CIA Director John Ratcliffe on Sunday teased plans to publicly disclose additional files that allegedly help tie Hillary Clinton to the false claims of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Ratcliffe specifically hinted at “underlying intelligence” referenced in the annex of the Durham report, which scrutinized probes into the Clinton vs. President Trump match-up and is currently undergoing a declassification process.
“What hasn’t come out yet and what’s going to come out is the underlying intelligence,” Ratcliffe told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures,” referring to Russiagate.
“And what that intelligence shows, Maria, is that part of this was a Hillary Clinton plan, but part of it was an FBI plan to be an accelerant to that fake Steele dossier, to those fake Russia collusion claims by pouring oil on the fire, by amplifying the lie and bearing the truth of what Hillary Clinton was up to.”
During the 2016 election cycle, an opposition-research file against then-candidate Trump and compiled by ex-MI6 spy Christopher Steele was circulated within the intelligence community.
The Washington Free Beacon, Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee ultimately ended up paying for the research Steele conducted into Trump during the 2016 cycle.
The largely debunked Steele dossier was reviewed by investigators in the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
Former Special Counsel John Durham, who was appointed by the first Trump administration, investigated the FBI probe and criticized the bureau’s handling of the inquiry in a report released in 2023. The unclassified portion of his report is public.
“In the summer of 2016, U.S. intelligence intercepted Russian intelligence talking about a Hillary Clinton plan, a Hillary Clinton plan to falsely accuse Donald Trump of Russia collusion, to vilify him and smear him with what would become known infamously as the — as the Steele dossier,” Ratcliffe recapped.
The CIA boss said he combed through predecessor John Brennan’s handwritten notes on the matter to discover the “underlying intelligence behind it that revealed exactly what happened.
“All of this evidence that’s been hidden and buried from the American people is finally coming to light,” Ratcliffe said.
Some key figures from the Obama administration, which was in power at the time, have denied that the Steele dossier was the impetus for the FBI’s Russia investigation into whether the Kremlin was communicating with Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“There is no doubt in my mind that the people that we just talked about conspired. They conspired against President Trump. They conspired against the American people,” Ratcliffe said.
He noted that both he and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have made referrals to the Justice Department pertaining to their findings.
“I don’t think statute of limitations are going to impact [it] because, on the conspiracy, the statute of limitation doesn’t start to run until the last act in furtherance of that conspiracy,” he said. “The people behind this are still furthering the conspiracy.
“They’re refusing to admit or acknowledge what they did … was wrong.”
Gabbard revisited Russiagate earlier this month with a series of public disclosures on previously classified information, such as a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report which determined there wasn’t enough evidence to conclude Russia favored Trump in 2016.
She also released material indicating that top intelligence bosses had evidence that Russia did not hack 2016 voting systems in a way that allowed them to change the election outcome.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced a “strike force” last week at the Justice Department to parse through the referrals made from Gabbard and Ratcliffe on Russiagate.
