WASHINGTON D.C. — The “smoking gun” that President Donald Trump and his supporters have been waiting for has finally arrived. A newly declassified appendix to the Durham report has blown the lid off the origins of the Russia collusion narrative, revealing that Hillary Clinton personally approved the plan to vilify Trump with false Russian ties to distract from her own email scandal.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released the bombshell declassified annex on Thursday. The documents, part of Special Counsel John Durham’s 2023 report, provide chilling validation for President Trump’s long-standing assertion: The FBI acted improperly, and the entire investigation was a political hit job orchestrated by the Clinton campaign.
The annex contains explosive communications that detail the inner workings of the hoax. Central to the revelation are emails involving Leonard Benardo of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
In a July 25, 2016 email, Benardo reportedly remarked that the hacking of DNC servers was significant because “politicization is on the table.” He suggested that Julianne Smith, then Clinton’s foreign policy adviser, was developing a strategy to “demonize Putin and Trump.”
“Now it is good for a post-convention bounce,” Benardo wrote. “Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire.“
Two days later, the strategy was confirmed. Benardo reportedly wrote that Clinton had approved an “idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections.” The motive was explicitly stated: “That should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level.”
Despite the documentary evidence suggesting Clinton personally “approved” the initiation of the narrative, she and her top aides denied everything to federal investigators.
When questioned by the FBI, Clinton claimed the intelligence material appeared to be “Russian disinformation.” Campaign Chair John Podesta called the idea “ridiculous,” and Senior Policy Advisor Jake Sullivan—who would later become Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor—claimed he had “not seen” the memorandum.
However, the declassified annex states that intelligence analysts found the Benardo emails to be “likely authentic.” Furthermore, the report concludes that the communications lend credence to the “notion that the Clinton campaign was engaged in an effort… to encourage scrutiny of Trump’s purported ties to Russia.”
The annex reveals that the campaign didn’t just want a narrative; they expected the FBI to aid them. They wanted the agency to “put more oil into the fire” by launching a formal investigation—which is exactly what happened.
The CIA even sent the FBI an “investigative referral” memorandum referencing the “purported Clinton campaign plan,” yet the bureau proceeded to investigate Trump, not Clinton. With these documents now public, the “Russiagate” hoax stands exposed as a manufactured political weapon authorized at the very top.