Formerly classified documents newly released by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley purportedly show the Hillary Clinton campaign came up with the plan to suggest President Donald Trump was colluding with Russia when he first ran for office in 2016.
The information collected by Clinton’s campaign was later used to justify a CIA-led surveillance operation into Trump’s campaign, and a special counsel investigation during the first few years of his presidency.
Grassley said he believes the documents show the FBI under the Obama administration “failed to adequately review and investigate intelligence reports showing the Clinton campaign may have been ginning up the fake Trump-Russia narrative for Clinton’s political gain, which was ultimately done through the Steele Dossier and other means.”
“These intelligence reports and related records, whether true or false, were buried for years,” Grassley said in a press release. “History will show that the Obama and Biden administration’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies were weaponized against President Trump. This political weaponization has caused critical damage to our institutions and is one of the biggest political scandals and cover-ups in American history.”
Also, the FBI recently found “burn bags” filled with sensitive documents related to the 2016 Trump-Russia probe, according to Fox News. Thousands of documents were apparently found.
Burn bags are common lingo at the FBI, former agent Nicole Parker told Fox News, “Anything that you basically use or touch at the FBI, goes into a burn bag. ... Those documents are literally escorted to an incinerator by armed agents.”
She added that there could have been a number of reasons as to why those documents weren’t destroyed — negligence, avoiding blame, or lack of procedural knowledge.
“There are a number of reasons that this could have occurred, but the key is that these documents were found,” she said.
Evidence found in the bags included the classified annex to former special counsel John Durham’s final report, showing that in early 2016, Democratic operatives, including then‑DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, held confidential discussions with senior officials at billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
Grassley also released the classified annex to Durham’s report. The documents allegedly show plans within the Clinton campaign to tie Trump to Putin and convince the public the two were colluding.
Open Society senior vice president Leonard Benardo was also allegedly involved in the coordination with Clinton campaign staffer Julianne Smith, according to a series of emails in late July 2016 that were discovered, according to a review of the documents by The New York Post.
“Julie (sic) says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump,” Benardo wrote on July 25. “Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”
He wrote a few days later, “HRC (Hillary Rodham Clinton) 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.”
Durham’s team and certain intelligence officials also considered the documents likely genuine, according to the annex, but their exact origin is still disputed. If confirmed, the documents imply a planned effort and anticipated institutional support aimed at shaping public opinion against Trump.
In June, FBI Director Kash Patel appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and claimed that former FBI Director James Comey and others concealed documents from the public, which is what he and his staff have been investigating.
“Just think about this,” Patel told Rogan. “Me, as director of the FBI, the former ‘Russiagate guy,’ when I first got to the bureau, found a room that Comey and others hid from the world in the Hoover Building, full of documents and computer hard drives that no one had ever seen or heard of. Locked the key and hid access and just said, ‘No one’s ever gonna find this place.’”
Earlier this month, Comey and the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, were put under investigation by the Department of Justice for potential wrongdoing in the Trump-Russia probe during the Obama administration.
And last week, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, accused former President Barack Obama and leadership in his national security cabinet of “lay(ing) the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump” in a press release.
Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former President Barack Obama have all denied wrongdoing related to the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia.
Clapper and Brennan, in an op-ed in the New York Times, called the allegations that they tried to undermine Trump “patently false.”
“In making those allegations, they seek to rewrite history,“ they said.