm paid by the Clinton campaign had been reaching out to the FBI for over two months, those reports had not yet made their way to the agents on the case. Durham later suggested that the delay “raises the question of whether the FBI had misgivings from the start about the provenance and reliability of the Steele Reports.”

September 21, 2016

Nevertheless, within two days of receiving it, FBI personnel put unverified information from the Steele dossier in the earliest draft of its first application for a surveillance warrant for Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser with the deepest history of ties to Russia.

This same day, Steele flies to Washington, D.C., and the next day meets with a series of reporters, including from the New York Times, at the Tabard Inn, planting stories about Trump and Russia, according to the Durham report.

September 23, 2016

The first leak related to the Trump-Russia investigation drops from journalist Michael Isikoff. In his article, Isikoff cites “multiple sources who have been briefed on the issue” to describe the FBI’s interest in Carter Page and his ties to the Kremlin.

September 25, 2016

Two days after the article about the FBI’s interest in him, Carter Page writes a letter to Comey offering to come in voluntarily for an interview. The FBI declines to accept, continuing its effort to wiretap him instead.

October 3, 2016

FBI agents meet with Steele in Rome and offer him $1 million if he can provide corroboration for his sensational claims linking Trump and his aides to Russia.

October 21, 2016

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approves the first of four FISA warrants for spying on Carter Page. The application for the wiretap included Unverified rumors from the Steele dossier.  

The investigation continues to be based on nothing more than a campaign volunteer’s tavern conversation in London and the Steele dossier.

November 8, 2016

Donald Trump pulls off an upset and defeats Hillary Clinton in the presidential race.

December 5, 2016

The House Intelligence Committee receives its first post-election briefing from a top DNI official on Russian election meddling. Significantly, the briefing does not include the judgment that Putin aspired to help Trump win, because this was not the intelligence community’s view at this time.

December 6, 2016

Then-President Barack Obama directs then-DNI James Clapper, Brennan, and others to produce a new review of all intelligence related to Russia’s activity during the 2016 election, according to a memo produced in June by CIA Director John Ratcliffe. 

Obama demands that the new intelligence community assessment (ICA) be ready for publication before Trump takes office, the House Intelligence Committee later found.

December 9, 2016

However, before work gets underway on the new assessment, leaks published in the New York Times and the Washington Post suggest that the intelligence community has already concluded that Putin wanted to help Trump win. 

“The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter,” the Post reports. A “senior U.S. official” describes this assessment as a “consensus view,” although the newly-released materials reveal that this was not true.

Also on this day, according to a newly-declassified House Intelligence Committee report, Brennan orders the five CIA analysts he selected to write up the first draft of the assessment to include information from “substandard reporting,” which had been collected before the election but judged at the time to be too unreliable to use in any way, in the assessment “to support claims that Putin aspired to help Trump win.” This includes a deceptively clipped fragment of a sentence, which in the context of the report from which it was clipped, appears to mean something different, and this sentence fragment ultimately “constitutes the only classified information cited to suggest Putin ‘aspired’ to help Trump win,” congressional investigators found.

Brennan also severely limits access to the underlying intelligence that he directs his analysts to pull from to support the conclusion that Putin aspired to help Trump win, and he says this is because the intelligence is so sensitive. But the ICA’s final conclusion — Putin aspired to help Trump win, which is misleadingly drawn based on that raw intelligence — is spelled out in a classified version of the final report that is circulated to 250 government officials, “an extraordinarily high number for such a
sensitive document.”

December 16, 2016

On Brennan’s orders, the CIA drafters dig up a second piece of “unverified and implausible” information, which is of unknown origin, to use in the intelligence assessment. Like the first piece of substandard reporting, CIA analysts had collected it before the election but declined to use it anywhere because it was not deemed credible then.

Yet simultaneously, the CIA drafters “selectively excluded information from reliable intelligence sources that senior Russian officials had serious reservations about how a potential Trump administration could be bad for Moscow and complicate repairing relations with Washington.”

Including that information — from sources far more reliable than what Brennan ordered his team to use — would have directly undermined Putin’s final judgement that Trump should win.

December 19, 2016

When representatives from multiple intelligence agencies meet to go over a first draft of the intelligence community assessment, several express “discomfort” with the claim that Putin aspired to help Trump win the election due to a lack of evidence, Ratcliffe’s memo says.

Among the information withheld from that draft and subsequent ones is the fact that intel agencies knew Russia had obtained emails showing Clinton was in poor physical health, suffering from a mental health crisis, benefitting from political pressure exerted on her behalf over the FBI to close the Clinton email and Foundation investigations, and had as secretary of state traded favors in exchange for political support – but that Putin chose not to leak any of this during the campaign. If Putin had indeed aspired to help Trump win, he would have released that information, House Intelligence Committee investigators concluded. None of this is included in the ICA. One day later, it enters a formal review process at the CIA.

December 28, 2016

Despite being weeks from leaving office, Obama imposes sanctions on Russia and expels 35 of its diplomats in response to its election meddling activities. Michael Flynn, incoming National Security Adviser, speaks on the phone that day with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

Obama’s move is widely viewed as a way to box in Trump, who has campaigned on de-escalating tensions with Russia.

December 29, 2016

The CIA’s deputy director for analysis writes an email to Brennan warning that including information from the Steele dossier in the intelligence community assessment risks “the credibility of the entire paper” due to the dossier’s unreliable claims. Contrary to his later denials, such as during a closed-door interview with the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2018, Brennan insists on its inclusion.

January 6, 2017

The final classified and unclassified versions of the ICA are published. Obama’s top intel officials brief President-elect Trump on the ICA’s findings. The briefing includes the Steele dossier, which was presented with the ICA in a classified appendix.

January 10, 2017

CNN reports that Trump has been briefed on the dossier, citing “multiple U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the briefings.” Hours later, Buzzfeed becomes the first outlet to publish the Steele dossiers in full.

January 12, 2017

FBI agents file the second FISA application for a warrant to continue spying on Carter Page. Like the first application, this one is also based on information that agents have not been able to verify.

The Washington Post, citing a “senior U.S. government official,” reports a leak that Flynn spoke with Kislyak in December, bringing a wave of scrutiny on Flynn. However, this leak does not reveal what Flynn and Kislyak discussed.

January 24, 2017

FBI agents begin a three-day interview with Igor Danchenko, whom they discovered to be Steele’s main source for the dossier in December. Danchenko tells the FBI that “most of the information he gathered for Steele was the product of casual conversation with people in his social circle, including those parts of the Steele Reports used in the Page FISA applications.” The FBI learns that Danchenko has been living in the Washington, D.C. area and not in Russia, as was indicated on the first two FISA applications for Carter Page, where agents cited Danchenko as a Russia-based source to justify the wiretaps. Nonetheless, FBI agents did not correct the records of the following two FISA applications. “Danchenko was not able to provide any corroborative evidence related to any substantive allegation contained in the Steele Reports – and critically- was unable to corroborate any of the FBI’s assertions contained in the Carter Page FISA applications,” Durham wrote. During a subsequent interview in February 2017 with FBI agents, Danchenko reiterates that the information he passed along to Steele was nothing more than “rumor and speculation.” Even so, the FBI moves in March 2017 to convert Danchenko to an informant and begins paying him. He is never able to corroborate anything in the dossier.

On this same day, FBI investigators interview Michael Flynn, Trump’s newly installed National Security Adviser. During that voluntary interview, Flynn said he did not ask Russia’s then-ambassador to the U.S. to convince Moscow not to retaliate against the U.S. over the sanctions Obama had imposed on Russia. 

January 27, 2017

Papadopoulos sits for an interview with the FBI for the first time, even though the FBI had tasked a confidential informant to speak with him back in September.

In this interview, Papadopoulos tells agents he recalls meeting with Misfud before he joined the Trump campaign as a volunteer adviser. However, the DOJ later says in its indictment of Papadopoulos that the announcement of his joining the campaign came in early March, and his first meeting with Misfud came on March 14. For this discrepancy, prosecutors under Special Counsel Mueller ultimately charged Papadopoulos with lying to the FBI. 

February 8, 2017

Comey briefs Trump and his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, at the White House on the Steele dossier, among other topics. After Priebus asks why the Steele dossier was included in the ICA even though it was unproven, Comey falsely claims the FBI, CIA, and the NSA all agreed it was relevant information and needed to be included, even though “CIA analysts and senior operations officers had only weeks earlier argued with FBI counterparts against the dossier being included in the ICA” and that Brennan “had to order it included over the objections of those professionals,” congressional investigators found. 

February 13, 2017

Michael Flynn resigns. He steps down the same day the Washington Post reports on the leak of a warning acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a key Obama administration holdover, gave to the Trump White House that Flynn had publicly misrepresented his December call with Kislyak, the Russian ambassador.

The report says Clapper and Brennan encouraged Yates to go to the Trump White House with the contents of Flynn’s phone call. Yates knew what was said on the call because the Obama intelligence community was spying on Kislyak’s communications and intercepted the conversation with Flynn, then “unmasked” Flynn’s identity in what critics said was a politicized intelligence abuse.

April 7, 2017

FBI agents file the third FISA application for a warrant to continue spying on Carter Page. This occurs despite the FBI failing to find anything to corroborate the Steele dossier in the six months since drafting the first warrant, which remains the only evidence presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In fact, the FBI has at this point collected a significant amount of evidence to suggest the Steele dossier is false, but agents omit this exculpatory information and keep trying to wiretap Page.

May 9, 2017

Trump fired Comey, sparking public outrage that led to the appointment of a special counsel. 

May 17, 2017

Robert Mueller is appointed special counsel.

June 19, 2017

Then-FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith alters an email used to support the fourth and final surveillance warrant for Carter Page. 

A CIA official had told Clinesmith in an email several days earlier that Page had previously worked with the CIA to provide information about the Russians he had encountered over the years. This included some of the Russians who were listed as Page’s suspicious contacts in the FISA applications. The CIA official said in an email that Page is a source for the intelligence agency.

But Clinesmith inserts the words “not a source” into the email before forwarding it to the FBI team. This makes Page’s contacts with Russians look far more suspicious than they really are, given that Page had already cooperated with the CIA about the contacts and wasn’t hiding anything. 

Clinesmith pleaded guilty in 2020 to a criminal charge of doctoring the email. He was sentenced to no prison time. This remains the only conviction related to the creation of the Russia investigation.

June 29, 2017

The FBI submits the fourth and final surveillance warrant application for Carter Page. It is approved.

October 5, 2017

Mueller’s prosecutors charge Papadopoulos with lying to the FBI over the incorrect dates he provided about his meetings with Misfud and what Papadopoulos said about his impression of Misfud. Papadopoulos told FBI agents during the January interview that he thought Misfud was “just a guy talk[ing] up connections,” but prosecutors said Papadopoulos was well aware of Misfud’s ties to Russian intelligence.

December 1, 2017

Mueller’s prosecutors charge Flynn with lying to the FBI about his phone call one year earlier with Kislyak. The criminal case takes on twists and turns over the years, with Flynn pleading guilty and then withdrawing his plea, and the DOJ eventually dropping the case in 2020. When prosecutors dropped the case, they took the unusual step of releasing an interview with the FBI agent who oversaw the initial counterintelligence investigation of Flynn. That agent described “problematic” behavior from the FBI leaders who insisted on advancing the investigation of Flynn despite there never being any evidence that Flynn had any illicit links to Russia. This agent said he was cut out of the January FBI interview with Flynn, when Flynn had suspected he was engaging in a friendly and casual conversation with FBI agents and even offered to give them a tour, not suspecting they would later catch him on a false statements charge.

May 16, 2018

In a closed-door hearing with the Senate Intelligence Committee, Brennan denies having advocated for the Steele dossier to be included in the 2016 ICA. “Initially, the FBI wanted it incorporated into the assessment itself. We all pushed back on that,” Brennan said.

April 18, 2019

After years of investigation, millions of taxpayer dollars spent, and the creation of a political scandal that has now engulfed the majority of Trump’s first term, the Justice Department releases the 448-page Mueller report.

It finds there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.