The story of the 2016 election has a volatile new chapter. A newly declassified annex from the Durham investigation contains intelligence alleging Hillary Clinton’s campaign engineered a plot to link Donald Trump to Russian hackers, hoping to “distract people from her own missing email” scandal.
The Durham annex, released by Senator Chuck Grassley, centered on a purported email from a top official at a George Soros-funded foundation. They suggest the Clinton campaign didn’t just react to Russian interference—it actively planned to weaponize it for political gain.
This release adds fuel to the fiery debate over the origins of the Russia probe and raises profound questions about the conduct of the FBI at a pivotal moment in American history.
What’s Inside the Durham Annex?
The documents stem from Special Counsel John Durham’s multi-year investigation into the origins of “Crossfire Hurricane,” the FBI’s initial probe into the Trump campaign. They detail U.S. intelligence received in the summer of 2016, just as the election was heating up.
At the heart of the matter is an intercepted email, dated July 27, 2016, and attributed to Leonard Benardo, a senior executive at the Open Society Foundations. The communication lays out the alleged strategy with chilling clarity.
“HRC approved Julia’s idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections,” the email reads. “The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue.”
The email goes on to suggest a specific playbook for the media, stating, “In absence of direct evidence, Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect will supply the media, and GRU will hopefully carry on to give more facts.”
A ‘Smoking Gun’ or Russian Disinformation?
Allies of former President Trump point to the annex as the ultimate vindication. “This is the smoking gun evidence,” said investigative reporter John Solomon, who argued the email shows that “the whole Clinton plan for Russiagate hoax” was known to key players four days before the FBI officially opened its investigation.
The Durham report itself treats the intelligence with nuance. While investigators noted the possibility that Russian intelligence had hacked Benardo’s emails, they also interviewed numerous U.S. intelligence officers to verify the information’s credibility. The conclusion was startling.
“Certain analysts and officers whom the Office interviewed… stated that their best assessment was that the Benardo emails were likely authentic,” the annex reveals.
This created a critical dilemma for the FBI: the bureau was seemingly alerted that the Trump-Russia narrative could be a politically motivated fabrication, yet it pressed forward with its investigation anyway.
ChainStreet View: When the Narrative Becomes the Weapon
Set aside the politics for a moment. The real story behind the declassified Durham annex isn’t about Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. It’s about a deeper fault line: the chain of custody for truth inside America’s most powerful institutions appears to be compromised.
The annex points to a disturbing scenario—one where a political campaign may have intentionally seeded a false or exaggerated intelligence narrative, and key agencies either looked the other way or got swept up in the spin. Regardless of which side you’re on, this marks a critical stress test for the integrity of U.S. intelligence and democratic oversight.
