We Don’t Need The Durham Annex To Know Hillary Set Up Trump

Just hours after the release of bombshell intelligence showing that the Clinton campaign orchestrated the Trump-Russia hoax, The New York Times and Washington Post rushed out articles that misrepresented the intelligence entirely — one falsely claimed Durham dismissed it, the other falsely claimed the FBI investigated it. In reality, Durham treated the intelligence as credible and preserved it in a classified appendix to his report without disclaiming or refuting it — because the facts were confirmed by what unfolded in real time.

Now, thanks to Sen. Chuck Grassley, that once-secret appendix has been released. It contains raw intelligence obtained by the CIA in July 2016 indicating that Hillary Clinton had approved a plan to “vilify” Donald Trump by tying him to Russia while relying on the FBI to drive the smear. At the time, the intelligence was routed to President Obama, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-FBI Director James Comey.

But rather than investigate Clinton for orchestrating a dirty trick operation that funneled false intelligence into the U.S. government, Comey and Brennan, with the apparent blessing of President Obama, turned their focus on Trump. Instead of treating him as the victim of a political smear campaign, they helped carry it out.

As the Durham appendix notes, both the CIA and intelligence analysts consulted by Durham assessed the intelligence as likely authentic. But the real strength of the intelligence — apparently left unstated by Durham or anyone else — lies in the fact that it was effectively self-verifying. The very actions it described — Clinton operatives accusing Trump of Russian ties, feeding false information into the FBI, and working with a cybersecurity firm to plant the Russia collusion narrative — were already unfolding in public, in real time, exactly as the intelligence outlined.

For example, on July 24, 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robbie Mook appeared on national television and declared that the “the Russian” perpetrated the DNC email leak “for the purpose of actually of helping Donald Trump.” It was a striking accusation made without evidence, and it came at the time U.S. intelligence was receiving reports, described in the Durham appendix, that Clinton operatives had a plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Russian hackers.

The intelligence also included two emails allegedly sent by Leonard Benardo, a senior vice president at George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, formerly known as the Soros Foundation. These emails — reportedly obtained by hackers “affiliated” with the Russian government who breached Benardo’s account — provide striking insight into the Clinton campaign’s strategy. In the first email, dated July 25, 2016, Benardo allegedly outlined the plan’s strategic goals: “Julie says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump.”

“Julie” appears to refer to Julianne Smith, the NATO ambassador under President Biden and, at the time, a Clinton foreign policy adviser.

Benardo allegedly continued, “Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire.” That Benardo purportedly anticipated FBI involvement — indeed, the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was launched just six days later — makes this exchange particularly significant.

In a second email, dated July 27, 2016, Benardo allegedly confirmed that Hillary Clinton herself had approved Smith’s plan to vilify Trump: “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. The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue.”

Perhaps the clearest evidence comes from Benardo’s purported reference to the role of the so-called cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which he mentioned in a crucial line: “In absence of direct evidence, CrowdStrike and ThreatConnect will supply the media.”

This was further confirmed by an accompanying memorandum in the intelligence package received by Brennan, Comey, and Obama in July 2016: “During the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information through the FBI-affiliated ‘attic-based’ technical structures, in particular, the Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect companies, from where the information would then be disseminated through leading U.S. publications.”

The fact that CrowdStrike was apparently explicitly identified as the vehicle to push the narrative into the media in the absence of actual evidence is especially striking — because that is exactly what CrowdStrike did.

On June 14, 2016, The Washington Post published a now-famous article by Ellen Nakashima asserting that Russia had hacked the DNC. That narrative had not been publicly advanced before then. Incredibly, her sources were CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch and Chief Security Officer Shawn Henry, who claimed with supreme confidence that Russian intelligence was behind the breach.

However, when forced to testify under oath in 2017, Henry struck a very different tone. He admitted that CrowdStrike “didn’t have direct evidence” that any data had been exfiltrated from the DNC servers. In fact, he could not even confirm there had been a hack, though he stated that “there are indicators that it happened.”

“There’s not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated,” Henry said, adding, “we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.”

So why did CrowdStrike rush to tell the media that Russia was responsible? And why did The Washington Post run with it? The Clinton Plan intelligence gives us the answer: Planting that story was the entire point.

And the FBI’s role in putting “more oil into the fire,” as the purported email describes, wasn’t theoretical — it actually happened. Benardo not only allegedly foreshadowed the launch of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, but shortly afterward, Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann walked into FBI headquarters with fabricated claims linking Trump to a Russian bank, Alfa Bank. Although the Bureau quickly debunked these claims, they continued to pursue them regardless. Meanwhile, starting a few weeks before Benardo’s emails, former British spy Christopher Steele — working on behalf of the Clinton campaign through Fusion GPS — was feeding similarly false intelligence to the FBI, alleging that Trump was compromised by Russia.

Once again, the details revealed in the Clinton Plan intelligence perfectly align with what unfolded in real time. The Clinton team pushed fabricated stories while CrowdStrike took the lead on the technical front. The media amplified these claims, and the FBI actively participated by adding fuel to the fire, just as the email anticipated.

Later, in a 2020 press release, CrowdStrike claimed it had “proof” of Russian hacking. However, rather than presenting direct evidence, it pointed to the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) — an assessment now shown to have been deceptively shaped by John Brennan — along with the Senate Intelligence Committee report and the Mueller investigation. When challenged, CrowdStrike’s only defense was to cite government bodies that were themselves dependent on CrowdStrike’s assertions. This was by all appearances a circular lie.

In truth, CrowdStrike was not some neutral cybersecurity firm reacting to a real-world crisis. At the time of the DNC incident, it was a mid-level company with no particular prominence. After it pinned the DNC breach on Russia, it was catapulted to fame. Its valuation skyrocketed and has continued to rise since.

The connections run even deeper. Dmitri Alperovitch and Shawn Henry — the two CrowdStrike executives who appeared as key sources in The Washington Post article that seeded the Russia hacking hoax narrative — have significant political and institutional ties. Alperovitch is a vocal pro-Ukraine activist involved with the Atlantic Council, a think tank closely aligned with the Democrat Party. Meanwhile, Henry spent years as an executive assistant director at the FBI. His leadership role gave him deep ties to the very agency that would later rely on CrowdStrike’s analysis, helping to seed the collusion hoax and, as the emails put it, “put more oil into the fire.”

Even worse, the person who brought CrowdStrike into the picture, tasking them with looking at the alleged DNC hack, was Michael Sussmann, the Clinton campaign lawyer who was also pushing the Alfa Bank hoax and feeding fabricated data to the FBI. CrowdStrike, Sussmann, and Clinton’s legal team operated in coordination, with help from a compliant media eager to amplify their claims.

All of this was obvious to anyone willing to look. By the time the FBI and CIA received the Clinton Plan intelligence, every piece was falling into place: CrowdStrike had laid the groundwork for the narrative, Christopher Steele was feeding bogus intelligence, Michael Sussmann was pushing fabricated claims inside the FBI, and Robbie Mook was making unfounded accusations in public. The timeline fit perfectly and the actions aligned exactly. The intelligence wasn’t unverified — it was a detailed account of what was actually happening.

In fact, we didn’t need secret intelligence to expose the plan. It was playing out openly before our eyes in real time, and those who looked away became complicit in the greatest political deception in American history.