Smoking Gun: Declassified Durham Appendix Confirms Hillary Clinton Plan To Smear Trump, Use FBI ‘To Put More Oil On The Fire’

On Thursday, newly declassified documents reveal that not only did the CIA believe a Russian intelligence assessment that the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign planned to smear Donald Trump by linking him to the Kremlin, it’s clear that the FBI helped the Clinton campaign orchestrate the Russia hoax to distract from its investigation into her emails.

To review:

• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard earlier this month declassified several documents - including a 2020 House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) report and other intelligence communications revealing that the Obama administration “manufactured and politicized intelligence” to create a false narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. 

• Gabbard’s releases highlight the inclusion of the Steele dossier – an unverified report funded by the Clinton campaign alleging ties between Trump and Russia – in the 2017 ICA as an annex. The hoax dossier was used to bolster the Russian interference narrative, despite CIA objections and its discredited status. The HPSCI report states that Brennan insisted on referencing the dossier, even though senior CIA officers warned it was flawed, with Brennan allegedly saying, “doesn’t it ring true?

• Gabbard has called these actions a “treasonous conspiracy” led by Obama, Brennan, Clapper, James Comey, Susan Rice, and others, aimed at undermining Trump’s presidency. She has referred the documents to the Justice Department and FBI for investigation into potential criminal implications.

And now we have the Durham annex… which includes a 2016 memorandum alleging that Russian intelligence knew of a Clinton campaign plan to tie Trump to Russian hackers. This memo claims the plan was designed to “distract the [American] public from the Clinton email server scandal.” Gabbard’s HPSCI report similarly references Russian intelligence claiming Clinton’s campaign discussed linking Putin to Trump.

• Clinton’s Approval of Smear Campaign: Pages 4 and 5 of the annex, highlighted in X posts, contain a 2016 memorandum alleging that Clinton personally approved a plan on July 26, 2016, to frame Trump with Russian hacking claims. The memo suggests this was to distract from her email scandal, with coordination involving DNC leadership and outside groups.

• Russian Intelligence Awareness: The annex confirms that Russian intelligence was aware of this plan, which aligns with Gabbard’s claim that the FBI and CIA had access to this information but pursued the Trump-Russia narrative anyway.

• No New Criminal Charges: Despite these allegations, Durham’s broader investigation (2019–2023) found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy among Obama officials to fabricate intelligence. He criticized the FBI’s handling of the Steele dossier and Crossfire Hurricane but did not charge Brennan, Clapper, or others named by Gabbard.

As ZH regular TechnoFog notes;

To briefly summarize, the Classified Appendix provided further information about the matters covered in parts of Durham’s report – specifically, those relating to Hillary Clinton’s plan to link Trump and Russia; the threat of foreign influence by a foreign government; and the Carter Page FISA application renewals.

But the most material information covers the Clinton Plan, and provides further details on how that plan started, efforts by Clinton and her team to influence officials within the Obama Administration, and how the Clinton Campaign would use Crowdstrike to further their theory that the Russians hacked and leaked information from the Democratic National Convention (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

The Smoking Gun(s)… 

SMOKING GUN: The declassified Durham Annex confirms Hillary Clinton personally approved the plan to frame Trump with Russian hacking US election claims — to “distract from her missing emails” and “demonize Trump.”

“Later, the FBI will put more oil on the fire.” pic.twitter.com/Sksq6nRdh0

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 31, 2025

And as Michael Shellenberger notes, the CIA believed Russian memos mentioning a Clinton plan to smear Trump as a Russian asset: “The CIA prepared a written assessment of the authenticity and veracity of the above-mentioned intelligence. The CIA stated that it did not assess that the above [redacted] memoranda or [redacted] hacked U.S. communications, to be the product of Russian fabrications.“

The newly declassified appendix to the Durham report is game-changing. It showed that the CIA believed Russian intelligence memos, which analyzed hacked emails and alleged a Clinton Plan to vilify Trump by linking him to Russia, were credible.

“The CIA prepared a written… https://t.co/OoeRrcNCZe pic.twitter.com/8U5UTOcAJR

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) July 31, 2025

What’s more, other memos reveal that the plan was to have Crowdstrike and ‘ThreatConnect’ spin narratives to the media in the absence of actual evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.

Regarding proving-up the DNC/DCCC hack and leak -

“In absence of direct evidence, Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect will supply the media” with info.

Crowdstrike will feed the info to the FBI and then the info “would then be disseminated through leading US publications.” pic.twitter.com/zT7T4REqIt

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) July 31, 2025

Stay tuned, things are getting spicier…