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Government Corruption

Newly declassified Crossfire Hurricane docs shine light on Steele, Clinton, and more

2025-04-13

Long and detailed. Herewith, a taste:

[JTN] Trump's first attempt at declassifying Crossfire Hurricane documents in January 2021 was thwarted. But now, the FBI records have been released, revealing in part new details on the FBI's problematic Trump-Russia probe.

Newly-declassified FBI documents shine new light on the FBI’s mishandling of its relationship with anti-Trump dossier author Christopher Steele, on the FBI’s double standards on defensive briefings given to Trump and Hillary Clinton, and other key elements of the debunked collusion saga.

Just the News already revealed on Thursday that declassified documents show that Stefan Halper, a key FBI informant in the widely-debunked Russia collusion case, was paid nearly $1.2 million over three decades and was motivated in part by "monetary compensation" — and that he continued snitching for the bureau even after agents concluded he told them an inaccurate story about future Trump National Security Advisor Mike Flynn.

And Just the News also revealed on Friday that the newly-released documents showed that then-NSA director Mike Rogers shot down a Pultizer Prize award-winning Washington Post article about the baseless Russian collusion investigation.

And a new review of hundreds of pages of declassified documents provides new information about the politicized Russiagate scandal — although significant redactions still remain.

This week, FBI Director Kash Patel transmitted to Congress hundreds of pages of declassified documents from the bureau’s "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation related to false claims about Trump-Russia collusion, following a declassification executive order from President Donald Trump last month. Just the News made all 700 pages from the declassified binder available to the public on Thursday.

An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller “did not establish” any criminal Trump-Russia collusion. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found huge flaws with the FBI’s investigation, criticizing the“central and essential” role of the dossier in the FBI’s politicized surveillance of former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. Special counsel John Durham’s report concluded that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

ADMIRAL MIKE ROGERS AND THE STEELE DOSSIER
Admiral Mike Rogers, who retired in 2018 after four years as National Security Agency chief and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, previously expressed a certain level of skepticism about the U.S. intelligence community’s 2017 assessment of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election — and a newly declassified interview Rogers gave to the FBI later in 2017 shines light on the dim view Rogers had of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier.

“ADM Rogers decided that he would make the final analytic call on the NSA’s input to the ICA as he knew there would be a lot of pressure and attention on the final draft and he felt strongly his career analysts shouldn’t have to be responsible for something under such political pressure. In one draft of the ICA, ADM Rogers noted the contents of the ‘Steele dossier’ in the body of the product, which he did not recall seeing in previous drafts,” FBI notes dated June 17, 2017 state.

“In early January, the four principals met and ADM Rogers told the group he was unclear why the ICA needed to focus on the dossier as it was considered largely uncorroborated. Comey responded that the information was relevant and ADM Rogers suggested the information be included in an annex or appendix rather than prominently in the nearly one-page summary he had seen.”

Rogers and Comey, along with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan, briefed President-elect Trump about their election meddling findings at Trump Tower in January 2017. Comey stayed behind to tell Trump about some of the dossier’s more salacious allegations.

Steele told the FBI in October 2017 that he was “frustrated” by his dossier’s inclusion in an annex to the ICA. The FBI agent who recounted the interview with Steele wrote, “They brought up the inclusion of their material in the ICA annex multiple times – almost to the point that it felt like fishing for information about how the ICA was constructed. In the end, I made the point that I wasn’t going to get into how the ICA was put together, how the annex came about, etc.”

The Steele dossier annexed to the ICA was largely declassified in 2020, and it relayed some of Steele’s baseless collusion claims: “The most politically-sensitive claims by the FBI source [Steele] alleged a close relationship between the President-elect and the Kremlin. The source also claimed that the President-elect and his top campaign advisers knowingly worked with Russian officials to bolster his chances of beating Secretary Clinton; were fully knowledgeable of Russia’s direction of leaked Democratic emails; and were offered financial compensation from Moscow.”

VARYING ASSESSMENTS FROM INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
The 2017 intelligence assessment concluded with “high confidence” that Russia worked to “undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency” and “developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.” The NSA diverged on one aspect, expressing only “moderate confidence” that Putin actively tried to help Trump’s election chances and harm those of Clinton.

“I wouldn’t call it a discrepancy. I’d call it an honest difference of opinion between three different organizations,” Rogers told the Senate in 2017. “It didn’t have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources.”

A 2018 report from the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee concluded that “the majority of the Intelligence Community Assessment judgments on Russia’s election activities employed proper analytic tradecraft” but found the “judgments on Putin’s strategic intentions did not.”

Posted by:Skidmark

#2 Rogers gave to the FBI later in 2017 shines light on the dim view Rogers had of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier.

"Ex-MI6" was he? Yea, ok.

Posted by: Besoeker 2025-04-13 06:56

#1 Read the Russia collusion memos President Trump declassified and Kash Patel gave to Congress

Posted by: Skidmark 2025-04-13 03:33

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