🕷️ Crawler Inspector

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1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 84 (from laksa074)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa084.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/us/politics/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/us/politics/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/31\/us\/politics\/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html","crawl_time":1772485294,"first_indexed_time":1754011717,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,nytimes!www,\/2025\/07\/31\/us\/politics\/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html s443","src_root_hash":"4566504020376537684","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"‘Clinton Plan’ Emails Were Likely Made by Russian Spies, Declassified Report Shows - The New York Times","meta_descriptions":["An annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham was the latest in a series of disclosures about the Russia inquiry, as the Trump team seeks to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"Advertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\nAn annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham was the latest in a series of disclosures about the Russia inquiry, as the Trump team seeks to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files.\nThe release of the annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham, right, adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans.\nCredit...\nSamuel Corum for The New York Times\nJuly 31, 2025\nThe Trump-era special counsel who scoured the Russia investigation for wrongdoing gathered evidence that undermines a theory pushed by some Republicans that Hillary Clinton’s campaign conspired to frame Donald J. Trump for colluding with Moscow in the 2016 election, information declassified on Thursday shows.\nThe information, a\n29-page annex\nto the special counsel’s 2023 report, reveals that a foundational document for that theory was most likely stitched together by Russian spies. The document is a purported email from July 27, 2016, that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign proposal to tie Mr. Trump to Russia to distract from the scandal over her use of a private email server.\nThe release of the annex adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans. It also shows how the special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise.\nThe declassification is the latest disclosure in recent weeks concerning the Russia investigation. The wave has come as the administration is seeking to change the subject from its broken promise to release files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.\nImage\nThe report annex indicates that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to tie Donald J. Trump to Russia in 2016 is not credible.\nCredit...\nEric Lee for The New York Times\nIn reality, the annex shows the opposite, indicating that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Mrs. Clinton approved a plan to tie Mr. Trump to Russia is not credible: Mr. Durham concluded that the email from July 27, 2016, and a related one dated two days earlier were probably manufactured.\nAhead of the 2020 election, Mr. Ratcliffe, as director of national intelligence in Mr. Trump’s first term, had\ndeclassified and released the crux of the July 27 email\n, even though he acknowledged doubts about its credibility. Officials did “not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication,” he said.\nAmong some Trump supporters, the message became known as the “Clinton Plan intelligence,” as Mr. Durham\nput it in his final report\n.\nIn his report, Mr. Durham used the U.S. government’s knowledge of the supposed plan, via the Russian memos, to criticize F.B.I. officials involved in the Russia investigation for not being more skeptical when they later received a copy of the Steele dossier and used it to obtain a wiretap order. The dossier, a compendium of Trump-Russia claims compiled by a former British spy, stemmed from a Democratic opposition research effort and was later discredited.\n“Whether or not the Clinton Plan intelligence was based on reliable or unreliable information, or was ultimately true or false,” Mr. Durham wrote, agents should have been more cautious when approaching material that appeared to have partisan origins.\nImage\nMrs. Clinton in 2016. Mr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia.\nCredit...\nRuth Fremson\/The New York Times\nMr. Durham’s report also mentioned that Mrs. Clinton and others in the campaign dismissed the allegation as ridiculous, positing that it was Russian disinformation. But Mr. Durham banished to the annex concrete details he had found that bolstered her campaign’s rebuttal, burying until now the conclusion that the email he called the “Clinton Plan intelligence” was almost certainly a product of Russian disinformation.\nThe annex shows that the person who supposedly sent the July 27 email, Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundations network, told Mr. Durham in 2021 that he had never seen the message and did not write it. The network is the philanthropic arm of the liberal financier George Soros, who has been made out to be a villain by Russian state media and by some American conservatives.\nThe annex also cited a purported email from July 25, 2016, also attributed to Mr. Benardo. Referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the message claimed that a Clinton adviser was proposing a plan “to demonize Putin and Trump,” adding, “Later the F.B.I. will put more oil into the fire.”\nThat message identified the adviser as “Julie,” while the July 27 one said “Julia.” An accompanying Russian intelligence memo identified the aide as Julianne Smith, a foreign policy adviser for the Clinton campaign who worked at the Center for a New American Security.\nBut the trove of Russian files contained two different versions of the July 25 message — one that somehow had an additional sentence. And Mr. Benardo denied sending it, telling Mr. Durham’s team that he did not know who “Julie” was and would not use a phrase like “put more oil into the fire.”\nMs. Smith informed Mr. Durham in 2021 that she had no memory of proposing anything to campaign leadership about attacking Mr. Trump over Russia, although she “recalled conversations with others in the campaign expressing their genuine concerns that the D.N.C. hack was a threat to the electoral system, and that Trump and his advisers appeared to have troubling ties to Russia.”\nThe annex also shows that Mr. Durham obtained emails from several liberal-leaning think tanks mentioned in the Russian memos and did not find copies of the messages supposedly written by Mr. Benardo. The think tanks included the Open Society Foundations, the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Center for a New American Security.\nBut Mr. Durham found other “emails, attachments and documents that contain language and references with the exact same or similar verbiage” to those messages. Those included a July 25 email by a Carnegie Endowment cyberexpert that contained an extensive passage about Russian hacking that was echoed, verbatim, in the purported July 25 message attributed to Mr. Benardo.\nMr. Durham also obtained text messages from Ms. Smith on July 25 showing that she had unsuccessfully tried to determine whether the F.B.I. had opened an investigation into the Democratic National Committee breach, although they did not mention Mr. Trump. And he obtained a July 27 email from Ms. Smith asking her colleagues at the think tank to sign a bipartisan statement criticizing Mr. Trump’s denunciations of the NATO alliance as reckless and too friendly to Russia.\nMr. Durham wrote that it would have been logical for someone to conclude that she played a role in efforts by the Clinton campaign to tie Mr. Trump to Russia. Her July 25 texts and July 27 email could be seen as support for the idea that such a plan existed, he added.\nBut ultimately, in weighing all the evidence, Mr. Durham concluded that the Russians had probably faked the key emails, the annex shows.\n“The office’s best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails that purport to be from Benardo were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the U.S.-based think tanks, including the Open Society Foundations, the Carnegie Endowment and others,” it says.\nThe Russian intelligence memos first came to public attention in 2017 after\nThe New York Times\nand\nThe Washington Post\nexplored a decision by James B. Comey Jr., the former F.B.I. director, to violate Justice Department procedure. In publicly addressing the investigation into Mrs. Clinton, he sharply criticized her use of a private email server but said no charges could be brought over it.\nMr. Comey later told Congress and an inspector general that he decided to be the face of the decision, rather than allowing Justice Department officials to do so, as is typical, in part because of something in the Russian memos. A\nDutch spy agency had hacked the memos from a Russian spy agency’s server in 2016 and gave copies to the U.S. government\n.\nTwo of the memos described purported communications in January 2016 and March 2016 involving a top Democratic Party leader, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, one with Mr. Benardo and the other with a different official at the Open Society Foundations. The memos indicated that the attorney general at the time, Loretta E. Lynch, was pressuring the F.B.I. about the email inquiry and sharing confidential information about it with the Clinton campaign.\nBut Mr. Comey and other officials also\nsaid\nthey believed that the memos described fake emails, in part because the January one also said that Mr. Comey himself was trying to help Republicans win the election. In 2017, Mr. Benardo and Ms. Wasserman Schultz said that they had never even met, let alone communicated about Mrs. Clinton’s emails.\nThe Trump administration has also declassified and released\na report by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee\nthat summarized unflattering claims about Mrs. Clinton from the Russian memos without flagging suspicions that the trove contained misinformation.\nAfter the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, Robert S. Mueller III, issued his final report, the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, assigned Mr. Durham to hunt for evidence proving Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theory that the investigation had stemmed from a deep-state plot against him.\nIn 2020, as\nThe New York Times has reported\n, after Mr. Durham failed to find evidence of intelligence abuses, he shifted to instead trying to find a basis to blame the Clinton campaign for the fact that Mr. Trump’s campaign had come under suspicion of colluding with Russia.\nMr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia, but he nevertheless used court filings and his final report to insinuate such suspicions. He brought charges of false statements against two people involved in outside efforts to scrutinize possible ties between Mr. Trump and Russia, both of which ended in quick acquittals.\nCharlie Savage\nwrites about national security and legal policy for The Times.\nAdam Goldman\nwrites about the F.B.I. and national security for The Times. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.\nA version of this article appears in print on\nAug. 2, 2025\n, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: New Disclosure Upends Claims Against Clinton\n.\nOrder Reprints\n|\nToday’s Paper\n|\nSubscribe\nRelated Content\nMore in Politics\nAnna Rose Layden for The New York Times\nKenny Holston\/The New York Times\nTierney L. Cross\/The New York Times\nSophie Park for The New York Times\nEditors’ Picks\nDustin Chambers for The New York Times\nDaniele Mascolo\/Reuters\nTrending in The Times\nPool Photo by Agence France-Presse — Getty Images\nThe Fashion Auctioneer\nBrandon Bell\/Getty Images\nJiji Press\/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images\nPhoto Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary\/Getty Images\nPhilip Montgomery for The New York Times\nThe New York Times\nJeremie Souteyrat for The New York Times\nDeanna Donegan\/The New York Times; Photographs by Getty\nClaudia Greco\/Reuters\nAdvertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT","attrs_markdown":"[Skip to content](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/31\/us\/politics\/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/31\/us\/politics\/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html#site-index)\n\nSearch & Section Navigation\n\nSection Navigation\n\nSearch\n\n[Politics](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/politics)\n\n[Log in](https:\/\/myaccount.nytimes.com\/auth\/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2025%252F07%252F31%252Fus%252Fpolitics%252Ftrump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html&asset=masthead)\n\nMonday, March 2, 2026\n\n[Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper)\n\nTrump Administration\n\n- [Attacks on Iran](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/28\/world\/middleeast\/iran-attacks-what-to-know.html)\n- [OpenAI-Pentagon Agreement](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/27\/technology\/openai-agreement-pentagon-ai.html)\n- [Midterm Message](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/27\/us\/politics\/trump-midterms-state-of-the-union.html)\n- [Trump in Epstein Files](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/25\/us\/politics\/trump-epstein-files.html)\n- [Tariff Tracker](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2026\/business\/economy\/trump-tariff-tracker.html)\n- [Approval Rating](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/polls\/donald-trump-approval-rating-polls.html)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/31\/us\/politics\/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html#after-top)\n\nSupported by\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/31\/us\/politics\/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html#after-sponsor)\n# ‘Clinton Plan’ Emails Were Likely Made by Russian Spies, Declassified Report Shows\nAn annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham was the latest in a series of disclosures about the Russia inquiry, as the Trump team seeks to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files.\n\n- Share full article\n\n![John H. Durham, wearing a blue suit and red tie, in 2022.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/07\/31\/multimedia\/31dc-durham-kpqc\/31dc-durham-kpqc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nThe release of the annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham, right, adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans.Credit...Samuel Corum for The New York Times\n\n[![Charlie Savage](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2018\/06\/12\/multimedia\/author-charlie-savage\/author-charlie-savage-thumbLarge-v2.png)](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/charlie-savage)[![Adam Goldman](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2018\/07\/12\/multimedia\/author-adam-goldman\/author-adam-goldman-thumbLarge.png)](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/adam-goldman)\n\nBy [Charlie Savage](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/charlie-savage) and [Adam Goldman](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/adam-goldman)\n\nReporting from Washington\n\nJuly 31, 2025\n\nThe Trump-era special counsel who scoured the Russia investigation for wrongdoing gathered evidence that undermines a theory pushed by some Republicans that Hillary Clinton’s campaign conspired to frame Donald J. Trump for colluding with Moscow in the 2016 election, information declassified on Thursday shows.\n\nThe information, a [29-page annex](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/newsgraphics\/documenttools\/6d15e0e33b27f7e3\/c842303b-full.pdf) to the special counsel’s 2023 report, reveals that a foundational document for that theory was most likely stitched together by Russian spies. The document is a purported email from July 27, 2016, that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign proposal to tie Mr. Trump to Russia to distract from the scandal over her use of a private email server.\n\nDECLASSIFIED REPORTS\n\n[Read the report about emails likely faked by Russian spies.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/newsgraphics\/documenttools\/6d15e0e33b27f7e3\/c842303b-full.pdf)\n\nThe release of the annex adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans. It also shows how the special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise.\n\nThe declassification is the latest disclosure in recent weeks concerning the Russia investigation. The wave has come as the administration is seeking to change the subject from its broken promise to release files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.\n\nImage\n\n![President Trump, wearing a blue suit and tie, stands before a microphone at a lectern.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/07\/31\/multimedia\/31dc-durham2-fghz\/31dc-durham2-fghz-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nThe report annex indicates that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to tie Donald J. Trump to Russia in 2016 is not credible.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times\n\nEven as the releases shed more light on a seismic political period nearly a decade ago, Mr. Trump and his allies have wildly overstated [what the documents show, accusing former President Barack Obama of “treason](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/25\/us\/trump-obama-russia.html).”\n\nThe release of the annex was no exception. John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, said in a statement that the materials proved that suspicions of Russian collusion stemmed from “a coordinated plan to prevent and destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.”\n\nAnd Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, who has [a long history of pushing false claims about the Russia investigation](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/23\/us\/politics\/kash-patel-trump-fbi-inquiries.html), [declared on social media that the annex](https:\/\/x.com\/FBIDirectorKash\/status\/1951012713930354869) revealed “evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.”\n\nIn reality, the annex shows the opposite, indicating that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Mrs. Clinton approved a plan to tie Mr. Trump to Russia is not credible: Mr. Durham concluded that the email from July 27, 2016, and a related one dated two days earlier were probably manufactured.\n\nAhead of the 2020 election, Mr. Ratcliffe, as director of national intelligence in Mr. Trump’s first term, had [declassified and released the crux of the July 27 email](https:\/\/www.judiciary.senate.gov\/imo\/media\/doc\/09-29-20_Letter%20to%20Sen.%20Graham_Declassification%20of%20FBI's%20Crossfire%20Hurricane%20Investigations_20-00912_U_SIGNED-FINAL.pdf), even though he acknowledged doubts about its credibility. Officials did “not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication,” he said.\n\nAmong some Trump supporters, the message became known as the “Clinton Plan intelligence,” as Mr. Durham [put it in his final report](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/05\/15\/us\/politics\/trump-russia-investigation-durham.html).\n\nIn his report, Mr. Durham used the U.S. government’s knowledge of the supposed plan, via the Russian memos, to criticize F.B.I. officials involved in the Russia investigation for not being more skeptical when they later received a copy of the Steele dossier and used it to obtain a wiretap order. The dossier, a compendium of Trump-Russia claims compiled by a former British spy, stemmed from a Democratic opposition research effort and was later discredited.\n\n## Editors’ Picks\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/28\/well\/28TAI-CHI-WALKING3\/28TAI-CHI-WALKING3-thumbLarge.jpg)The Very Real Benefits of Tai Chi Walking](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/28\/well\/move\/tai-chi-walking-balance-longevity.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/23\/multimedia\/36-hours-las-vegas-01-khzl\/36-hours-las-vegas-01-khzl-thumbLarge-v3.jpg)36 Hours in Las Vegas](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2026\/02\/26\/travel\/things-to-do-las-vegas.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/08\/arts\/08Myten-Rausch\/08Myten-Rausch-thumbLarge.jpg)After ‘Love Island,’ Rob Rausch Was Wary of ‘The Traitors’](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/28\/arts\/television\/rob-rausch-traitors-love-island.html)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/31\/us\/politics\/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html#after-pp_edpick)\n\n“Whether or not the Clinton Plan intelligence was based on reliable or unreliable information, or was ultimately true or false,” Mr. Durham wrote, agents should have been more cautious when approaching material that appeared to have partisan origins.\n\nImage\n\n![Hillary Clinton, wearing a green suit, stands on a stage holding a microphone.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/07\/31\/multimedia\/31dc-durham3-pwjb\/31dc-durham3-pwjb-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nMrs. Clinton in 2016. Mr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia.Credit...Ruth Fremson\/The New York Times\n\nMr. Durham’s report also mentioned that Mrs. Clinton and others in the campaign dismissed the allegation as ridiculous, positing that it was Russian disinformation. But Mr. Durham banished to the annex concrete details he had found that bolstered her campaign’s rebuttal, burying until now the conclusion that the email he called the “Clinton Plan intelligence” was almost certainly a product of Russian disinformation.\n\nThe annex shows that the person who supposedly sent the July 27 email, Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundations network, told Mr. Durham in 2021 that he had never seen the message and did not write it. The network is the philanthropic arm of the liberal financier George Soros, who has been made out to be a villain by Russian state media and by some American conservatives.\n\nThe annex also cited a purported email from July 25, 2016, also attributed to Mr. Benardo. Referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the message claimed that a Clinton adviser was proposing a plan “to demonize Putin and Trump,” adding, “Later the F.B.I. will put more oil into the fire.”\n\nThat message identified the adviser as “Julie,” while the July 27 one said “Julia.” An accompanying Russian intelligence memo identified the aide as Julianne Smith, a foreign policy adviser for the Clinton campaign who worked at the Center for a New American Security.\n\nBut the trove of Russian files contained two different versions of the July 25 message — one that somehow had an additional sentence. And Mr. Benardo denied sending it, telling Mr. Durham’s team that he did not know who “Julie” was and would not use a phrase like “put more oil into the fire.”\n\nMs. Smith informed Mr. Durham in 2021 that she had no memory of proposing anything to campaign leadership about attacking Mr. Trump over Russia, although she “recalled conversations with others in the campaign expressing their genuine concerns that the D.N.C. hack was a threat to the electoral system, and that Trump and his advisers appeared to have troubling ties to Russia.”\n\nThe annex also shows that Mr. Durham obtained emails from several liberal-leaning think tanks mentioned in the Russian memos and did not find copies of the messages supposedly written by Mr. Benardo. The think tanks included the Open Society Foundations, the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Center for a New American Security.\n\nBut Mr. Durham found other “emails, attachments and documents that contain language and references with the exact same or similar verbiage” to those messages. Those included a July 25 email by a Carnegie Endowment cyberexpert that contained an extensive passage about Russian hacking that was echoed, verbatim, in the purported July 25 message attributed to Mr. Benardo.\n\nMr. Durham also obtained text messages from Ms. Smith on July 25 showing that she had unsuccessfully tried to determine whether the F.B.I. had opened an investigation into the Democratic National Committee breach, although they did not mention Mr. Trump. And he obtained a July 27 email from Ms. Smith asking her colleagues at the think tank to sign a bipartisan statement criticizing Mr. Trump’s denunciations of the NATO alliance as reckless and too friendly to Russia.\n\nMr. Durham wrote that it would have been logical for someone to conclude that she played a role in efforts by the Clinton campaign to tie Mr. Trump to Russia. Her July 25 texts and July 27 email could be seen as support for the idea that such a plan existed, he added.\n\nBut ultimately, in weighing all the evidence, Mr. Durham concluded that the Russians had probably faked the key emails, the annex shows.\n\n“The office’s best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails that purport to be from Benardo were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the U.S.-based think tanks, including the Open Society Foundations, the Carnegie Endowment and others,” it says.\n\nThe Russian intelligence memos first came to public attention in 2017 after [The New York Times](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/22\/us\/politics\/james-comey-election.html) and [The Washington Post](https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/how-a-dubious-russian-document-influenced-the-fbis-handling-of-the-clinton-probe\/2017\/05\/24\/f375c07c-3a95-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html) explored a decision by James B. Comey Jr., the former F.B.I. director, to violate Justice Department procedure. In publicly addressing the investigation into Mrs. Clinton, he sharply criticized her use of a private email server but said no charges could be brought over it.\n\nMr. Comey later told Congress and an inspector general that he decided to be the face of the decision, rather than allowing Justice Department officials to do so, as is typical, in part because of something in the Russian memos. A [Dutch spy agency had hacked the memos from a Russian spy agency’s server in 2016 and gave copies to the U.S. government](https:\/\/myprivacy.dpgmedia.nl\/consent?siteKey=PUBX2BuuZfEPJ6vF&callbackUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.volkskrant.nl%2Fprivacy-wall%2Faccept%3FredirectUri%3D%252fwetenschap%252fdutch-agencies-provide-crucial-intel-about-russia-s-interference-in-us-elections%257eb4f8111b%252f%253freferer%253dhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.google.com%25252F).\n\nTwo of the memos described purported communications in January 2016 and March 2016 involving a top Democratic Party leader, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, one with Mr. Benardo and the other with a different official at the Open Society Foundations. The memos indicated that the attorney general at the time, Loretta E. Lynch, was pressuring the F.B.I. about the email inquiry and sharing confidential information about it with the Clinton campaign.\n\nBut Mr. Comey and other officials also [said](https:\/\/www.grassley.senate.gov\/imo\/media\/doc\/horowitz_2018_midyear_appendix_released_by_chairman_grassley.pdf) they believed that the memos described fake emails, in part because the January one also said that Mr. Comey himself was trying to help Republicans win the election. In 2017, Mr. Benardo and Ms. Wasserman Schultz said that they had never even met, let alone communicated about Mrs. Clinton’s emails.\n\nThe Trump administration has also declassified and released [a report by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee](https:\/\/www.dni.gov\/files\/ODNI\/documents\/DIG\/DIG-Declassified-HPSCI-Report-Manufactured-Russia-Hoax-July2025.pdf) that summarized unflattering claims about Mrs. Clinton from the Russian memos without flagging suspicions that the trove contained misinformation.\n\nAfter the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, Robert S. Mueller III, issued his final report, the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, assigned Mr. Durham to hunt for evidence proving Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theory that the investigation had stemmed from a deep-state plot against him.\n\nIn 2020, as [The New York Times has reported](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/01\/26\/us\/politics\/durham-trump-russia-barr.html), after Mr. Durham failed to find evidence of intelligence abuses, he shifted to instead trying to find a basis to blame the Clinton campaign for the fact that Mr. Trump’s campaign had come under suspicion of colluding with Russia.\n\nMr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia, but he nevertheless used court filings and his final report to insinuate such suspicions. He brought charges of false statements against two people involved in outside efforts to scrutinize possible ties between Mr. Trump and Russia, both of which ended in quick acquittals.\n\n[Charlie Savage](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/charlie-savage) writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.\n\n[Adam Goldman](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/adam-goldman) writes about the F.B.I. and national security for The Times. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.\n\nA version of this article appears in print on Aug. 2, 2025, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: New Disclosure Upends Claims Against Clinton. [Order Reprints](https:\/\/nytimes.wrightsmedia.com\/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscriptions\/Multiproduct\/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY)\n\nSee more on: [U.S. Justice Department](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/organization\/us-justice-department), [Hillary Rodham Clinton](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/person\/hillary-rodham-clinton), [John H Durham](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/john-h-durham), [Robert S. Mueller III](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/person\/robert-s-mueller), [Kashyap Patel](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/kashyap-patel), [Donald Trump](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/donald-trump)\n\n- Share full article\n\n***\n## The Latest on the Trump Administration\n***\n- **Attacks on Iran:** Lawmakers questioned whether the United States faced an “imminent” threat from Iran, [a requirement for the president to lawfully initiate military action](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/01\/world\/middleeast\/democrats-question-trumps-urgency-to-attack-iran.html) without congressional approval. The attacks, in much of the world’s eyes, appeared to short-circuit the Trump administration’s nuclear talks with Iran. It was at least the third time — after his earlier Iran bombings and attack on Venezuela — that Trump [deployed heavy force against a country with which he had been negotiating](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/01\/us\/politics\/iran-nuclear-talks-war-trump-diplomacy.html).\n- **Anthropic and the Defense Dept.****:** The Pentagon and Anthropic were close to agreeing on the use of artificial intelligence. But strong personalities, mutual dislike and a rival company [unraveled a deal](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/01\/technology\/anthropic-defense-dept-openai-talks.html).\n- **Reference Manual for Judges****:** More than two dozen contributors l [criticized the deletion of a chapter on climate science](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/climate\/climate-science-judges-manual.html) by the Federal Judicial Center.\n- **The Pentagon’s Favorite Tech Guy****:** Palmer Luckey, who founded the defense tech start-up Anduril, [has been tapped by President Trump](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/technology\/pentagon-anduril-palmer-luckey.html) to modernize the U.S. military with autonomous weapons.\n- **Labor Secretary****:** Lori Chavez-DeRemer is [under investigation internally](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/us\/politics\/labor-secretary-chavez-deremer-investigation.html) after allegations of misconduct and misuse of department funds.\n***\n**How We Report on the Trump Administration**\n\nHundreds of readers asked about our coverage of the president. Times editors and reporters [responded to some of the most common questions](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/03\/06\/insider\/how-the-new-york-times-reports-on-trump.html).\n\n## Related Content\n### [More in Politics](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/politics)\n- [How Trump Decided to Go to War](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/us\/politics\/trump-war-iran-israel.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02DC-IRAN-TICKTOCK-top-vzhp\/02DC-IRAN-TICKTOCK-top-vzhp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times\n- [Kash Patel’s Girlfriend Seeks Fame and Fortune, Escorted by an F.B.I. 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Cross\/The New York Times\n- [An Update: Did a Brooklyn Couple Kill a Neighbor’s Trees for a Better View in Maine?](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/27\/us\/politics\/maine-tree-poisoning.html)\n  \n  ![Dead trees behind the home of the late Ruth Graham last August in Rockport, Maine.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/27\/multimedia\/dc-trees-3-pbcw\/dc-trees-3-pbcw-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Sophie Park for The New York Times\n\n### Editors’ Picks\n- [The Very Real Benefits of Tai Chi Walking](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/28\/well\/move\/tai-chi-walking-balance-longevity.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/28\/well\/28TAI-CHI-WALKING3\/28TAI-CHI-WALKING3-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Dustin Chambers for The New York Times\n- [At Gucci: Bodies, Bodies, Bodies](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/28\/style\/gucci-demna-show.html)\n  \n  ![Kate Moss, making a rare runway reappearance at Gucci.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/28\/multimedia\/28ST-GUCCI-REVIEW-qfzt\/28ST-GUCCI-REVIEW-qfzt-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Daniele Mascolo\/Reuters\n\n### Trending in The Times\n- [Macron Expands French Nuclear Arsenal and Vows Protection for Neighbors](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/world\/europe\/france-nuclear-arsenal-macron.html)\n  \n  ![President Emmanuel Macron of France speaking before a nuclear-powered submarine at a navy base in Crozon, France, on Monday. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02int-france-nuclear-01-jltz\/02int-france-nuclear-01-jltz-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Pool Photo by Agence France-Presse — Getty Images\n- [Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s Wardrobe Finds a New Obsessive Audience](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/style\/carolyn-bessette-kennedy-auction-love-story.html)\n  \n  ![Several styles worn by Ms. Bessette Kennedy are on sale in an auction timed to meet renewed interest in her style.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/27\/multimedia\/ST-CBK-AUCTION-01-zmpf\/ST-CBK-AUCTION-01-zmpf-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  The Fashion Auctioneer\n- [The 2 Victims of the Austin Bar Shooting Were College Students](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/us\/austin-bar-shooting-victims.html)\n  \n  ![A shooting occurred at Buford’s, a popular bar near the University of Texas at Austin campus, early on Sunday.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02nat-austin-victims-qckg\/02nat-austin-victims-qckg-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Brandon Bell\/Getty Images\n- [Watch the Moon Turn Blood Red During a Total Lunar Eclipse](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/science\/blood-moon-lunar-eclipse-time-when-tonight.html)\n  \n  ![To best view the phenomenon, NASA recommends finding a dark place away from bright lights. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02hs-blood-moon-ghfj\/02hs-blood-moon-ghfj-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Jiji Press\/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images\n- [Reporters Seek Comment. 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![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/world\/02wea-quake-tracker-northern-california-nytiruy5-index\/02wea-quake-tracker-northern-california-nytiruy5-index-square640-v14.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  The New York Times\n- [A Quirky Watch Brand Studio Gets Serious](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/fashion\/watches-studio-underd0g-britain.html)\n  \n  ![Richard Benc, the founder of the watch brand Studio Underd0g, said that the company has always embodied its tagline: serious watches for serious collectors (who don’t take themselves too seriously).](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/multimedia\/03sp-watches-underdog-inyt-01-cpgq\/03sp-watches-underdog-inyt-01-cpgq-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York Times\n- [Nearly Half of Colorectal Cancers Now Occur in Younger Patients, Study Shows](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/well\/colorectal-cancer-young.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/28\/well\/2Well-Colorectal-Cancers\/2Well-Colorectal-Cancers-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Deanna Donegan\/The New York Times; Photographs by Getty\n- [An ‘American Gigolo’ in Milan](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/style\/armani-gere-gigolo.html)\n  \n  ![The Giorgio Arman exhibition at the Pinacoteca di Brera art museum in Milan.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02NL-FASHIONWEEK-milan-fczm\/02NL-FASHIONWEEK-milan-fczm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Claudia Greco\/Reuters\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/31\/us\/politics\/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html#after-bottom)\n\n## Site Index\n[Go to Home Page »](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/)\n\nNews\n\n- [Home 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Durham was the latest in a series of disclosures about the Russia inquiry, as the Trump team seeks to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files.\n\n![John H. Durham, wearing a blue suit and red tie, in 2022.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/07\/31\/multimedia\/31dc-durham-kpqc\/31dc-durham-kpqc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nThe release of the annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham, right, adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans.Credit...Samuel Corum for The New York Times\n\nJuly 31, 2025\n\nThe Trump-era special counsel who scoured the Russia investigation for wrongdoing gathered evidence that undermines a theory pushed by some Republicans that Hillary Clinton’s campaign conspired to frame Donald J. Trump for colluding with Moscow in the 2016 election, information declassified on Thursday shows.\n\nThe information, a [29-page annex](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/newsgraphics\/documenttools\/6d15e0e33b27f7e3\/c842303b-full.pdf) to the special counsel’s 2023 report, reveals that a foundational document for that theory was most likely stitched together by Russian spies. The document is a purported email from July 27, 2016, that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign proposal to tie Mr. Trump to Russia to distract from the scandal over her use of a private email server.\n\nThe release of the annex adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans. It also shows how the special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise.\n\nThe declassification is the latest disclosure in recent weeks concerning the Russia investigation. The wave has come as the administration is seeking to change the subject from its broken promise to release files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.\n\nImage\n\n![President Trump, wearing a blue suit and tie, stands before a microphone at a lectern.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/07\/31\/multimedia\/31dc-durham2-fghz\/31dc-durham2-fghz-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nThe report annex indicates that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to tie Donald J. Trump to Russia in 2016 is not credible.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times\n\nIn reality, the annex shows the opposite, indicating that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Mrs. Clinton approved a plan to tie Mr. Trump to Russia is not credible: Mr. Durham concluded that the email from July 27, 2016, and a related one dated two days earlier were probably manufactured.\n\nAhead of the 2020 election, Mr. Ratcliffe, as director of national intelligence in Mr. Trump’s first term, had [declassified and released the crux of the July 27 email](https:\/\/www.judiciary.senate.gov\/imo\/media\/doc\/09-29-20_Letter%20to%20Sen.%20Graham_Declassification%20of%20FBI's%20Crossfire%20Hurricane%20Investigations_20-00912_U_SIGNED-FINAL.pdf), even though he acknowledged doubts about its credibility. Officials did “not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication,” he said.\n\nAmong some Trump supporters, the message became known as the “Clinton Plan intelligence,” as Mr. Durham [put it in his final report](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/05\/15\/us\/politics\/trump-russia-investigation-durham.html).\n\nIn his report, Mr. Durham used the U.S. government’s knowledge of the supposed plan, via the Russian memos, to criticize F.B.I. officials involved in the Russia investigation for not being more skeptical when they later received a copy of the Steele dossier and used it to obtain a wiretap order. The dossier, a compendium of Trump-Russia claims compiled by a former British spy, stemmed from a Democratic opposition research effort and was later discredited.\n\n“Whether or not the Clinton Plan intelligence was based on reliable or unreliable information, or was ultimately true or false,” Mr. Durham wrote, agents should have been more cautious when approaching material that appeared to have partisan origins.\n\nImage\n\n![Hillary Clinton, wearing a green suit, stands on a stage holding a microphone.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/07\/31\/multimedia\/31dc-durham3-pwjb\/31dc-durham3-pwjb-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nMrs. Clinton in 2016. Mr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia.Credit...Ruth Fremson\/The New York Times\n\nMr. Durham’s report also mentioned that Mrs. Clinton and others in the campaign dismissed the allegation as ridiculous, positing that it was Russian disinformation. But Mr. Durham banished to the annex concrete details he had found that bolstered her campaign’s rebuttal, burying until now the conclusion that the email he called the “Clinton Plan intelligence” was almost certainly a product of Russian disinformation.\n\nThe annex shows that the person who supposedly sent the July 27 email, Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundations network, told Mr. Durham in 2021 that he had never seen the message and did not write it. The network is the philanthropic arm of the liberal financier George Soros, who has been made out to be a villain by Russian state media and by some American conservatives.\n\nThe annex also cited a purported email from July 25, 2016, also attributed to Mr. Benardo. Referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the message claimed that a Clinton adviser was proposing a plan “to demonize Putin and Trump,” adding, “Later the F.B.I. will put more oil into the fire.”\n\nThat message identified the adviser as “Julie,” while the July 27 one said “Julia.” An accompanying Russian intelligence memo identified the aide as Julianne Smith, a foreign policy adviser for the Clinton campaign who worked at the Center for a New American Security.\n\nBut the trove of Russian files contained two different versions of the July 25 message — one that somehow had an additional sentence. And Mr. Benardo denied sending it, telling Mr. Durham’s team that he did not know who “Julie” was and would not use a phrase like “put more oil into the fire.”\n\nMs. Smith informed Mr. Durham in 2021 that she had no memory of proposing anything to campaign leadership about attacking Mr. Trump over Russia, although she “recalled conversations with others in the campaign expressing their genuine concerns that the D.N.C. hack was a threat to the electoral system, and that Trump and his advisers appeared to have troubling ties to Russia.”\n\nThe annex also shows that Mr. Durham obtained emails from several liberal-leaning think tanks mentioned in the Russian memos and did not find copies of the messages supposedly written by Mr. Benardo. The think tanks included the Open Society Foundations, the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Center for a New American Security.\n\nBut Mr. Durham found other “emails, attachments and documents that contain language and references with the exact same or similar verbiage” to those messages. Those included a July 25 email by a Carnegie Endowment cyberexpert that contained an extensive passage about Russian hacking that was echoed, verbatim, in the purported July 25 message attributed to Mr. Benardo.\n\nMr. Durham also obtained text messages from Ms. Smith on July 25 showing that she had unsuccessfully tried to determine whether the F.B.I. had opened an investigation into the Democratic National Committee breach, although they did not mention Mr. Trump. And he obtained a July 27 email from Ms. Smith asking her colleagues at the think tank to sign a bipartisan statement criticizing Mr. Trump’s denunciations of the NATO alliance as reckless and too friendly to Russia.\n\nMr. Durham wrote that it would have been logical for someone to conclude that she played a role in efforts by the Clinton campaign to tie Mr. Trump to Russia. Her July 25 texts and July 27 email could be seen as support for the idea that such a plan existed, he added.\n\nBut ultimately, in weighing all the evidence, Mr. Durham concluded that the Russians had probably faked the key emails, the annex shows.\n\n“The office’s best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails that purport to be from Benardo were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the U.S.-based think tanks, including the Open Society Foundations, the Carnegie Endowment and others,” it says.\n\nThe Russian intelligence memos first came to public attention in 2017 after [The New York Times](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/22\/us\/politics\/james-comey-election.html) and [The Washington Post](https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/how-a-dubious-russian-document-influenced-the-fbis-handling-of-the-clinton-probe\/2017\/05\/24\/f375c07c-3a95-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html) explored a decision by James B. Comey Jr., the former F.B.I. director, to violate Justice Department procedure. In publicly addressing the investigation into Mrs. Clinton, he sharply criticized her use of a private email server but said no charges could be brought over it.\n\nMr. Comey later told Congress and an inspector general that he decided to be the face of the decision, rather than allowing Justice Department officials to do so, as is typical, in part because of something in the Russian memos. A [Dutch spy agency had hacked the memos from a Russian spy agency’s server in 2016 and gave copies to the U.S. government](https:\/\/myprivacy.dpgmedia.nl\/consent?siteKey=PUBX2BuuZfEPJ6vF&callbackUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.volkskrant.nl%2Fprivacy-wall%2Faccept%3FredirectUri%3D%252fwetenschap%252fdutch-agencies-provide-crucial-intel-about-russia-s-interference-in-us-elections%257eb4f8111b%252f%253freferer%253dhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.google.com%25252F).\n\nTwo of the memos described purported communications in January 2016 and March 2016 involving a top Democratic Party leader, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, one with Mr. Benardo and the other with a different official at the Open Society Foundations. The memos indicated that the attorney general at the time, Loretta E. Lynch, was pressuring the F.B.I. about the email inquiry and sharing confidential information about it with the Clinton campaign.\n\nBut Mr. Comey and other officials also [said](https:\/\/www.grassley.senate.gov\/imo\/media\/doc\/horowitz_2018_midyear_appendix_released_by_chairman_grassley.pdf) they believed that the memos described fake emails, in part because the January one also said that Mr. Comey himself was trying to help Republicans win the election. In 2017, Mr. Benardo and Ms. Wasserman Schultz said that they had never even met, let alone communicated about Mrs. Clinton’s emails.\n\nThe Trump administration has also declassified and released [a report by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee](https:\/\/www.dni.gov\/files\/ODNI\/documents\/DIG\/DIG-Declassified-HPSCI-Report-Manufactured-Russia-Hoax-July2025.pdf) that summarized unflattering claims about Mrs. Clinton from the Russian memos without flagging suspicions that the trove contained misinformation.\n\nAfter the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, Robert S. Mueller III, issued his final report, the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, assigned Mr. Durham to hunt for evidence proving Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theory that the investigation had stemmed from a deep-state plot against him.\n\nIn 2020, as [The New York Times has reported](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/01\/26\/us\/politics\/durham-trump-russia-barr.html), after Mr. Durham failed to find evidence of intelligence abuses, he shifted to instead trying to find a basis to blame the Clinton campaign for the fact that Mr. Trump’s campaign had come under suspicion of colluding with Russia.\n\nMr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia, but he nevertheless used court filings and his final report to insinuate such suspicions. He brought charges of false statements against two people involved in outside efforts to scrutinize possible ties between Mr. Trump and Russia, both of which ended in quick acquittals.\n\n[Charlie Savage](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/charlie-savage) writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.\n\n[Adam Goldman](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/adam-goldman) writes about the F.B.I. and national security for The Times. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.\n\nA version of this article appears in print on Aug. 2, 2025, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: New Disclosure Upends Claims Against Clinton. [Order Reprints](https:\/\/nytimes.wrightsmedia.com\/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscriptions\/Multiproduct\/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY)\n\n## Related Content\n[More in Politics](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/politics)\n\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02DC-IRAN-TICKTOCK-top-vzhp\/02DC-IRAN-TICKTOCK-top-vzhp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times\n- ![Alexis Wilkins with Kash Patel as he is sworn in as F.B.I. director at the White House in February 2025.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/06\/multimedia\/00DC-ALEXIS-01-whjv\/00DC-ALEXIS-01-whjv-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Kenny Holston\/The New York Times\n- ![Justice Clarence Thomas speaking in Washington in September. His planned in-person appearance at an event this week changed after a security threat, he said.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/27\/multimedia\/27dc-thomas-hqtf\/27dc-thomas-hqtf-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Tierney L. Cross\/The New York Times\n- ![Dead trees behind the home of the late Ruth Graham last August in Rockport, Maine.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/27\/multimedia\/dc-trees-3-pbcw\/dc-trees-3-pbcw-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Sophie Park for The New York Times\n\nEditors’ Picks\n\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/28\/well\/28TAI-CHI-WALKING3\/28TAI-CHI-WALKING3-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Dustin Chambers for The New York Times\n- ![Kate Moss, making a rare runway reappearance at Gucci.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/28\/multimedia\/28ST-GUCCI-REVIEW-qfzt\/28ST-GUCCI-REVIEW-qfzt-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Daniele Mascolo\/Reuters\n\nTrending in The Times\n\n- ![President Emmanuel Macron of France speaking before a nuclear-powered submarine at a navy base in Crozon, France, on Monday. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02int-france-nuclear-01-jltz\/02int-france-nuclear-01-jltz-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Pool Photo by Agence France-Presse — Getty Images\n- ![Several styles worn by Ms. Bessette Kennedy are on sale in an auction timed to meet renewed interest in her style.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/27\/multimedia\/ST-CBK-AUCTION-01-zmpf\/ST-CBK-AUCTION-01-zmpf-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  The Fashion Auctioneer\n- ![A shooting occurred at Buford’s, a popular bar near the University of Texas at Austin campus, early on Sunday.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02nat-austin-victims-qckg\/02nat-austin-victims-qckg-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Brandon Bell\/Getty Images\n- ![To best view the phenomenon, NASA recommends finding a dark place away from bright lights. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02hs-blood-moon-ghfj\/02hs-blood-moon-ghfj-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Jiji Press\/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/21\/pageoneplus\/21insider-comment\/21insider-comment-square640.png?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Photo Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary\/Getty Images\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/08\/magazine\/08mag-interview-gyllenhaal-04\/08mag-interview-gyllenhaal-04-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Philip Montgomery for The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/world\/02wea-quake-tracker-northern-california-nytiruy5-index\/02wea-quake-tracker-northern-california-nytiruy5-index-square640-v14.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  The New York Times\n- ![Richard Benc, the founder of the watch brand Studio Underd0g, said that the company has always embodied its tagline: serious watches for serious collectors (who don’t take themselves too seriously).](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/multimedia\/03sp-watches-underdog-inyt-01-cpgq\/03sp-watches-underdog-inyt-01-cpgq-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/28\/well\/2Well-Colorectal-Cancers\/2Well-Colorectal-Cancers-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Deanna Donegan\/The New York Times; Photographs by Getty\n- ![The Giorgio Arman exhibition at the Pinacoteca di Brera art museum in Milan.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02NL-FASHIONWEEK-milan-fczm\/02NL-FASHIONWEEK-milan-fczm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Claudia Greco\/Reuters\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/31\/us\/politics\/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html#after-bottom)","meta_canonical":null}

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Meta Title	‘Clinton Plan’ Emails Were Likely Made by Russian Spies, Declassified Report Shows - The New York Times
Meta Description	An annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham was the latest in a series of disclosures about the Russia inquiry, as the Trump team seeks to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files.
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Boilerpipe Text	Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT An annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham was the latest in a series of disclosures about the Russia inquiry, as the Trump team seeks to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files. The release of the annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham, right, adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans. Credit... Samuel Corum for The New York Times July 31, 2025 The Trump-era special counsel who scoured the Russia investigation for wrongdoing gathered evidence that undermines a theory pushed by some Republicans that Hillary Clinton’s campaign conspired to frame Donald J. Trump for colluding with Moscow in the 2016 election, information declassified on Thursday shows. The information, a 29-page annex to the special counsel’s 2023 report, reveals that a foundational document for that theory was most likely stitched together by Russian spies. The document is a purported email from July 27, 2016, that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign proposal to tie Mr. Trump to Russia to distract from the scandal over her use of a private email server. The release of the annex adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans. It also shows how the special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise. The declassification is the latest disclosure in recent weeks concerning the Russia investigation. The wave has come as the administration is seeking to change the subject from its broken promise to release files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Image The report annex indicates that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to tie Donald J. Trump to Russia in 2016 is not credible. Credit... Eric Lee for The New York Times In reality, the annex shows the opposite, indicating that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Mrs. Clinton approved a plan to tie Mr. Trump to Russia is not credible: Mr. Durham concluded that the email from July 27, 2016, and a related one dated two days earlier were probably manufactured. Ahead of the 2020 election, Mr. Ratcliffe, as director of national intelligence in Mr. Trump’s first term, had declassified and released the crux of the July 27 email , even though he acknowledged doubts about its credibility. Officials did “not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication,” he said. Among some Trump supporters, the message became known as the “Clinton Plan intelligence,” as Mr. Durham put it in his final report . In his report, Mr. Durham used the U.S. government’s knowledge of the supposed plan, via the Russian memos, to criticize F.B.I. officials involved in the Russia investigation for not being more skeptical when they later received a copy of the Steele dossier and used it to obtain a wiretap order. The dossier, a compendium of Trump-Russia claims compiled by a former British spy, stemmed from a Democratic opposition research effort and was later discredited. “Whether or not the Clinton Plan intelligence was based on reliable or unreliable information, or was ultimately true or false,” Mr. Durham wrote, agents should have been more cautious when approaching material that appeared to have partisan origins. Image Mrs. Clinton in 2016. Mr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia. Credit... Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Mr. Durham’s report also mentioned that Mrs. Clinton and others in the campaign dismissed the allegation as ridiculous, positing that it was Russian disinformation. But Mr. Durham banished to the annex concrete details he had found that bolstered her campaign’s rebuttal, burying until now the conclusion that the email he called the “Clinton Plan intelligence” was almost certainly a product of Russian disinformation. The annex shows that the person who supposedly sent the July 27 email, Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundations network, told Mr. Durham in 2021 that he had never seen the message and did not write it. The network is the philanthropic arm of the liberal financier George Soros, who has been made out to be a villain by Russian state media and by some American conservatives. The annex also cited a purported email from July 25, 2016, also attributed to Mr. Benardo. Referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the message claimed that a Clinton adviser was proposing a plan “to demonize Putin and Trump,” adding, “Later the F.B.I. will put more oil into the fire.” That message identified the adviser as “Julie,” while the July 27 one said “Julia.” An accompanying Russian intelligence memo identified the aide as Julianne Smith, a foreign policy adviser for the Clinton campaign who worked at the Center for a New American Security. But the trove of Russian files contained two different versions of the July 25 message — one that somehow had an additional sentence. And Mr. Benardo denied sending it, telling Mr. Durham’s team that he did not know who “Julie” was and would not use a phrase like “put more oil into the fire.” Ms. Smith informed Mr. Durham in 2021 that she had no memory of proposing anything to campaign leadership about attacking Mr. Trump over Russia, although she “recalled conversations with others in the campaign expressing their genuine concerns that the D.N.C. hack was a threat to the electoral system, and that Trump and his advisers appeared to have troubling ties to Russia.” The annex also shows that Mr. Durham obtained emails from several liberal-leaning think tanks mentioned in the Russian memos and did not find copies of the messages supposedly written by Mr. Benardo. The think tanks included the Open Society Foundations, the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Center for a New American Security. But Mr. Durham found other “emails, attachments and documents that contain language and references with the exact same or similar verbiage” to those messages. Those included a July 25 email by a Carnegie Endowment cyberexpert that contained an extensive passage about Russian hacking that was echoed, verbatim, in the purported July 25 message attributed to Mr. Benardo. Mr. Durham also obtained text messages from Ms. Smith on July 25 showing that she had unsuccessfully tried to determine whether the F.B.I. had opened an investigation into the Democratic National Committee breach, although they did not mention Mr. Trump. And he obtained a July 27 email from Ms. Smith asking her colleagues at the think tank to sign a bipartisan statement criticizing Mr. Trump’s denunciations of the NATO alliance as reckless and too friendly to Russia. Mr. Durham wrote that it would have been logical for someone to conclude that she played a role in efforts by the Clinton campaign to tie Mr. Trump to Russia. Her July 25 texts and July 27 email could be seen as support for the idea that such a plan existed, he added. But ultimately, in weighing all the evidence, Mr. Durham concluded that the Russians had probably faked the key emails, the annex shows. “The office’s best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails that purport to be from Benardo were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the U.S.-based think tanks, including the Open Society Foundations, the Carnegie Endowment and others,” it says. The Russian intelligence memos first came to public attention in 2017 after The New York Times and The Washington Post explored a decision by James B. Comey Jr., the former F.B.I. director, to violate Justice Department procedure. In publicly addressing the investigation into Mrs. Clinton, he sharply criticized her use of a private email server but said no charges could be brought over it. Mr. Comey later told Congress and an inspector general that he decided to be the face of the decision, rather than allowing Justice Department officials to do so, as is typical, in part because of something in the Russian memos. A Dutch spy agency had hacked the memos from a Russian spy agency’s server in 2016 and gave copies to the U.S. government . Two of the memos described purported communications in January 2016 and March 2016 involving a top Democratic Party leader, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, one with Mr. Benardo and the other with a different official at the Open Society Foundations. The memos indicated that the attorney general at the time, Loretta E. Lynch, was pressuring the F.B.I. about the email inquiry and sharing confidential information about it with the Clinton campaign. But Mr. Comey and other officials also said they believed that the memos described fake emails, in part because the January one also said that Mr. Comey himself was trying to help Republicans win the election. In 2017, Mr. Benardo and Ms. Wasserman Schultz said that they had never even met, let alone communicated about Mrs. Clinton’s emails. The Trump administration has also declassified and released a report by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee that summarized unflattering claims about Mrs. Clinton from the Russian memos without flagging suspicions that the trove contained misinformation. After the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, Robert S. Mueller III, issued his final report, the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, assigned Mr. Durham to hunt for evidence proving Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theory that the investigation had stemmed from a deep-state plot against him. In 2020, as The New York Times has reported , after Mr. Durham failed to find evidence of intelligence abuses, he shifted to instead trying to find a basis to blame the Clinton campaign for the fact that Mr. Trump’s campaign had come under suspicion of colluding with Russia. Mr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia, but he nevertheless used court filings and his final report to insinuate such suspicions. He brought charges of false statements against two people involved in outside efforts to scrutinize possible ties between Mr. Trump and Russia, both of which ended in quick acquittals. Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times. Adam Goldman writes about the F.B.I. and national security for The Times. He has been a journalist for more than two decades. A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 2, 2025 , Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: New Disclosure Upends Claims Against Clinton . Order Reprints \| Today’s Paper \| Subscribe Related Content More in Politics Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times Kenny Holston/The New York Times Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times Sophie Park for The New York Times Editors’ Picks Dustin Chambers for The New York Times Daniele Mascolo/Reuters Trending in The Times Pool Photo by Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Fashion Auctioneer Brandon Bell/Getty Images Jiji Press/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Photo Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary/Getty Images Philip Montgomery for The New York Times The New York Times Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York Times Deanna Donegan/The New York Times; Photographs by Getty Claudia Greco/Reuters Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Markdown	[Skip to content](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/us/politics/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/us/politics/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html#site-index) Search & Section Navigation Section Navigation Search [Politics](https://www.nytimes.com/section/politics) [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2025%252F07%252F31%252Fus%252Fpolitics%252Ftrump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html&asset=masthead) Monday, March 2, 2026 [Today’s Paper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper) Trump Administration - [Attacks on Iran](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/world/middleeast/iran-attacks-what-to-know.html) - [OpenAI-Pentagon Agreement](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/openai-agreement-pentagon-ai.html) - [Midterm Message](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/us/politics/trump-midterms-state-of-the-union.html) - [Trump in Epstein Files](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/us/politics/trump-epstein-files.html) - [Tariff Tracker](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/business/economy/trump-tariff-tracker.html) - [Approval Rating](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/polls/donald-trump-approval-rating-polls.html) Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/us/politics/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html#after-top) Supported by [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/us/politics/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html#after-sponsor) # ‘Clinton Plan’ Emails Were Likely Made by Russian Spies, Declassified Report Shows An annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham was the latest in a series of disclosures about the Russia inquiry, as the Trump team seeks to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files. - Share full article ![John H. Durham, wearing a blue suit and red tie, in 2022.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/07/31/multimedia/31dc-durham-kpqc/31dc-durham-kpqc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) The release of the annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham, right, adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans.Credit...Samuel Corum for The New York Times [![Charlie Savage](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/06/12/multimedia/author-charlie-savage/author-charlie-savage-thumbLarge-v2.png)](https://www.nytimes.com/by/charlie-savage)[![Adam Goldman](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/07/12/multimedia/author-adam-goldman/author-adam-goldman-thumbLarge.png)](https://www.nytimes.com/by/adam-goldman) By [Charlie Savage](https://www.nytimes.com/by/charlie-savage) and [Adam Goldman](https://www.nytimes.com/by/adam-goldman) Reporting from Washington July 31, 2025 The Trump-era special counsel who scoured the Russia investigation for wrongdoing gathered evidence that undermines a theory pushed by some Republicans that Hillary Clinton’s campaign conspired to frame Donald J. Trump for colluding with Moscow in the 2016 election, information declassified on Thursday shows. The information, a [29-page annex](https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/6d15e0e33b27f7e3/c842303b-full.pdf) to the special counsel’s 2023 report, reveals that a foundational document for that theory was most likely stitched together by Russian spies. The document is a purported email from July 27, 2016, that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign proposal to tie Mr. Trump to Russia to distract from the scandal over her use of a private email server. DECLASSIFIED REPORTS [Read the report about emails likely faked by Russian spies.](https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/6d15e0e33b27f7e3/c842303b-full.pdf) The release of the annex adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans. It also shows how the special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise. The declassification is the latest disclosure in recent weeks concerning the Russia investigation. The wave has come as the administration is seeking to change the subject from its broken promise to release files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Image ![President Trump, wearing a blue suit and tie, stands before a microphone at a lectern.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/07/31/multimedia/31dc-durham2-fghz/31dc-durham2-fghz-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) The report annex indicates that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to tie Donald J. Trump to Russia in 2016 is not credible.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times Even as the releases shed more light on a seismic political period nearly a decade ago, Mr. Trump and his allies have wildly overstated [what the documents show, accusing former President Barack Obama of “treason](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/us/trump-obama-russia.html).” The release of the annex was no exception. John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, said in a statement that the materials proved that suspicions of Russian collusion stemmed from “a coordinated plan to prevent and destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.” And Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, who has [a long history of pushing false claims about the Russia investigation](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/us/politics/kash-patel-trump-fbi-inquiries.html), [declared on social media that the annex](https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1951012713930354869) revealed “evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.” In reality, the annex shows the opposite, indicating that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Mrs. Clinton approved a plan to tie Mr. Trump to Russia is not credible: Mr. Durham concluded that the email from July 27, 2016, and a related one dated two days earlier were probably manufactured. Ahead of the 2020 election, Mr. Ratcliffe, as director of national intelligence in Mr. Trump’s first term, had [declassified and released the crux of the July 27 email](https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/09-29-20_Letter%20to%20Sen.%20Graham_Declassification%20of%20FBI's%20Crossfire%20Hurricane%20Investigations_20-00912_U_SIGNED-FINAL.pdf), even though he acknowledged doubts about its credibility. Officials did “not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication,” he said. Among some Trump supporters, the message became known as the “Clinton Plan intelligence,” as Mr. Durham [put it in his final report](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/trump-russia-investigation-durham.html). In his report, Mr. Durham used the U.S. government’s knowledge of the supposed plan, via the Russian memos, to criticize F.B.I. officials involved in the Russia investigation for not being more skeptical when they later received a copy of the Steele dossier and used it to obtain a wiretap order. The dossier, a compendium of Trump-Russia claims compiled by a former British spy, stemmed from a Democratic opposition research effort and was later discredited. ## Editors’ Picks [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/28/well/28TAI-CHI-WALKING3/28TAI-CHI-WALKING3-thumbLarge.jpg)The Very Real Benefits of Tai Chi Walking](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/well/move/tai-chi-walking-balance-longevity.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/23/multimedia/36-hours-las-vegas-01-khzl/36-hours-las-vegas-01-khzl-thumbLarge-v3.jpg)36 Hours in Las Vegas](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/02/26/travel/things-to-do-las-vegas.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/08/arts/08Myten-Rausch/08Myten-Rausch-thumbLarge.jpg)After ‘Love Island,’ Rob Rausch Was Wary of ‘The Traitors’](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/arts/television/rob-rausch-traitors-love-island.html) Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/us/politics/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html#after-pp_edpick) “Whether or not the Clinton Plan intelligence was based on reliable or unreliable information, or was ultimately true or false,” Mr. Durham wrote, agents should have been more cautious when approaching material that appeared to have partisan origins. Image ![Hillary Clinton, wearing a green suit, stands on a stage holding a microphone.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/07/31/multimedia/31dc-durham3-pwjb/31dc-durham3-pwjb-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Mrs. Clinton in 2016. Mr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Mr. Durham’s report also mentioned that Mrs. Clinton and others in the campaign dismissed the allegation as ridiculous, positing that it was Russian disinformation. But Mr. Durham banished to the annex concrete details he had found that bolstered her campaign’s rebuttal, burying until now the conclusion that the email he called the “Clinton Plan intelligence” was almost certainly a product of Russian disinformation. The annex shows that the person who supposedly sent the July 27 email, Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundations network, told Mr. Durham in 2021 that he had never seen the message and did not write it. The network is the philanthropic arm of the liberal financier George Soros, who has been made out to be a villain by Russian state media and by some American conservatives. The annex also cited a purported email from July 25, 2016, also attributed to Mr. Benardo. Referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the message claimed that a Clinton adviser was proposing a plan “to demonize Putin and Trump,” adding, “Later the F.B.I. will put more oil into the fire.” That message identified the adviser as “Julie,” while the July 27 one said “Julia.” An accompanying Russian intelligence memo identified the aide as Julianne Smith, a foreign policy adviser for the Clinton campaign who worked at the Center for a New American Security. But the trove of Russian files contained two different versions of the July 25 message — one that somehow had an additional sentence. And Mr. Benardo denied sending it, telling Mr. Durham’s team that he did not know who “Julie” was and would not use a phrase like “put more oil into the fire.” Ms. Smith informed Mr. Durham in 2021 that she had no memory of proposing anything to campaign leadership about attacking Mr. Trump over Russia, although she “recalled conversations with others in the campaign expressing their genuine concerns that the D.N.C. hack was a threat to the electoral system, and that Trump and his advisers appeared to have troubling ties to Russia.” The annex also shows that Mr. Durham obtained emails from several liberal-leaning think tanks mentioned in the Russian memos and did not find copies of the messages supposedly written by Mr. Benardo. The think tanks included the Open Society Foundations, the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Center for a New American Security. But Mr. Durham found other “emails, attachments and documents that contain language and references with the exact same or similar verbiage” to those messages. Those included a July 25 email by a Carnegie Endowment cyberexpert that contained an extensive passage about Russian hacking that was echoed, verbatim, in the purported July 25 message attributed to Mr. Benardo. Mr. Durham also obtained text messages from Ms. Smith on July 25 showing that she had unsuccessfully tried to determine whether the F.B.I. had opened an investigation into the Democratic National Committee breach, although they did not mention Mr. Trump. And he obtained a July 27 email from Ms. Smith asking her colleagues at the think tank to sign a bipartisan statement criticizing Mr. Trump’s denunciations of the NATO alliance as reckless and too friendly to Russia. Mr. Durham wrote that it would have been logical for someone to conclude that she played a role in efforts by the Clinton campaign to tie Mr. Trump to Russia. Her July 25 texts and July 27 email could be seen as support for the idea that such a plan existed, he added. But ultimately, in weighing all the evidence, Mr. Durham concluded that the Russians had probably faked the key emails, the annex shows. “The office’s best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails that purport to be from Benardo were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the U.S.-based think tanks, including the Open Society Foundations, the Carnegie Endowment and others,” it says. The Russian intelligence memos first came to public attention in 2017 after [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/us/politics/james-comey-election.html) and [The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-a-dubious-russian-document-influenced-the-fbis-handling-of-the-clinton-probe/2017/05/24/f375c07c-3a95-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html) explored a decision by James B. Comey Jr., the former F.B.I. director, to violate Justice Department procedure. In publicly addressing the investigation into Mrs. Clinton, he sharply criticized her use of a private email server but said no charges could be brought over it. Mr. Comey later told Congress and an inspector general that he decided to be the face of the decision, rather than allowing Justice Department officials to do so, as is typical, in part because of something in the Russian memos. A [Dutch spy agency had hacked the memos from a Russian spy agency’s server in 2016 and gave copies to the U.S. government](https://myprivacy.dpgmedia.nl/consent?siteKey=PUBX2BuuZfEPJ6vF&callbackUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.volkskrant.nl%2Fprivacy-wall%2Faccept%3FredirectUri%3D%252fwetenschap%252fdutch-agencies-provide-crucial-intel-about-russia-s-interference-in-us-elections%257eb4f8111b%252f%253freferer%253dhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.google.com%25252F). Two of the memos described purported communications in January 2016 and March 2016 involving a top Democratic Party leader, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, one with Mr. Benardo and the other with a different official at the Open Society Foundations. The memos indicated that the attorney general at the time, Loretta E. Lynch, was pressuring the F.B.I. about the email inquiry and sharing confidential information about it with the Clinton campaign. But Mr. Comey and other officials also [said](https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/horowitz_2018_midyear_appendix_released_by_chairman_grassley.pdf) they believed that the memos described fake emails, in part because the January one also said that Mr. Comey himself was trying to help Republicans win the election. In 2017, Mr. Benardo and Ms. Wasserman Schultz said that they had never even met, let alone communicated about Mrs. Clinton’s emails. The Trump administration has also declassified and released [a report by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee](https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/DIG/DIG-Declassified-HPSCI-Report-Manufactured-Russia-Hoax-July2025.pdf) that summarized unflattering claims about Mrs. Clinton from the Russian memos without flagging suspicions that the trove contained misinformation. After the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, Robert S. Mueller III, issued his final report, the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, assigned Mr. Durham to hunt for evidence proving Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theory that the investigation had stemmed from a deep-state plot against him. In 2020, as [The New York Times has reported](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/26/us/politics/durham-trump-russia-barr.html), after Mr. Durham failed to find evidence of intelligence abuses, he shifted to instead trying to find a basis to blame the Clinton campaign for the fact that Mr. Trump’s campaign had come under suspicion of colluding with Russia. Mr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia, but he nevertheless used court filings and his final report to insinuate such suspicions. He brought charges of false statements against two people involved in outside efforts to scrutinize possible ties between Mr. Trump and Russia, both of which ended in quick acquittals. [Charlie Savage](https://www.nytimes.com/by/charlie-savage) writes about national security and legal policy for The Times. [Adam Goldman](https://www.nytimes.com/by/adam-goldman) writes about the F.B.I. and national security for The Times. He has been a journalist for more than two decades. A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 2, 2025, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: New Disclosure Upends Claims Against Clinton. [Order Reprints](https://nytimes.wrightsmedia.com/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY) See more on: [U.S. Justice Department](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/organization/us-justice-department), [Hillary Rodham Clinton](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/hillary-rodham-clinton), [John H Durham](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/john-h-durham), [Robert S. Mueller III](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/robert-s-mueller), [Kashyap Patel](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/kashyap-patel), [Donald Trump](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/donald-trump) - Share full article * ## The Latest on the Trump Administration * - Attacks on Iran: Lawmakers questioned whether the United States faced an “imminent” threat from Iran, [a requirement for the president to lawfully initiate military action](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/world/middleeast/democrats-question-trumps-urgency-to-attack-iran.html) without congressional approval. The attacks, in much of the world’s eyes, appeared to short-circuit the Trump administration’s nuclear talks with Iran. It was at least the third time — after his earlier Iran bombings and attack on Venezuela — that Trump [deployed heavy force against a country with which he had been negotiating](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/us/politics/iran-nuclear-talks-war-trump-diplomacy.html). - Anthropic and the Defense Dept.: The Pentagon and Anthropic were close to agreeing on the use of artificial intelligence. 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Readable Markdown	Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/us/politics/trump-clinton-emails-russia-investigation.html#after-top) An annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham was the latest in a series of disclosures about the Russia inquiry, as the Trump team seeks to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files. ![John H. Durham, wearing a blue suit and red tie, in 2022.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/07/31/multimedia/31dc-durham-kpqc/31dc-durham-kpqc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) The release of the annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham, right, adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans.Credit...Samuel Corum for The New York Times July 31, 2025 The Trump-era special counsel who scoured the Russia investigation for wrongdoing gathered evidence that undermines a theory pushed by some Republicans that Hillary Clinton’s campaign conspired to frame Donald J. Trump for colluding with Moscow in the 2016 election, information declassified on Thursday shows. The information, a [29-page annex](https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/6d15e0e33b27f7e3/c842303b-full.pdf) to the special counsel’s 2023 report, reveals that a foundational document for that theory was most likely stitched together by Russian spies. The document is a purported email from July 27, 2016, that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign proposal to tie Mr. Trump to Russia to distract from the scandal over her use of a private email server. The release of the annex adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans. It also shows how the special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise. The declassification is the latest disclosure in recent weeks concerning the Russia investigation. The wave has come as the administration is seeking to change the subject from its broken promise to release files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Image ![President Trump, wearing a blue suit and tie, stands before a microphone at a lectern.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/07/31/multimedia/31dc-durham2-fghz/31dc-durham2-fghz-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) The report annex indicates that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to tie Donald J. Trump to Russia in 2016 is not credible.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times In reality, the annex shows the opposite, indicating that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Mrs. Clinton approved a plan to tie Mr. Trump to Russia is not credible: Mr. Durham concluded that the email from July 27, 2016, and a related one dated two days earlier were probably manufactured. Ahead of the 2020 election, Mr. Ratcliffe, as director of national intelligence in Mr. Trump’s first term, had [declassified and released the crux of the July 27 email](https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/09-29-20_Letter%20to%20Sen.%20Graham_Declassification%20of%20FBI's%20Crossfire%20Hurricane%20Investigations_20-00912_U_SIGNED-FINAL.pdf), even though he acknowledged doubts about its credibility. Officials did “not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication,” he said. Among some Trump supporters, the message became known as the “Clinton Plan intelligence,” as Mr. Durham [put it in his final report](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/trump-russia-investigation-durham.html). In his report, Mr. Durham used the U.S. government’s knowledge of the supposed plan, via the Russian memos, to criticize F.B.I. officials involved in the Russia investigation for not being more skeptical when they later received a copy of the Steele dossier and used it to obtain a wiretap order. The dossier, a compendium of Trump-Russia claims compiled by a former British spy, stemmed from a Democratic opposition research effort and was later discredited. “Whether or not the Clinton Plan intelligence was based on reliable or unreliable information, or was ultimately true or false,” Mr. Durham wrote, agents should have been more cautious when approaching material that appeared to have partisan origins. Image ![Hillary Clinton, wearing a green suit, stands on a stage holding a microphone.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/07/31/multimedia/31dc-durham3-pwjb/31dc-durham3-pwjb-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Mrs. Clinton in 2016. Mr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Mr. Durham’s report also mentioned that Mrs. Clinton and others in the campaign dismissed the allegation as ridiculous, positing that it was Russian disinformation. But Mr. Durham banished to the annex concrete details he had found that bolstered her campaign’s rebuttal, burying until now the conclusion that the email he called the “Clinton Plan intelligence” was almost certainly a product of Russian disinformation. The annex shows that the person who supposedly sent the July 27 email, Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundations network, told Mr. Durham in 2021 that he had never seen the message and did not write it. The network is the philanthropic arm of the liberal financier George Soros, who has been made out to be a villain by Russian state media and by some American conservatives. The annex also cited a purported email from July 25, 2016, also attributed to Mr. Benardo. Referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the message claimed that a Clinton adviser was proposing a plan “to demonize Putin and Trump,” adding, “Later the F.B.I. will put more oil into the fire.” That message identified the adviser as “Julie,” while the July 27 one said “Julia.” An accompanying Russian intelligence memo identified the aide as Julianne Smith, a foreign policy adviser for the Clinton campaign who worked at the Center for a New American Security. But the trove of Russian files contained two different versions of the July 25 message — one that somehow had an additional sentence. And Mr. Benardo denied sending it, telling Mr. Durham’s team that he did not know who “Julie” was and would not use a phrase like “put more oil into the fire.” Ms. Smith informed Mr. Durham in 2021 that she had no memory of proposing anything to campaign leadership about attacking Mr. Trump over Russia, although she “recalled conversations with others in the campaign expressing their genuine concerns that the D.N.C. hack was a threat to the electoral system, and that Trump and his advisers appeared to have troubling ties to Russia.” The annex also shows that Mr. Durham obtained emails from several liberal-leaning think tanks mentioned in the Russian memos and did not find copies of the messages supposedly written by Mr. Benardo. The think tanks included the Open Society Foundations, the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Center for a New American Security. But Mr. Durham found other “emails, attachments and documents that contain language and references with the exact same or similar verbiage” to those messages. Those included a July 25 email by a Carnegie Endowment cyberexpert that contained an extensive passage about Russian hacking that was echoed, verbatim, in the purported July 25 message attributed to Mr. Benardo. Mr. Durham also obtained text messages from Ms. Smith on July 25 showing that she had unsuccessfully tried to determine whether the F.B.I. had opened an investigation into the Democratic National Committee breach, although they did not mention Mr. Trump. And he obtained a July 27 email from Ms. Smith asking her colleagues at the think tank to sign a bipartisan statement criticizing Mr. Trump’s denunciations of the NATO alliance as reckless and too friendly to Russia. Mr. Durham wrote that it would have been logical for someone to conclude that she played a role in efforts by the Clinton campaign to tie Mr. Trump to Russia. Her July 25 texts and July 27 email could be seen as support for the idea that such a plan existed, he added. But ultimately, in weighing all the evidence, Mr. Durham concluded that the Russians had probably faked the key emails, the annex shows. “The office’s best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails that purport to be from Benardo were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the U.S.-based think tanks, including the Open Society Foundations, the Carnegie Endowment and others,” it says. The Russian intelligence memos first came to public attention in 2017 after [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/us/politics/james-comey-election.html) and [The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-a-dubious-russian-document-influenced-the-fbis-handling-of-the-clinton-probe/2017/05/24/f375c07c-3a95-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html) explored a decision by James B. Comey Jr., the former F.B.I. director, to violate Justice Department procedure. In publicly addressing the investigation into Mrs. Clinton, he sharply criticized her use of a private email server but said no charges could be brought over it. Mr. Comey later told Congress and an inspector general that he decided to be the face of the decision, rather than allowing Justice Department officials to do so, as is typical, in part because of something in the Russian memos. A [Dutch spy agency had hacked the memos from a Russian spy agency’s server in 2016 and gave copies to the U.S. government](https://myprivacy.dpgmedia.nl/consent?siteKey=PUBX2BuuZfEPJ6vF&callbackUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.volkskrant.nl%2Fprivacy-wall%2Faccept%3FredirectUri%3D%252fwetenschap%252fdutch-agencies-provide-crucial-intel-about-russia-s-interference-in-us-elections%257eb4f8111b%252f%253freferer%253dhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.google.com%25252F). Two of the memos described purported communications in January 2016 and March 2016 involving a top Democratic Party leader, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, one with Mr. Benardo and the other with a different official at the Open Society Foundations. The memos indicated that the attorney general at the time, Loretta E. Lynch, was pressuring the F.B.I. about the email inquiry and sharing confidential information about it with the Clinton campaign. But Mr. Comey and other officials also [said](https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/horowitz_2018_midyear_appendix_released_by_chairman_grassley.pdf) they believed that the memos described fake emails, in part because the January one also said that Mr. Comey himself was trying to help Republicans win the election. In 2017, Mr. Benardo and Ms. Wasserman Schultz said that they had never even met, let alone communicated about Mrs. Clinton’s emails. The Trump administration has also declassified and released [a report by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee](https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/DIG/DIG-Declassified-HPSCI-Report-Manufactured-Russia-Hoax-July2025.pdf) that summarized unflattering claims about Mrs. Clinton from the Russian memos without flagging suspicions that the trove contained misinformation. After the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, Robert S. Mueller III, issued his final report, the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, assigned Mr. Durham to hunt for evidence proving Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theory that the investigation had stemmed from a deep-state plot against him. In 2020, as [The New York Times has reported](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/26/us/politics/durham-trump-russia-barr.html), after Mr. Durham failed to find evidence of intelligence abuses, he shifted to instead trying to find a basis to blame the Clinton campaign for the fact that Mr. Trump’s campaign had come under suspicion of colluding with Russia. Mr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia, but he nevertheless used court filings and his final report to insinuate such suspicions. He brought charges of false statements against two people involved in outside efforts to scrutinize possible ties between Mr. Trump and Russia, both of which ended in quick acquittals. [Charlie Savage](https://www.nytimes.com/by/charlie-savage) writes about national security and legal policy for The Times. [Adam Goldman](https://www.nytimes.com/by/adam-goldman) writes about the F.B.I. and national security for The Times. He has been a journalist for more than two decades. A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 2, 2025, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: New Disclosure Upends Claims Against Clinton. 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