Newly released documents from the government’s “Crossfire Hurricane” probe into the 2016 election have exposed a bombshell admission by Obama-era officials regarding their understanding of Russia’s role in that year’s presidential race.
A classified memo, declassified Friday by Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, reveals that U.S. intelligence officials had concluded Russia did not play a significant role in Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton. Despite that assessment, the memo indicates the intelligence community pushed ahead with its investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, even as internal doubts mounted.
Dated 2016, the document’s authors told then-President Barack Obama they had concluded “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.”
Other findings from the investigation, also outlined in the memo shared with Obama, had been disclosed earlier — including officials’ belief that Russian hackers may have breached an Illinois voter registration database. Several other states were reportedly targeted, though those attempts were unsuccessful.
Even still, the targeting of infrastructure that is not used in the direct casting of ballots “make[s] it highly unlikely it would have resulted in altering any state’s official vote,” the memo states. It adds: “Criminal activity also failed to reach the scale and sophistication necessary to change election outcomes.”
The revelation serves as a major vindication for Trump, who has consistently claimed that the “Russiagate” narrative was a politically motivated smear campaign engineered by the Clinton team and Obama-era intelligence officials to sabotage his candidacy. The memo also appears to implicate Obama in the scandal, as he was briefed on the intelligence but apparently allowed the hoax investigation into Trump’s campaign to proceed.
It also comes as the FBI prepares to launch a criminal investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, and others who led the probe. This month, former CIA Director John Brennan was named in a release by John Ratcliffe, President Trump’s nominee to head the agency, for his aggressive handling of the Russia investigation.
According to career officials who spoke with Ratcliffe, Brennan allegedly kept the probe isolated from other intelligence agencies and pushed for the inclusion of the discredited Steele dossier—a document that falsely linked Trump to various Russian operatives.
