In a revelation that adds new weight to long-standing conservative concerns about the 2016 election narrative, newly declassified intelligence documents released Thursday reveal that Hillary Clinton personally approved a scheme to tie Donald Trump to Russian election interference — a political maneuver designed, in part, to deflect attention from her own spiraling email scandal.
The 24-page intelligence annex, compiled by U.S. agencies during the Obama administration, contains a trove of memos and internal emails that detail what intelligence officials described as “confidential conversations” among senior Democratic Party leaders, including then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and top figures at George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
At the center of the operation was Clinton’s foreign policy adviser at the time, Julianne Smith, who proposed using the narrative of “Putin’s support for Trump” to “steer public opinion” and encourage Americans to view Russian political influence as equivalent to hacking U.S. election infrastructure. Smith, who later served as President Biden’s ambassador to NATO, declined to comment when reached by The Post.
According to the documents, Open Society’s senior vice president Leonard Benardo was deeply involved in the plan and described its goals in blunt terms.
“Julie says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump,” Benardo wrote in an email dated July 25, 2016. “Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”
Just two days later, Benardo confirmed Clinton’s endorsement of the plan: “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.”
Just remember the RIDICULOUS amount of ink spent on a three-word reply by @DonaldJTrumpJr to a Russian fishing expedition. Now compare that to THIS NEWLY RELEASED email about Hillary approving dirt on Trump and Russia and including Crowdstrike and OTHERS.
This is a smoking gun. pic.twitter.com/AjDt90LxOp
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) July 31, 2025
In another email, Benardo summarized the intended media strategy: “The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue. In absence of direct evidence, Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect will supply the media, and GRU will hopefully carry on to give more facts.”
These revelations come from special counsel John Durham’s exhaustive probe into intelligence handling during the 2016 campaign, a process that has unearthed troubling questions about partisan manipulation at the highest levels of American politics.
Durham’s team consulted both the FBI and CIA, which concluded that the materials were “likely authentic.” While exact copies of the Benardo emails could not be independently verified through Open Society Foundations, the CIA determined that the intelligence was not “the product of Russian fabrications.”
The Clinton campaign’s attempts to weaponize unverified allegations of collusion — allegations that fueled years of divisive political discourse and undermined public trust in U.S. institutions — now appear to have been part of a deliberate political strategy.
The newly surfaced evidence gives conservatives fresh cause to revisit what many have long argued was an orchestrated effort to delegitimize a political opponent using national intelligence narratives for partisan ends.
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