Democrats and their media allies have run a lot of unsubstantiated hoaxes throughout the past several years. And while each is damaging in its own way, one of the biggest and arguably most destructive conspiracies perpetuated by these actors and Americans’ own government was the unsubstantiated narrative that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
Despite a complete lack of “actual” corroborating evidence, leftists spent years fomenting delusions that the New York-born billionaire, while in cahoots with the Kremlin, had masterminded a scheme to undermine American “democracy” and deny Hillary Clinton the White House. Even worse was many of these conspiracies were aided by U.S. intel agencies like the FBI, which concocted a years-long investigation (“Crossfire Hurricane”) into Trump’s first presidency using baseless “evidence” bought and paid for by a Clinton campaign-hired law firm.
While Special Counsel John Durham’s 2023 analysis of the FBI’s antics confirmed what The Federalist had reported for years — that there was no evidenciary basis for the agency’s anti-Trump probe — the damage the conspiracy had done to Americans’ trust in elections was already complete. And now, almost two years after Durham’s bombshell report, newly released documents further prove the baselessness of the scheme.
Obtained by The Federalist late last week, the nearly 700 pages of government records offer an introspective look into the FBI’s efforts to undermine Trump using its crooked Crossfire Hurricane operation.
The Steele Dossier
To fully understand how the Russia collusion hoax came to fruition requires delving into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane.
In early to mid-2016, the Clinton campaign’s law firm, Perkins Coie, hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump ahead of the November contest. As The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland reported, to accomplish this task, Fusion subsequently hired ex-British spy Christopher Steele “in May or June of 2016 to focus on Trump’s connections to Russia, and by June 20, 2016, Steele had drafted the first of some 17 memoranda that would eventually compose what is now known colloquially as the Steele dossier.”
Steele’s “initial memorandum” — which contained bunk and salacious allegations about Trump — was then shopped by Steele to his FBI handler on July 5, 2016, Cleveland continued.
So, where did Steele acquire the dirt for his anti-Trump dossier?
As further confirmed in the newly unsealed records, which detail Steele’s September 2017 interview with FBI officials, the ex-spy acknowledged that his anti-Trump oppo research largely relied upon claims from a “primary subsource.” According to the records, Steele said this individual “is a US resident and is a native Russian, adding that there is no way [the source] could have the kind of access he has without being Russian.”
“Steele trained up his primary subsource, and Steele described him as a prolific asset,” the documents read.
In the years since Steele’s 2017 interview, the primary sub-source has been identified as Russian national Igor Danchenko. As noted by Cleveland, Danchenko was indicted in late 2021 for “making false statements to the FBI” and was “alleged to have invented some of the supposed intel contained in the dossier.” Danchenko was later acquitted by a Northern Virginia-based jury on charges of lying to the agency in October 2022.
[READ: Media Shame Durham After Danchenko Verdict, But It’s Russia Hoaxers Who Should Be Embarrassed]
“The bottom line … is that the dossier consisted of a few publicly known accurate facts and a litany of false claims concocted by Danchenko and others and then sold by Steele and the Clinton campaign as the work of a former MI6 Russian expert,” Cleveland wrote.
‘Uncorroborated’ Evidence and FISA
But the salacious nature of how the Steele dossier was compiled is just the tip of the iceberg that became the destructive Russia collusion hoax.
Durham revealed that on July 19, 2016 — two weeks after providing his FBI handler with the allegations about Trump contained within his dossier — Steele sent this FBI handler even more hearsay about the Trump campaign, “this time relating to campaign staffer Carter Page,” as The Federalist’s Elle Purnell noted. “The handler sent both reports to the assistant special agent in charge of the New York Field Office” on July 28.
“The handler told Durham’s investigators that on the same day, [the assistant special agent] ‘advised him that FBI leadership … was now aware of the existence of the reports,’” Purnell wrote. “The Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened three days later.”
Even more egregious than the FBI’s apparent use of the dossier in launching Crossfire Hurricane, however, was its weaponization of the anti-Trump oppo to spy on the Trump campaign. In fact, the FBI used the dossier as the basis for obtaining several Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to surveil Page, and by default, the Trump campaign, in the lead-up to the 2016 election. As Purnell noted, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe admitted as much.
The newly unsealed Crossfire Hurricane files indicate the FBI did this despite knowing such claims were unverified.
Records detailing then-National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers’ 2017 FBI interview, for example, noted that Rogers participated in a January 2017 meeting with then-President-elect Trump, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and National Intelligence Director James Clapper to “brief” Trump on “the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA)” on Russian interference in the 2016 contest. “[T]he assembled group,” the document reads, “agreed Comey should be the one to tell [Trump] about the contents of the ‘Steele dossier.’”
The records went on to detail how, “In one draft of the ICA, [Admiral] Rogers noted the contents of the ‘Steele dossier’ in the body of the product, which he did not recall seeing in previous drafts.” According to the documents, during an early January 2017 meeting with the aforementioned then-intel chiefs, Rogers “told the group he was unclear why the ICA needed to focus on the dossier, as it was considered largely uncorroborated” [emphasis added].
“Comey responded that the information was relevant, and [Admiral] Rogers suggested the information be included in an annex or appendix, rather than prominently in the nearly one page summary he had seen,” the document reads.
[READ: Comey’s Memos Indicate Dossier Briefing Of Trump Was A Setup]
But Rogers’ expressed concerns came too late. By that time, months had passed since the FBI used the dossier to obtain the initial FISA warrant to spy on Page. The FBI then renewed this warrant multiple times in 2017.
A Destructive Witch Hunt
These referenced snippets are but a snapshot of the information contained within the unsealed Crossfire Hurricane documents that further confirms the baselessness of the Russia collusion hoax that hindered most of Trump’s first presidency. The mentioned examples don’t even include the egregious conduct by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the openly anti-Trump bias by FBI officials like Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, or the reported leaking of classified information about the probe by congressional Democrats and their staff to legacy media.
What is abundantly clear, as further evidenced by these newly released documents, is that America’s federal intel agencies launched one of the greatest witch hunts in U.S. history to cripple a dually elected president and undermine the will of the American people. And despite their best efforts, there is no amount of lying and whitewashing Democrats and complicit “journalists” can do to change that.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
