President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday directing the FBI to immediately declassify files concerning the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the agency probe launched in 2016 that sought information on whether Trump campaign members colluded with Russia during the presidential race.
After signing the order, Trump said that now the media can review previously withheld files pertaining to the investigation – although he cast doubt on whether many journalists would do so.
TRUMP FBI DIRECTOR KASH PATEL ‘INSTRUMENTAL IN UNRAVELING’ RUSSIA COLLUSION HOAX, FORMER CHAIR SAYS
“You probably won’t bother because you’re not going to like what you see,” Trump said. “But this was total weaponization, it’s a disgrace. It should have never happened in this country. But now you’ll be able to see for yourselves. All declassified.”
The FBI on July 31, 2016, opened a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump, then a presidential candidate, or members of his campaign were colluding or coordinating with Russia to influence the 2016 election. That investigation was referred to inside the bureau as “Crossfire Hurricane.”
The opening of the investigation came just days after a July 28 meeting during which then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed then-President Barack Obama on a purported proposal from one of Hillary Clinton’s campaign foreign policy advisers “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.” Clinton was the Democrat nominee for president that year.
Eventually, the probe included examining allegations from the so-called Steele dossier, the infamous anti-Trump document that contained baseless claims about ties between Trump and Russia. The dossier also served as the basis for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants obtained against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
The dossier was funded by the Clinton 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The Clinton campaign and the DNC hired the firm Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research and Fusion GPS, in turn, tasked ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele with the project.
The FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation was taken over by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in May 2017.
Mueller completed his investigation into a possible Trump-Russia connection in April 2019. The extensive probe yielded no evidence of criminal conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.
After Mueller’s report was made public, then-Attorney General Bill Barr tapped John Durham, a U.S. attorney for Connecticut, to serve as special counsel to investigate the origins of “Crossfire Hurricane” itself.
Durham, in his final report released in May 2023, said he found, after years of investigating, that the FBI did not have any actual evidence to support the start of that investigation. He also found that the Department of Justice and FBI “failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law” when it launched the Trump-Russia investigation.
Durham also found that the FBI “failed to act” on a “clear warning sign” that the bureau was the “target” of a Clinton-led effort to “manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes” ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Durham was referring to intelligence about the Clinton plan to tie Trump to Russia to distract from the investigation into her use of a private email server and mishandling of classified information.
Durham found that Brennan “realized the significance” of the intelligence that Clinton was stirring up a plan to tie Trump to Russia – so much so, that he “expeditiously” briefed Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, and other top national security officials.
But nothing came of that briefing or of his subsequent referral of the information to the FBI, according to Durham’s final report.
“The aforementioned facts reflect a rather startling and inexplicable failure to adequately consider and incorporate the Clinton Plan intelligence into the FBI’s investigative decision-making in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham’s report states.
“Indeed, had the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation as an assessment and, in turn, gathered and analyzed data in concert with the information from the Clinton Plan intelligence, it is likely that the information received would have been examined, at a minimum, with a more critical eye,” the report continued.
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