By the time then-President Barack Obama convened a Dec. 9, 2016 White House Cabinet meeting to order a new intelligence assessment for Russia’s alleged intervention into the 2016 campaign to damage the candidate Moscow perceived would win the election, Hillary Clinton, the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign had already been ongoing for more than four months.
The new assessment would shift intelligence agencies’ official analysis of Russia’s intent from attempting to disrupt the perceived incoming Clinton administration to instead, after the election, alleging Russia had intended to help Trump win the campaign — something Russia had not anticipated.
But the new assessment, publicly released in January 2017 a couple of weeks prior to President Donald Trump being sworn into office for the first time, came at the tail end of a months-long investigation by the Justice Department and served as an exclamation point on the entire hoax, with direct involvement by then-President Obama.
Specifically, the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was officially opened at the FBI on July 31, 2016, according to former Special Counsel John Durham’s final report, following up on information from Australian diplomats related to then-Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos’ March and May 2016 meetings with Joseph Mifsud — who has long since disappeared — wherein Papadopoulos was allegedly teased about “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
That was when the FBI began targeting several Trump campaign advisors in August 2016, per Durham: “shortly thereafter, the FBI opened full investigations of Papadopoulos, Carter Page, General Michael Flynn, and Paul Manafort. All four were U.S. persons associated with the Trump campaign and all of them (other than Papadopoulos) had ‘either ties to Russia or a history of travel to Russia.’”
And the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigators officially came into possession of the dossier paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele on Sept. 19, 2016, which falsely alleged “a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia to hack the DNC and John Podesta emails and put them on Wikileaks.
By October 2016, the Steele dossier was used in part to obtain the October 2016 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.
Elsewhere, a version of the Steele dossier had come into the State Department’s possession as early as July 2016, according to the Durham report, with Victoria Nuland stating “she had received a two-page summary of the Steele allegations from Jonathan Winer, who in 2016 was serving as Secretary of State Kerry’s Special Envoy to Libya. 277 Winer told Nuland that Winer had prepared the summary from his review of the Steele reporting while he was at Steele’s country house in the United Kingdom. Nuland thought Winer had passed the summary to her sometime in July 2016.”
And prior to September 2016 when Crossfire Hurricane investigators officially received the Steele dossier, other officials at the FBI had received the Steele dossier in early July 2016, according to the Durham report: “In July 2016, Handling Agent-I was serving as the FBI’s Assistant Legal Attache (“ALAT”) in Rome, Italy. In early July 2016, Steele contacted Handling Agent-I and requested an urgent meeting at Steele’s office in London. On July 5, 2016, Handling Agent-I met with Steele in London and Steele provided him with Report 2016/080 dated June 20, 2016.”
And the CIA and then-President Obama were aware that the Clinton campaign planned to tie the Trump campaign to the Russian hacks of the DNC and Podesta emails as early as July 2016, according to the Durham report, “In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication… According to his handwritten notes, CIA Director Brennan subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the ‘alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.’”
That briefing appears to have occurred Aug. 3, 2016: “On August 3, 2016, within days of receiving the Clinton Plan intelligence, Director Brennan met with the President, Vice President and other senior Administration officials, including but not limited to the Attorney General (who participated remotely) and the FBI Director, in the White House Situation Room to discuss Russian election interference efforts. According to Brennan’s handwritten notes and his recollections from the meeting, he briefed on relevant intelligence known to date on Russian election interference, including the Clinton Plan intelligence. Specifically, Director Brennan’s declassified handwritten notes reflect that he briefed the meeting’s participants regarding the [Clinton approval of the plan to tie Trump to Russia].”
Obama was also briefed on July 28, 2016 more generally about Russia and the election: “On July 28, 2016, Director Brennan met with President Obama and other White House personnel, during which Brennan and the President discussed intelligence relevant to the 2016 presidential election as well as the potential creation of an inter-agency Fusion Cell to synthesize and analyze intelligence about Russian malign influence on the 2016 presidential election.”
In other words, by the time the Steele dossier was incorporated into the intelligence community’s official assessments beginning in December 2016, leading to the January 2017 assessment whose most highly classified version was briefed directly to then-President Barack Obama and then-President-elect Trump, it had already been utilized by the State Department, Justice Department and intelligence agencies for months as the wide ranging probe into the Trump campaign was fully underway.
The Dec. 9, 2016 meeting is important because it does show the President’s involvement, but Obama was briefed on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the Steele dossier months earlier, clearly. We know of the July 28, 2016 and Aug. 3, 2016 briefings, per Brennan’s notes.
But what was Obama’s reaction? Did he order the investigation, which officially began on July 31, 2016? Even a “Keep looking into this” would suffice.
It is rather unbelievable that the Justice Department was conducting high level surveillance of the Trump campaign for suspected involvement in the DNC and Podesta hacks and Wikileaks publication for months and that Obama would not have learned about it until December 2016. That’s simply not what happened. We need a more thorough timeline of White House and former President Obama’s involvement, as well as other senior officials including Attorney General Loretta Lynch. What did Obama know and when did he know it?
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
