Released Documents Prove Hillary Clinton Approved Russian Smear Campaign Against Trump

Hillary Clinton approved a plan hatched by a campaign adviser to “smear” then-candidate Donald Trump with false claims of Russian collusion and distract from her own mounting email scandal during the 2016 election, according to explosive intelligence files declassified Thursday.

The plan included “raising the theme of ‘Putin’s support for Trump’” and “subsequently steering public opinion toward the notion that it needs to equate” the Russian leader’s political influence campaign with actual interference in election infrastructure.

Clinton approved a plan proposed by one of her foreign policy advisors, Julianne Smith, to ‘smear Donald Trump by magnifying the scandal tied to the intrusion by the Russian special services in the pre-election process to benefit the Republican candidate,’” one of the declassified memos read.

Smith would go on to serve as former President Joe Biden’s ambassador to NATO.

The memos point to then-President Barack Obama potentially seeking to shut down the FBI’s probe of Clinton’s use of a private email server to receive highly classified information while Secretary of State.

They also show the origins of a plan to link Trump with Russia around nine months before the 44th president ordered a post-election intelligence assessment claiming the same in December 2016.

That assessment, published in January 2017, included — over the objections of senior CIA officials — details from a since-debunked dossier put together by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele, an opposition research project funded in part by Clinton’s campaign and the DNC.

The “special services” cited in one of the memos referred to intelligence activities of Obama’s CIA and FBI, which may have included the work of “Trump dossier author Christopher Steele.”

In March 2016, then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe shared the memos with senior officials at the Department of Justice, suggesting a plot to launch an investigation based on the Democratic campaign document.

Open Society Foundations senior vice president Leonard Bernardo was looped in on the scheme and laid out stages that it was projected to cover.

“During the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information through the FBI-affiliated … technical structures … in particular, the Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect companies, from where the information would then be disseminated through leading U.S. publications,” one Bernardo email read.

“The media analysis on the DNC hacking appears solid,” another stated, “Julie [sic] says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later, the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”

One shocking July 27, 2016, missive noted: “HRC approved Julia’s idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections. That should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level.”

Special counsel John Durham uncovered the information during a multi-year probe into intelligence activities during the 2016 election.

Durham consulted the FBI and CIA, both of which assessed that the intelligence was “likely authentic” but couldn’t corroborate exact copies of the Bernardo emails with the Open Society Foundations. The CIA also determined that the intelligence was also noted “the product of Russian fabrications.”

“Smith was, at minimum, playing a role in the Clinton campaign’s efforts to tie Trump to Russia,” Durham concluded.