Key documents from the FBI’s politicized Crossfire Hurricane investigation into false allegations of Trump-Russia collusion remain hidden from public view, but a new order from President Trump will reveal more answers — and documents already obtained by Just the News provide clues on what is to come.

Just the News obtained a portion of the Crossfire Hurricane documents slated for declassification in January 2021, although the majority of the FBI records remain out of the public’s reach due to the Justice Department thwarting Trump. The documents revealed by Just the News in 2021 were interesting both for the new details they revealed and for what remained. Large sections still remain blacked out and hidden from public view behind ongoing redactions.

The declassified documents included transcripts of intercepts made by the FBI of Trump aides, a declassified copy of the final FISA warrant approved by an intelligence court, and the tasking orders and debriefings of the two main confidential human sources, Christopher Steele and Stefan Halper, who the bureau used to investigate whether Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

No longer classified

Trump issued a new executive order in late March on the “Immediate Declassification of Materials Related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation.” In it, Trump referenced the prior thwarted executive order of his from his final full day in office during his first term, with Trump saying last month that “I have determined that all of the materials referenced in the Presidential Memorandum of January 19, 2021…are no longer classified.”

Trump’s January 2021 order mentioned a binder of materials related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation that Trump said the Justice Department provided to the White House at his request on Dec. 30, 2020.

“I hereby declassify the remaining materials in the binder. This is my final determination under the declassification review and I have directed the Attorney General to implement the redactions proposed in the FBI’s January 17 submission and return to the White House an appropriately redacted copy,” Trump had said on Jan. 19, 2021.

The 2021 memo from Trump noted he had “determined that the materials should be declassified to the maximum extent possible.” But the FBI said in mid-January 2021 that the bureau had “identified the passages that it believed it was most crucial to keep from public disclosure.”

Trump said at the time he would “accept the redactions proposed for continued classification by the FBI” and ordered the rest of the documents to be declassified and made available by the Justice Department. That never happened, in part because Trump‘s final declassification request was blocked by the Justice Department after he left the White House.

A memo by Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows that was delivered on the morning of Jan. 20, 2021 noted the Justice Department “must” release the binder of declassified documents about the flawed Trump–Russia investigation, following a Privacy Act review.

Garland failed to follow instructions

The Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland never released the records despite the declassification order from Trump and the last-minute memo from Meadows. It remains to be seen when the Justice Department and FBI will follow through on Trump’s new executive order — and how much new information will be made public.

“My decision to declassify the materials described above does not extend to materials that must be protected from disclosure pursuant to orders of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and does not require the disclosure of certain personally identifiable information or any other materials that must be protected from disclosure under applicable law,” Trump said last month.

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.” The special counsel noted that “the FBI ignored the fact that at no time before, during, or after Crossfire Hurricane were investigators able to corroborate a single substantive allegation in the Steele dossier reporting.”

The declassified documents already obtained by Just the News related to the FBI’s deeply flawed and politicized surveillance of Carter Page, internal FBI notes from 2016 about British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s debunked dossier, a payment request for Steele, tasking orders for American academic and FBI confidential human source Stefan Halper, notes and transcripts from the FBI’s interview of Steele, and details on an unusual defensive briefing the FBI had given to Hillary Clinton.

What the FBI has publicly posted on Crossfire Hurricane is also further redacted than what Just the News has obtained. Court filings by lawyers for Just the News editor-in-chief John Solomon state that "the FBI Vault records are different from the records in the Crossfire Hurricane binder Mr. Meadows sent to the Department on January 20, 2021, for Privacy Act redactions and public release” and that the FBI’s public version of the documents has more redactions.

These declassified documents obtained by Just the News — despite what remains blacked out — likely serve as a guidepost for what further information is yet to be revealed.

Carter Page’s final FISA warrant renewal

The third and final renewal of the FISA warrants against Carter Page obtained by Just the News in January 2021 was less-redacted than previous versions that had been released, but still has massive sections blacked out. This less-redacted version included claims by the FBI which hinted that Page’s denials of being involved in Russian collusion were actually evidence of him being involved with the Russians. 

"The FBI also notes that Page continues to be active in meeting with media outlets to promote his theories of how U.S. foreign policy should be adjusted with regard to Russia and also to refute claims of his involvement with Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election," the once top-secret FISA application read on page 57.

"The FBI believes that Page may have been instructed by Russian officials to aggressively deny, especially in the media, any Russian involvement with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The FBI believes this approach is important because, from the Russian government's point of view, it continues to keep the controversy of the election in front of the American and world media, which has the effect of undermining the integrity of the U.S. electoral process and weakening the effectiveness of the current U.S. Administration.”

At least in the currently-available version, the FBI provided no evidence to substantiate its claims that Page was acting at the direction of the Russian government when he denied that he had been involved in alleged Russian meddling efforts.

The further declassified version of the fourth FISA application also stated that Page, during his interaction with FBI source Stefan Halper, did not offer a direct rebuttal to claims he had met with senior Russians or played a role in changing the GOP platform to make it more favorable to Russia as alleged by Steele.

"On or about October 17, 2016, Page met with Source #2, which meeting the FBI consensually monitored and recorded," the FISA application read. "According to the FBI's review of the recorded conversation, Source #2 made general inquiries about the media reporting regarding Page's contacts with Russian officials.”

"Although Page did not provide any specific details to refute, dispel, or clarify the media reporting, he made vague statements that minimized his activities. Page also made general statements about a perceived conspiracy against him mounted by the media," the FBI told the court.

Allegations denied

The transcript of Page's conversation with Halper, also declassified and obtained by Just the News, showed that Page did in fact directly deny all four of the main allegations made about him in the Steele dossier that supported the FISA application, including specific denials he had met with two Russian officials named Igor Sechin and Igor Diveychkin.

Kevin Clinesmith, who worked on both the Hillary Clinton emails investigation and the Trump-Russia inquiry, pleaded guilty to falsifying a document during the bureau’s efforts to renew FISA authority to wiretap Carter Page, who was an adviser to President Trump's 2016 campaign.

Clinesmith admitted in August 2020 that he had falsely edited a CIA email in 2017 to state that Carter Page was “not a source” for the CIA when the agency had actually told the bureau on multiple occasions that Page had been an “operational contact” for the CIA.

Horowitz said the third renewal application “again failed to disclose Page's past relationship with the other agency” because of Clinesmith’s actions. Clinesmith was not named in Horowitz's report, but it was clear he was the "Office of General Counsel attorney" who had been working with the Crossfire Hurricane team.

"The core lie is that I met with these sanctioned Russian officials, several of which I never even met in my entire life, but they said that I met them in July," the FBI transcript quotes Page as telling Halper during the Oct. 17, 2016 interaction at Halper's farm in northern Virginia.

Page was never charged with a crime as part of Mueller's investigation, which failed to establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, and Page has repeatedly denied being an agent for Russia.

"Supervisory Special Agent 2" — who swore to an affidavit for all three FISA renewals against Page in 2017 — told Horowitz's investigators that on the third renewal he wanted "a definitive answer to whether Page had ever been a source for another U.S. government agency before he signed the final renewal application."

While in contact with the CIA's liaison, Clinesmith was reminded that back in August 2016, predating the first Page warrant application in October 2016, the CIA informed the FBI that Page "did, in fact, have a prior relationship with that other agency [the CIA]."

An email from the CIA’s liaison was sent to Clinesmith, who then "altered the liaison's email by inserting the words 'not a source' into it, thus making it appear that the liaison had said that Page was 'not a source' for the other agency" and then sent it to "Supervisory Special Agent 2," Horowitz found.

Judge Rosemary Collyer, then the presiding judge over the FISA court, in December 2019 ordered an FBI review of every FISA filing that Clinesmith had ever touched following the release of Horowitz’s report that month on Crossfire Hurricane. The FISA court criticized the FBI’s handling of the Page applications as “antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above” and demanded corrective action from the bureau.

Boasberg goes easy on defendant

In Horowitz’s 2018 report on the FBI's politicized Clinton emails investigation, Clinesmith was also mentioned multiple times as being one of the FBI officials who conveyed a bias against Trump. In messages exchanged the day after Trump’s November 2016 victory, Clinesmith worried that “my god damned name is all over the legal documents investigating his staff." Other messages showed Clinesmith said “Viva le resistance" in the weeks after Trump's win.

Judge James Boasberg in 2021 denied the Justice Department’s efforts to seek up to six months behind bars for Clinesmith, who eventually pleaded guilty to making false statements in special counsel John Durham’s Trump-Russia investigation — instead giving Clinesmith a year of probation, 400 hours of community service, and no fine.

Durham had argued that Clinesmith’s “deceptive conduct” related to the FISA application fabrication “was antithetical to the duty of candor and eroded the FISC’s confidence in the accuracy of all previous FISA applications worked on by the defendant,” and said his deception “fueled public distrust of the FBI and of the entire FISA program itself.”

But Boasberg seemed to defend Clinesmith’s deceptive FISA-related actions during his January 2021 sentencing. "Mr. Clinesmith likely believed that what he said was true," Boasberg ruled, adding, "I do not believe he was attempting to achieve an end he knew was wrong."

Durham had argued that Clinesmith's deception "fueled public distrust of the FBI and of the entire FISA program itself.” Clinesmith told the court that “I am deeply remorseful for any effect my actions may have had” on the FISA process even as he claimed that “I never intended to mislead my colleagues about the status of Dr. Page.”

The FBI told the FISA Court in January 2020 that it was working to "sequester" all the information from the Page wiretaps, and then-FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress in February 2020 that he was working to "claw back" the intelligence obtained through those warrants.

Page FISA still largely redacted

This third Carter Page FISA renewal is dated June 28, 2017. It was signed by since-fired FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe the same day and by former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein the day after. While Just the News obtained a version of it with fewer redactions than any prior version, heavy redactions remain throughout the lengthy document. 

The entire section on the “Clandestine Intelligence Activities of the Russian Federation” is redacted, as are two sentences or paragraphs on the “RIS [Russian Intelligence Services] Efforts to Influence U.S. Presidential Elections.” Three partial sentences and one full sentence or paragraph on “The Russian Government’s Coordinated Efforts to Influence the 2016 Election” are also redacted.

Details on former Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos were redacted as being a “Foreign Government Third Party Equity” and details on Carter Page were redacted as “FISA-Acquired Information Subject to Sequestration.”

Eleven partial sentences as well as parts or the entirety of eighteen footnotes on “Carter Page” were also redacted, within one of the small pieces of information redacted as “FISA-Acquired Information Subject to Sequestration.” There was also a nearly page-long section all redacted and labeled as “FISA-Acquired Information Subject to Sequestration.”

One paragraph on “Additional Investigative Results” and one paragraph on “Page [Redacted] Meeting with Russian Officials in July 2016” was also redacted as “FISA-Acquired Information Subject to Sequestration,” as were two paragraphs on “Page’s Security Conscious Behavior.”

One full page, one paragraph, and one footnote all within an unknown section name were also redacted as “FISA-Acquired Information Subject to Sequestration,” and five full or partial sentences and two paragraphs and one footnote within the “Page’s International Travel” section were also redacted, with one of the paragraphs redacted as “FISA-Acquired Information Subject to Sequestration.”

More than three pages all within another unknown section name were redacted as “FISA-Acquired Information Subject to Sequestration,” as was one page and one footnote within a section on “Page’s Perception Management Efforts.”

Three partial sentences, one paragraph, one full sentence, and one page on “The FBI’s interview of Page” were redacted, with most of it redacted as “FISA-Acquired Information Subject to Sequestration.”

Six and a half pages and two footnotes on “Facilities Used by Page” were all redacted, as were four pages on “the facilities or places at which electronic surveillance will be directed — and the premises to be searched” section.

Also redacted were one sentence in the “Conclusion” section, more than two pages within “Proposed Minimization Procedures” section, one paragraph within “Nature of the Information Sought” section, half a page within “Certification” section, half a page within “Purpose of the Authorities Requested” section, more than three pages within a fully redacted section, six pages beginning under the “Carter W. Page” section, two pages within the “Certification” section and the “Foreign Intelligence Information” subsection, and three pages within the “Limitations of Normal Investigative Techniques” section. Nearly a full page in the “Approval” section signed by Rod Rosenstein was also redacted,

The FISA warrant itself was signed by Judge Raymond Dearie the same day it was submitted to him — June 29, 2017 — and the vast majority of the warrant is redacted, with sixteen pages completely blacked out.

Steele interviewed by FBI

Just the News reported on Jan. 19, 2021 that anti-Trump dossier author Christopher Steele admitted to the FBI that he leaked the Russia collusion story during the height of the 2016 election to help Hillary Clinton overcome her lingering email scandal and because he believed Donald Trump's election would be bad for U.S. relations with his home country of Britain, according to the documents declassified by Trump in his final full day in office during his first term.

Key elements of this document, however, remain hidden behind redactions.

Steele told agents that then-FBI Director James Comey's decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation in fall of 2016 became his tipping point for leaking the anti-Trump collusion research that his company Orbis Intelligence had gathered and given to the FBI.

"STEELE explained that as the election season went on, they as a company were riding two horses — their client and the FBI — and after FBI Director James Comey's reopening of the Hillary Clinton investigation, they had to pick one horse and chose the business client relationship over the relationship with the FBI," the interview report stated.

The declassified documents also showed that Steele and his business partner Christopher Burrows "described President TRUMP as their 'main opponent' and indicated that they were fearful about how Trump's presidency negatively impacted the historical US-UK alliance.”

The FBI documents also showed that the Steele dossier’s alleged main source — Igor Danchenko — had been “introduced to STEELE and ORBIS by FIONA HILL in or around 2011.” Hill, who had worked at the Brookings Institution with Danchenko, went on to serve on the Trump National Security Council and was a Ukraine impeachment witness in his first term.

The FBI report revealed that "STEELE said FIONA HILL knows that the primary sub-source was involved in the dossier.”

Steele’s claims contradicted Hill’s sworn testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in October 2019. “I have no knowledge whatsoever of how he developed that dossier, none,” Hill said. “The first time I saw that dossier was the day before it was published in BuzzFeed when a colleague, like it seemed to be about half of Washington, D.C., had it, and showed me a copy of it, and I was shocked … That was when I expressed the misgivings and concern that he could have been played.”

Hill told House lawmakers in November 2019 it was Brookings President Strobe Talbott who showed her the dossier. She was critical of Steele’s dossier when she spoke to Congress.

“I almost fell over when I discovered that he was doing this report,” Hill said in October 2019. Hill said she met with Steele in 2016 and noted Steele “was clearly very interested in building up a client base,” which made him a target for Russia, calling it “a great opportunity to, basically, you know, present him with information that he’s looking for that can be couched in some truth and some disinformation.”

Hill testified that Steele’s dossier was a “rabbit hole” and Steele “could have been played” by the Russians. Her testimony was part of the Ukraine-related impeachment proceedings, and she stated that “it’s very likely that the Russians planted disinformation” in the dossier, adding, “I don’t believe it’s appropriate for him to have been hired to do this.”

Horowitz’s report on the Russia investigation criticized the DOJ and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page and for the bureau’s reliance on the Democratic-funded dossier compiled by Steele. Steele was hired by Fusion GPS in June 2016, and the opposition research firm had been hired by the Perkins Coie law firm, working for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Horowitz noted that Steele’s FBI interview “highlighted discrepancies between Steele’s presentation of information in the election reporting and the views of his Primary Sub-source” and “revealed bias against Trump.”

FBI notes of a January 2017 interview with analyst Igor Danchenko showed he told the bureau he “did not know the origins” of some Steele claims and “did not recall” other dossier information. Danchenko also noted much of what he gave to Steele was “word of mouth and hearsay,” some of which stemmed from a “conversation that [he] had with friends over beers,” and the most salacious allegations may have been made in “jest.”

Orbis Business Intelligence tweeted an article in 2020 from The Spectator that Steele’s company called “a useful corrective.” The report said that “either Danchenko was producing Pulitzer-prize-winning fiction for Steele or he later felt he had to be extremely careful with what he told the FBI” and “Steele’s supporters believe this is what happened.”

But Horowitz said Danchenko “contradicted the allegations of a ‘well-developed conspiracy’ in” Steele’s dossier. Declassified documents also show the FBI previously investigated Danchenko as a possible “threat to national security.” Danchenko has denied all wrongdoing and was found not guilty in a false statements case brought by Durham.

The FBI interview notes obtained by Just the News related to the bureau’s discussion with Steele and his business partner in 2017 also remain heavily redacted. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley had released a version of the notes in 2020 which was only slightly less redacted.

Comey had sought to include the Steele dossier in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on alleged Russian meddling, and the dossier was successfully included in an annex to the assessment.

The FBI notes state: “They [Steele and Burrows] were certainly frustrated by the inclusion of their reporting in the ICA annex. I explained that the ICA (which included the annex) was based on POTUS Obama's USIC-wide call for information on Russian influence and 2016 election. Their reporting, as it was provided to the FBI, was part of the overall material that fit with that call for information. They felt that they should have had advance warning that their information was going in the ICA.”

There is soon a redaction in the notes, and then the FBI agent writes: “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.” There are also significant and paragraph-long redactions related to Danchenko and how the Steele dossier was put together and disseminated.

FBI's maneuvering

Although the documents on FBI source Stefan Halper obtained by Just the News in 2021 were revelatory in exposing the FBI’s actions, they still contain dozens of redactions.

These Halper memos show that, immediately after the FBI opened a Russia collusion probe at the end of July 2016, FBI agents pressed Halper for information on more than a half dozen figures beyond Papadopoulos, including future Attorney General Jeff Sessions, foreign policy adviser Sam Clovis, campaign chairman Paul Manafort, economic adviser Peter Navarro, future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and campaign adviser Carter Page.

Papadopoulos was given the code name Crossfire Typhoon (CT), while Page was given the codename Crossfire Dragon (CD) in the memos.

"The main goal of the operation is to have CD admit that he has direct knowledge of and is either helping coordinate or assisting the RF [Russian Federation] conduct an active measure campaign with the 'Trump Team,'" stated an Aug. 24, 2016 report detailing the FBI's interactions with Halper that week.

If the Page operation failed, the FBI "team would then change its posture and move forward with an operation against CROSSFIRE TYPHOON," the memos stated.

The memos showed Halper followed FBI instructions and helped the FBI make recordings that clearly captured Page — unaware he was talking to an FBI informant — actually denying the key allegations against him. On the recordings, Page said that he had not met with two sanctioned Russians as Steele had alleged, that he had not played a role in modifying the Republican National Committee’s 2016 platform to help Russia, and that he was not involved with or aware of any effort by the Trump campaign to work with Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's emails.

These denials were never disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that approved a year of surveillance targeting the Trump campaign, and specifically Page. The memo containing the partial transcript of the Halper-Page meeting was dated Nov. 16, 2017, but Horowitz’s report made clear the conversation actually took place on Oct. 17, 2016, or four days before the FISA warrant was approved by the FISA Court authorizing surveillance of Page.

William Barnett, the FBI agent who handled retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn’s case in 2016 and 2017, called the Trump-Russia investigation “Collusion Clue” and argued many investigators were out to “get Trump.”

Barnett spoke with Justice Department investigators in 2020 and said Halper’s claims about Flynn were “potentially significant and something that could be investigated,” but the DOJ document said, “intelligence analysts did not locate information to corroborate” Halper’s allegations, and Barnett found the claims “not plausible.” The Department of Justice said, “With nothing to corroborate the story, Barnett thought the information was not accurate.”

McCabe refuses to recuse himself

Just the News also revealed in 2021 new details on since-fired FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe’s refusal to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation. This was one of the few documents obtained by Just the News that was almost entirely unredacted.

As Robert Mueller was ramping up his Russia collusion probe in spring 2017, then-acting Director McCabe was summoned to the Justice Department for a high-level Sunday morning meeting led by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Rosenstein wanted McCabe to recuse himself from the Russia probe because McCabe's wife had run for office in 2015 in Virginia as a Democrat and had accepted financial help from longtime Hillary Clinton ally and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the notes show. McCabe was pictured wearing a campaign shirt for his wife.

"He stated that he did not believe I had a conflict with the Russia investigation," McCabe wrote in his May 22, 2017 memo of his conversation with Rosenstein. "Despite this, he then stated that he thought I should consider recusing myself from the investigation. He said he was not ordering me to recuse, but merely suggesting that I consider it in order to ensure the credibility of the investigation."

Mueller, the notes state, did not want to get involved in the matter, including reviewing the FBI memos. But he did raise another reason why McCabe might need to step aside from involvement in the Russia probe: "SC Mueller stated that he would not weigh in on the recusal issue, but he wanted to let me know that he thought I would likely be a witness in the investigation," McCabe wrote.

 "I told the DAG that I did not believe he was in a position to order me, or anyone, to recuse from the Russia investigation, in light of his appointment of the Special Counsel. He repeated that he was not ordering me to recuse, but was rather suggesting that I consider it."

The typed notes of the closed-door drama described above are one of several newly declassified documents that show how much concern McCabe's ties to his wife's 2015 campaign and Democrats raised concerns of conflicts of interest as the FBI executive played key roles in two politically sensitive cases: the Russia probe and the Clinton classified email probe.

McCabe belatedly recused himself from the Clinton email case but never did so on the Russia collusion inquiry.

Comey: "McCabe lacked candor"

In 2020, the Justice Department declined to pursue criminal charges against McCabe for allegedly lying to investigators about authorizing media disclosures.

Horowitz released a report in 2018 detailing multiple instances in which McCabe “lacked candor” with FBI Director James Comey, FBI investigators, and inspector general investigators about his authorization to leak sensitive information to the Wall Street Journal that revealed the existence of an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

Comey said he did not permit McCabe to tell the media, and Horowitz wrote that McCabe’s actions were “designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of Department leadership” and “violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct.”

McCabe denied wrongdoing, and his lawyers declared that “justice has been done” when charges weren’t filed.

FBI Talks about the Dossier

Just the News also obtained in 2021 internal FBI emails discussing the Steele dossier. These emails were sent among FBI agents such as fired FBI special agent Peter Strzok, former FBI leader Jonathan Moffa, and at least 13 redacted FBI officials.

These declassified documents provided to Just the News had Steele’s name redacted throughout — but Grassley and Republican Sen. Ron Johnson released a version of the FBI email exchanges in 2020 where Steele’s name had been unredacted. In both versions, nearly all of the FBI agents who sent or received the emails remain redacted.

Marc Elias, a former Perkins Coie lawyer who served as general counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, played a key role in the funding and spreading of Steele’s discredited dossier. He hired the opposition firm Fusion GPS, which hired Steele.

The FBI emails from December 2016 include a redacted FBI official with the Washington Field Office sending an email to Strzok, Moffa, and roughly a dozen FBI officials discussing a thumb drive provided by former DOJ official Bruce Ohr. The email includes a “tracking matrix” on the receipt of Steele dossier reports, including from Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson.

“We obtained a USB drive from Glenn Simpson via a DOJ colleague,” the FBI emails says. “We are handling as evidence and a working copy is in the share drive — where we have historically kept [redacted] reporting, the folder labeled [redacted] reporting, sub folder Simpson 121216. A cursory look at the files appears they are indeed [redacted] reports.”

“I just uploaded to our share drive the documents and files that Bruce Ohr’s wife (through Bruce) voluntarily provided to the FBI this morning,” another December 2016 email states. “They are reports/work she completed for Fusion GPS/Glenn Simpson (similar to the one she gave us on Manafort last week). They are under the Fusion GPS file on the share drive. Please review (there are approx 85 docs...) and once we have a grasp of what's on there I can submit to the appropriate case files.”

Payment request from Steele

Just the News also obtained an FBI payment request in 2021 related to Steele and predating the Steele dossier. Declassified footnotes from the Horowitz report said that Steele received a total of $95,000 from the FBI during his time as a CHS for the bureau. The DOJ watchdog said that there were eight documents detailing the FBI’s payments to Steele — and the document obtained by Just the News appeared to be one of them.

“From the end of June 2015 through November 2015, the CHS engaged a subsource at the FBI’s direction to organize and facilitate meetings in Berlin, Germany between FBI staff and an individual with knowledge of the Government of Russia’s bio weaponization efforts. From the outset, the CHS identified the subsource to the FBI, who in turn identified the subsource to German authorities and CoS. All of whom approved of the subsource’s efforts to facilitate a meeting,” the FBI payment request said. 

“The subsource whose contact was limited to the CHS endeavored to do so and set meetings twice (September and November). However on both occasions at no fault to the CHS or the subsource, the FBI (WMDD) cancelled at the last minute and the meeting was never conducted. Despite this, the CHS and subsource continue to be willing to facilitate a meeting. Attached is a bill dated January 15, 2016 that was submitted to the CHS by the subsource for his services (meetings, briefings, reports, travel accommodations, meals) for $5,000 Euro. 302’s/1023’s regarding the matter are documented in the file as are emails between Legat Rome, Legat Berlin, WMDD evidencing the planning and ultimate cancellation of the meetings. Payment will be made to the CHS to reimburse expenses paid to the subsource in this regard.”

Horowitz said that one of the reasons the FBI had trusted Steele was because of “his past record as an FBI CHS, which included furnishing information concerning the activities of Russian oligarchs and investigative leads involving corruption in FIFA.” Steele became an FBI CHS in 2013.

Meetings with Russian oligarchs

Declassified footnotes from Horowitz’s report showed that “a 2015 report concerning oligarchs written by the FBI’s Transnational Organized Crime Intelligence Unit (TOCIU) noted that from January through May 2015, ten Eurasian oligarchs sought meetings with the FBI, and five of these had their intermediaries contact Steele.” The TOCIU report “noted that Steele’s contact with five Russian oligarchs in a short period of time was unusual and recommended that a validation review be completed on Steele because of this activity,” Horowitz said, yet the FBI’s Validation Management Unit “did not perform such an assessment on Steele until early 2017” — well after the bureau had deployed the dossier in FISAs and in the 2017 intelligence community assessment on alleged Russian meddling in the election.

The Horowitz report’s declassified footnotes also said that the Crossfire Hurricane team had received information “indicating the potential for Russian disinformation influencing Steele's election reporting.” The footnote said that some of the Steele dossier’s claims about now-former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen were “part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.” The footnote also added that a U.S. intelligence community report concluded that the Steele dossier’s baseless and salacious claims about Trump at the Ritz Carlton Moscow were the result of Russian intelligence who "infiltrate[d] a source into the network" managed by Steele.

Significant portions of the declassified footnotes from the Horowitz report also remain redacted, and the TOCIU report and the U.S. intelligence community report — both referencing Steele and his Russian contacts — have never been made public.

Steele and his company, Orbis Business Intelligence, worked for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in 2016, allegedly helping recover millions of dollars the Russian oligarch claimed Paul Manafort had stolen from him. Steele sought help in this anti-Trump research effort from Fusion GPS, the founders of the company wrote, and Fusion GPS hired Steele soon after.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2020 report assessed that “the Russian government coordinates with and directs Deripaska on many of his influence operations.” The report found “multiple links between Steele and Deripaska” and “indications that Deripaska had early knowledge of Steele’s work” and said Steele’s relationship with Deripaska “provid[ed] a potential direct channel for Russian influence on the dossier.”

Steele himself admitted that ​​“I think there is a chance” that Russia fed him disinformation, though he tried to downplay the possibility during an interview with George Stephanopoulos in 2021.

Hillary Clinton gets defensive briefing

Declassified memos obtained by Just the News in 2021 also showed that FBI agents opened an investigation in late 2014 into a foreign power's effort to curry influence with Hillary Clinton's prospective presidential campaign through donations, but the bureau's leadership slow-walked a surveillance warrant and instead arranged for the candidate to get a defensive briefing. Key portions of the document remain redacted, including the identity of the foreign power and specifics related to what Clinton’s top aides were actually told by the FBI. 

FBI agents became so frustrated that they were being stonewalled from securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to investigate the foreign money plot that they even escalated to then-FBI Director James Comey, according to the memos declassified by President Trump on Tuesday night and obtained by Just the News.

"The FISA application has remained in limbo for the last four months, even though subsequent investigative activity by [redacted] provided additional probable cause for the FISA application," an FBI employee wrote Comey in an April 14, 2015 email in which he expressed concern he was "overstepping" his chain of command by raising his concerns.

That email stated the FBI field office leading the probe was "still uncertain as to why the application has not been sent to DOJ for final approval although several reasons have been put forth by CD [Criminal Division]” and that the decision to put the application on hold originated “on the seventh floor” — meaning it originated with FBI leadership.

Comey wrote back to the agent, "Don't know anything about this but will get smarter."

The memos don't offer any further evidence that a FISA warrant was ever approved. Instead, they show that FBI leadership ultimately decided to give Clinton's team a defensive briefing in October 2015 as her presidential campaign geared up. The briefing was given to her legal team led by David Kendall and Katherine Turner, the memos show.

A double standard

"Kendall and Turner were advised the FBI was providing them with this briefing for awareness and so Ms. Clinton could take appropriate action to protect herself," a summary memo stated. "They were also told the FBI was seeking their assistance to identify other appropriate recipients of the brief, if any."

​​Republicans have long pointed to a double standard in how FBI defensive briefings were used in high-profile cases involving political figures. Clinton received a defensive briefing, and defensive briefings were also given to Rep. Eric Swalwell and then-Sen. Dianne Feinstein about their close ties to suspected Chinese agents, which effectively ended the FBI’s criminal or counterintelligence investigations.

The FBI’s first intelligence briefing of then-candidate Trump in August 2016 at its New York field office was used as a “pretext” to gather evidence on him and on then-foreign policy adviser Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, according to 2019 testimony from Horowitz.

“They sent a supervisory agent to the briefing from the Crossfire Hurricane team, and that agent prepared a report to the file of the briefing about what Mr. Trump and Mr. Flynn said,” Horowitz testified. “So the agent was actually doing the briefing but also using it for the purpose of investigation.”

Crossfire Hurricane declassification blocked

A memo by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows — dated Jan. 20, 2021 — was made public by Just the News in 2022 after a visit to the Trump collection at the National Archives. The memo showed how Trump’s efforts to release all of the Crossfire Hurricane documents were thwarted almost literally at the last minute.

Meadows told the DOJ the Office of Legal Counsel had said the Privacy Act doesn’t apply to the White House, but that “we do not intend to disclose materials that would violate the standards of the Privacy Act.” The Trump chief of staff nevertheless asked the DOJ to review the records for anything that might run afoul of the spirit of the privacy law.

“Accordingly, I am returning the bulk of the binder of declassified documents to the Department of Justice (including all that appear to have a potential to raise privacy concerns) with the instruction that the Department must expeditiously conduct a Privacy Act review under the standards that the Department of Justice would normally apply, redact material appropriately, and release the remaining material with redactions applied,” the Meadows memo ordered.

The Meadows memo confirmed prior reporting by Just the News that Trump on Jan. 19, 2021 declassified a binder of hundreds of pages of sensitive FBI documents that show how the bureau used informants and FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign and misled both a federal court and Congress about flaws in the evidence they offered to get approval for the investigation.

Many of the documents that Trump declassified never saw the light of day, even though they were lawfully declassified by Trump and the DOJ was instructed by the president though Meadows to expeditiously release them after redacting private information as necessary.

Meadows also provided insights into the declassification struggle within the Trump administration in his 2021 book.

Republicans began pushing the Biden DOJ to make the records public in 2021, but to no avail. Grassley lamented in December 2021 that then-Attorney General Merrick Garland “hasn’t produced a single declassified record to Congress relating to Crossfire Hurricane” and said the Biden DOJ’s intransigence was akin to Garland saying, “Screw you, senators.” The Iowa Republican, along with Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson, had made a similar push in October 2021 after the DOJ failed to release any of the Crossfire Hurricane documents Trump ordered declassified his last day in office.

The Biden DOJ continued to block the release of these documents through the end of Biden’s term.

Trump had signaled in October 2020 that declassification was coming.

“I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!” Trump tweeted October 6, 2020. He added that “all Russia Hoax Scandal information was Declassified by me long ago. Unfortunately for our Country, people have acted very slowly, especially since it is perhaps the biggest political crime in the history of our Country. Act!!!”

A federal judge ordered the Justice Department to get an answer directly from Trump about whether the tweets and statements by him constituted orders to declassify, unredact, and make public Mueller’s entire report along with all of the FBI interviews connected to that investigation.

Meadows told the federal court in 2020 that the president’s tweets related to the declassification of secretive Trump-Russia documents were not declassification orders and were not meant to reveal any further information related to Mueller’s investigation. Trump's executive order a few months later was then thwarted.

John Solomon goes to court over Presidential Records Act

Just the News editor-in-chief John Solomon sued the Biden-led Justice Department and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in March 2023, alleging they had wrongly kept from public inspection hundreds of pages of documents chronicling the FBI's bungled Russia collusion probe that were declassified by Trump.

Solomon's suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., with help from the nonprofit America First Legal public interest law firm. It alleged that the DOJ and NARA were violating the Presidential Records Act by keeping the declassified Russia probe documents out of the Archives' official collection for the Trump presidency.

"This is a case about two government agencies apparently colluding to evade the Presidential Records Act," the lawsuit said, asking the court to "recover the records wrongfully withheld and to force the defendants to comply with the law."

Solomon's lawsuit chronicled in detail the events that ensued after Trump on Jan. 19, 2021 declassified a binder of hundreds of pages of sensitive FBI documents from the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation.

On June 19, 2022, Trump designated his former adviser and future FBI director, Kash Patel, along with Solomon as his representatives to the NARA to access those records, according to a copy of the letter attached to the lawsuit.

Three days later, Solomon requested that NARA make copies of the declassified documents from the Trump-Russia collusion probe, but NARA said that the DOJ still had them.

Over the following two months, NARA, Solomon, and Patel corresponded about access to the documents. On Aug. 17, 2022, NARA General Counsel Gary Stern told Solomon that he "asked DOJ to complete its review" of the declassified documents "as quickly as possible, so that we can all have a fully releasable set of records."

"To date, the National Archives has not indicated that the records have been returned," according to the lawsuit.

The Biden DOJ sought to dismiss the lawsuit in June 2023, while Solomon’s legal team opposed such a dismissal, arguing that “Crossfire Hurricane was part of a conspiracy, unprecedented in our Nation’s history, between senior career government officials and Democrat party operatives to falsely smear the Republican presidential candidate as a Russian asset” and that these documents must be made public.

Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court dismissed much of the lawsuit in September 2024. The lawsuit was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in October 2024. That matter is still under review.