Declassified intelligence has exposed a 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign plot to smear Trump with Russian ties. Newly released documents, detailed in a largely unredacted appendix of John Durham’s 2023 report, reveal intercepted communications suggesting that Clinton’s team schemed to falsely link Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin, as Just the News reports. The goal? Distract from Clinton’s own email scandal.
The intelligence, dubbed the “Clinton Plan,” shows that Clinton’s campaign allegedly planned to tie Trump to Russia in order to shift focus from her private email server woes. Intercepted emails, reportedly from a George Soros ally, indicate the campaign expected FBI involvement to amplify this narrative. This raises serious questions about the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe.
In July 2016, the U.S. intelligence community, including the FBI, received this intelligence. The timing is suspicious -- just days later, the FBI launched its Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump’s campaign. Coincidence or coordinated effort? Conservatives smell a rat.
Intercepted emails allegedly from Leonard Benardo, a senior vice president at Soros’s Open Society Foundations, detail the plot. One email, dated July 25, 2016, claims “Julie” (likely Julianne Smith) pushed to “demonize Putin and Trump” for a post-convention bounce. Benardo’s words: “FBI will put more oil into the fire.”
Another email, dated July 27, 2016, suggests Clinton approved Smith’s idea to frame Trump as colluding with Russian hackers. The plan? Portray it as a “critical infrastructure threat” to elections, using firms like Crowdstrike to feed media narratives. This reeks of political manipulation dressed up as national security.
Durham’s report notes these emails were likely a composite from Russian hacking of U.S. think tanks, including Soros’s group. Some analysts believe they’re authentic; others suspect Russian tampering. Either way, the Clinton campaign’s fingerprints are hard to ignore.
Smith, a Clinton foreign policy adviser, has emerged as a key player in the plot. Durham’s review of her communications confirms the campaign encouraged scrutiny of Trump’s Russia ties in late July 2016. Smith’s email on July 27 sought signatures for a statement blasting Trump’s NATO and Russia stance.
A text exchange on July 25, 2016, shows Smith fishing for details on an FBI probe into the DNC hack. That same day, the FBI announced it was investigating the cyber intrusion. The campaign’s eagerness to exploit this smells like a setup.
Then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed then-President Barack Obama in the summer of 2016 about Clinton’s alleged plan. His notes claim Clinton approved, on July 26, 2016, a scheme to vilify Trump with Russian interference claims. This was no rogue operation -- it had top-level buy-in.
The FBI knew about the Clinton Plan intelligence but dismissed it without proper scrutiny. Some officials, such as former FBI General Counsel James Baker, later expressed dismay at being kept in the dark. Had they known, Baker said, he’d have questioned the Steele Dossier’s credibility.
Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias hired Fusion GPS, which produced the infamous Steele Dossier. Clinton personally approved pushing false Trump-related Alfa Bank claims to the media, tweeting about them on Oct. 31, 2016. The dossier and Alfa claims fueled years of baseless collusion hysteria.
Russian intelligence reportedly possessed a Clinton campaign email about the Trump-Putin smear. Yet, curiously, they didn’t release damaging Clinton info during the election. This undercuts the narrative that Putin was Team Trump.
Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley declassified this bombshell on Thursday. He slammed the Obama-era FBI for failing to investigate the Clinton Plan, calling it a “political weaponization” of law enforcement. Grassley’s right: this scandal demands accountability.
Open Society Foundations called the allegations “outrageous falsehoods” tied to Russian disinformation. “We are a nonpartisan organization,” their spokesperson claimed. Nice try, but the emails suggest otherwise, and conservatives aren’t buying the victim card.
Clinton and her allies -- Jake Sullivan, John Podesta, Jennifer Palmieri -- dismissed the claims as “ridiculous.” Their unified denial sounds like a rehearsed script. If it’s so ridiculous, why did Durham’s probe find evidence of Smith’s involvement?
