Newly-declassified intelligence on the so-called “Clinton Plan” included intercepted communications from a George Soros ally suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign against Donald Trump was plotting a “long-term affair to demonize” Trump by linking him to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
In addition, the Clinton campaign expected that “the FBI will put more oil into the fire” in assisting campaign officials with legitimizing the false allegation that the future president was working with the Russians to undermine the election.
The revelations—based on intercepted communications allegedly involving Leonard Benardo, a senior official at George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and Clinton foreign policy adviser Julianne Smith—shed new light on intelligence received by the U.S. intelligence community in July 2016, just before the FBI launched its politically charged Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
The explosive allegations—suggesting a coordinated effort to falsely link Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin as a way to deflect attention from Hillary Clinton’s classified email scandal—are detailed in a previously classified, now largely unredacted appendix to Special Counsel John Durham’s 2023 report on the origins of the Russiagate probe.
The intelligence, reportedly shared with the FBI and other agencies, included emails attributed to Benardo describing an alleged scheme by Smith and others, allegedly carried out with Clinton’s approval. The emails are believed to have been initially obtained through Russian cyber operations.
“The media analysis on the DNC hacking appears solid… Politicization is on the table… Julie says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire,” Benardo allegedly said in an email on July 25, 2016.
Durham noted in the annex report that “Julie” appeared to be a reference to Julianne Smith.
Benardo’s purported email the next day – July 27, 2016 – also said: “HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] approved Julia’s idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections. That should distract people from her own missing emails, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level. The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue.”
“Say something like a critical infrastructure threat for the election to feel menace since both POTUS [Obama] and VPOTUS [Biden] have acknowledged the fact IC [intelligence community] would speed up searching for evidence that is regrettably still unavailable…” the purported email from Benardo continued. “In absence of direct evidence, Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect will supply the media, and GRU [Russia’s Main Intelligence Directive] will hopefully carry on to give more facts.”
Durham said enough evidence existed to believe that the Clinton Plan intelligence was authentic, with some analysts saying it was “possible” that “the Russians might have fabricated or altered” the emails. However, other analysts said that “their best assessment was that the Benardo emails were likely authentic.”
Durham’s annex noted that his team interviewed Benardo and showed him the emails, adding that “Benardo stated that they did not look familiar to him” and that he didn’t know who “Julie” was.
Durham wrote in his annex that “the Office’s best assessment” is that the alleged Benardo emails from July 2016 “were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian hacking of the U.S.-based Think Tanks, including the Open Society Foundations.”
“The office’s review of certain communications involving Smith provided possible additional support … to the notion that the Clinton campaign was engaged in an effort or plan in late July 2016 to encourage scrutiny of Trump’s purported ties to Russia, and that the [Clinton] campaign might have wanted or expected the FBI or other agencies to aid that effort (‘put more oil into the fire’) by commencing a formal investigation of the DNC hack,” Durham’s classified annex stated.
Other information in the annex said that the Russians caught wind of the dirty trick by hacking senior Team Clinton officials. It also said the Dutch government hacked the Russians, learned of the plot, and told Obama-era intelligence officials.