Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed federal prosecutors to convene a grand jury to investigate allegations that the Obama administration fabricated intelligence regarding Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The move mirrors actions taken during former President Donald Trump’s first term, when then-Attorney General Bill Barr commissioned a similar review, alleging that “government power was used to spy on American citizens.” That four-year investigation, led by Special Counsel John Durham, criticized the FBI for its handling of the Trump-Russia probe but did not result in criminal charges or uncover significant wrongdoing by the CIA or the wider intelligence community regarding their conclusion that Russia interfered to aid Trump’s campaign.
Bondi’s directive reopens a matter that has been scrutinized for over eight years and represents the latest instance of the Justice Department being used to investigate former President Trump’s political adversaries.
“John Durham was dead set on bringing criminal charges if he could. And he didn’t get anywhere near the type of charges or the type of players they’re talking about here,” said Elie Honig, a CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor. “This is now the fifth bite at that same apple. If they want to go down this road again, I don’t see any reason to think they’re going to do any better unless they just completely manipulate the facts here.”
The new probe was initiated following the declassification of documents by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. She has asserted the documents are evidence of a “seditious conspiracy” by Obama officials to manufacture intelligence, for which she believes they should be prosecuted. When asked why previous investigations, including Durham’s, failed to uncover this alleged plot, Gabbard suggested a deliberate cover-up.
While Durham’s investigation focused mainly on documented FBI missteps, Gabbard’s allegations target the CIA and the intelligence community. However, Durham’s final report affirmed the validity of the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian meddling, and he testified in 2023 that “there was a real Russian threat.”
Critics accuse Gabbard of misrepresenting the intelligence community’s findings. For instance, she has highlighted that Russia did not alter vote tallies, a claim the intelligence community never made. Its assessment focused on influence operations and cyberattacks. She has also promoted a Republican House Intelligence Committee report that questioned the sourcing for the conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin preferred Trump, but that report did not claim the intelligence was fabricated.
Democrats have argued that Gabbard and Trump are using the renewed focus on the Russia investigation to distract from other controversies. They maintain that the conclusions of four major inquiries—by Durham, special counsel Robert Mueller, the Justice Department’s inspector general, and the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee—all affirm that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump.
“After years of investigation, John Durham confirmed what we already knew: There was no grand conspiracy to frame Donald Trump,” said Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “What we do know, from the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report and multiple independent investigations, is that Russia interfered in our elections in order to help Trump win.”
The new grand jury’s specific focus remains unclear. Bondi has not publicly commented on the investigation, though she previously announced a strike force to explore “potential next legal steps” from Gabbard’s disclosures. The effort is also supported by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who released a review criticizing the process behind the 2017 intelligence assessment and referred former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey to the Justice Department for investigation.
### Emails in “Clinton Plan” Annex Appear Fabricated
Trump’s allies have heavily promoted a recently declassified annex from the Durham report, claiming it exposes a Hillary Clinton campaign plan to link Trump to Russia. The document, declassified by Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, was released by Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley.
However, the Durham report itself indicates that the emails at the center of this claim are not authentic. The annex focuses on supposed communications from Leonard Benardo of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which the FBI deemed not credible at the time. Durham’s team concluded the emails were likely a “composite” assembled from various documents stolen by Russian intelligence during hacks of U.S. think tanks.
“The office’s best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails that purport to be from Benardo were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking,” the annex states. Consequently, Durham’s office could not “determine definitely whether the purported Clinton campaign plan… was entirely genuine, partially true, a composite pulled from multiple sources, exaggerated in certain respects, or fabricated in its entirety.”
Despite concluding the emails were likely inauthentic, Durham’s annex criticized the FBI for dismissing the information without a full investigation, contrasting it with the bureau’s approach to the separate dossier on Trump and Russia.
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