A trove of long-suppressed classified documents—said to reveal government efforts to allege collusion between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in the 2016 election—may finally be released.
Two Trump administration officials told RealClearInvestigations that senior aides convened an urgent meeting Sunday to review “new information on Russiagate,” which could underpin a criminal conspiracy case against Obama and Biden political appointees accused of weaponizing federal agencies against Trump.
Among the records is a previously hidden 200-page congressional audit, detailing how an Obama-ordered intelligence assessment on Russia was framed to portray Trump as beholden to the Kremlin.
Sources told RealClearInvestigations that emails and other documents tying the CIA’s drafting of the Intelligence Community Assessment to the FBI’s now-discredited “Crossfire Hurricane” probe could be declassified in an ODNI report as soon as Thursday. The White House was briefed on the development Tuesday, according to those sources.
At the Sunday meeting, intelligence officials and their DOJ counterparts also weighed declassifying Special Counsel John Durham’s investigative notes and deposition transcripts from his probe into how the CIA and FBI handled the ICA—which in part relied on an anti-Trump dossier funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Officials say the newly declassified records could bolster a criminal case against Obama-era intelligence chiefs—most notably ex–CIA Director John Brennan—who are accused of lying to Congress about their use of the dossier in the ICA. Although the five-year statute of limitations for perjury has expired, they could still face charges for conspiring to commit perjury, the outlet reported.
Sources told RealClearInvestigations the ODNI-organized meeting took place in a secure SCIF and also covered plans to release a classified appendix to Durham’s final report. That appendix purportedly contains intelligence Brennan intercepted showing that, in July 2016, the Clinton campaign plotted to fabricate a Trump–Russia scandal to distract from her email probe—an alleged plot the FBI ignored as it launched “Crossfire Hurricane” against Trump.
Meeting participants also weighed declassifying an additional annex from the inspector general’s review of the FBI’s handling of Clinton’s unsecured email server. That annex reportedly shows how Clinton’s improper email practices allowed “foreign actors” access to classified information—yet the FBI never opened a probe into the breach, reinforcing a narrative that then-Director James Comey let Clinton off the hook while aggressively pursuing investigations into Trump.
Senior staff from ODNI and DOJ attended, along with members of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group; notably absent were DNI Tulsi Gabbard and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
