There is a classified annex to the report, the CIA director said.
A classified portion of special counsel John Durham’s report will be made public soon, CIA Director John Ratcliffe said on July 27.
“What’s going to come out is the underlying intelligence … in the John Durham report classified annex,” Ratcliffe said during an appearance on Fox News.
Ratcliffe said he has gone over the document and offered recommendations to other officials regarding its declassification.
He described the classified portion of the report as showing that the intelligence underlying the assessment in 2017 that Russia tried to prevent then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from getting elected as president in 2016 and boost then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s chances came partly from a Clinton campaign-funded effort that resulted in a dossier compiled by ex-UK spy Christopher Steele.
“What that intelligence shows 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 claims—by pouring oil on the fire, by amplifying the lie and burying the truth of what Hillary Clinton was up to,” Ratcliffe said.
Clinton’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The Durham Report, released in May 2023, was the result of a four-year investigation led by Durham into the FBI’s probe of alleged ties between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
Clinton testified to Durham under oath, as did officials who were in top intelligence positions during the 2016 elections.
Durham probed the FBI’s investigation into Trump and found that it was triggered by unverified intelligence. However, Durham told lawmakers after the report was released in 2023 that “based on our investigation, it is not a legitimate basis to open a full investigation.”
The Durham Report describes a classified appendix that it said featured additional information about applications the FBI made to spy on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide, and FBI investigations into the Clinton campaign.
The Trump administration recently declassified a House of Representatives report that found that the 2017 intelligence community assessment was based on substandard intelligence reports.
The Department of Justice has formed a task force to review the evidence and evaluate potential next steps.
