Clinton campaign helped create the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, Durham report shows

A report released nearly seven years after Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election to Donald Trump provides details about her campaign’s prominent role in creating a narrative that Mr. Trump was colluding with Russians.

Some of the Clinton campaign’s debunked opposition research helped launch a yearslong investigation into the Trump campaign, according to a 306-page report recently released by special counsel John Durham.

The Durham report criticized the FBI for launching its “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into the Trump-Russia collusion narrative based on fake evidence, some provided by operatives for the Clinton campaign.

Mr. Durham said FBI agents were so eager to pursue Donald Trump, both as a candidate and then as president, that they heralded “seriously flawed information” and abandoned their “own principles regarding objectivity and integrity.”

Mr. Durham wrote that the FBI’s behavior was “seriously deficient” and caused the agency “severe reputational harm.”

The report details how the Clinton campaign, through operatives paid to dig up dirt on her opponent, gave the FBI some of the flawed information, possibly as part of a plan to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”

A Clinton spokesman did not respond to a request for a comment about the Durham report’s findings.

Mr. Trump sued Mrs. Clinton and others accused of involvement in the 2016 Trump-Russia conspiracy theory. His lawsuit said they created the narrative to hurt his campaign and undermine his presidency.

A federal judge in Florida tossed out the case in September, but Mr. Trump’s attorney Alina Habba said the former president would appeal the decision. She did not respond to a request for an update on the case.

Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly denied that her campaign played a role in provoking the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

The Durham report concluded that the actions of her campaign team “did not, all things considered, amount to a provable criminal offense.”

The Clinton campaign’s ties to the Trump-Russia collusion narrative are well documented.

Last year, the Federal Election Commission fined the Clinton campaign for failing to disclose that it had paid the investigative firm Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research on Mr. Trump. Fusion GPS produced the since-debunked Steele dossier, which claimed, among other things, that Mr. Trump once paid prostitutes at a Moscow hotel to urinate on a bed where the Obamas once supposedly slept.

The firm also produced a phony claim that the Trump campaign was covertly communicating with Russia’s Alfa Bank.

The dossier and Alfa Bank claim were part of the evidence the FBI used to justify investigating the Trump campaign. The Durham report faulted the bureau for ignoring that some evidence came from the Clinton campaign. Mr. Durham called that “a clear warning sign that the FBI might then be the target of an effort to manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes during the 2016 presidential election.”

Before issuing the report, Mr. Durham interviewed Mrs. Clinton and top members of her campaign team about a set of documents declassified in 2020 that suggested her campaign played a major role in drumming up the Trump-Russia collusion story.

The documents included notes written in 2016 by then-CIA Director John O. Brennan indicating that he had briefed President Obama about “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 28 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”

Clinton campaign team members, whom Mr. Durham interviewed last year, denied it or said they could not recall formulating a plan to tie Mr. Trump with Russia. The story was supposedly meant to distract from headlines about the discovery of a private email server that Mrs. Clinton used improperly while serving as secretary of state.

Mrs. Clinton called the allegations “sad,” according to footnotes in the Durham report. Former campaign chairman John Podesta, now a senior Biden administration adviser, characterized the information as “ridiculous.”

Her campaign’s foreign policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, now President Biden’s national security adviser, also called the declassified documents about the alleged plan to vilify Mr. Trump “ridiculous.” He told Mr. Durham that the campaign “was broadly focused on Trump and Russia … and could not recall anyone articulating a strategy or ‘plan’ to distract negative attention away from Clinton by tying Trump to Russia, but could not conclusively rule out the possibility.”

The Durham report highlights the FBI’s aggressive pursuit of the Trump campaign and its decision not to investigate the Clinton campaign and the Clinton Foundation over separate allegations of improper donations and foreign influence. The FBI became aware of these allegations in 2016.

The FBI’s field office in Little Rock, Arkansas, New York and Washington opened investigations into possible criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation. The Little Rock investigation, according to the report, involved suspected “large monetary contributions” to the Clinton Foundation “in exchange for favorable government action and/or influence.”

The FBI did not pursue any of the Clinton claims because of concerns that they were unverified and a presidential election was months away.

The FBI used a different standard for Mr. Trump, according to the Durham report.

“By contrast, the Crossfire Hurricane investigation [into the Trump campaign] was immediately opened as a full investigation despite the fact that it was similarly predicated on unvetted hearsay information,” Mr. Durham states in the report.

In a statement on his Truth Social media site, Mr. Trump said the Durham report “spells out in great detail the Democrat Hoax that was perpetrated upon me and the American people.” He said it equated to election fraud in the 2020 presidential contest, which he lost narrowly to Mr. Biden.

House Republicans plan to hold a hearing on the Durham report findings. They say the report illustrates the political weaponization of the FBI and other government agencies.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, said the FBI’s unjustified investigation into the Trump campaign shows politics are driving the agenda in government agencies.

“No probable cause, no predicate, no evidence whatsoever, and yet they used a fake dossier from the Clinton campaign to open an investigation into a presidential campaign,” Mr. Jordan said.

Democrats downplayed the Durham report and its conclusions about the Clinton campaign’s involvement. They argued that Republicans were hyping up a report after Mr. Durham produced no new evidence or charges and made no substantive recommendations for changing how the FBI operates beyond the reforms the bureau has already implemented.

“This is another example of right-wing conservatives making a mountain out of a molehill,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat.