>Fucking Durham too
How Trump’s Own Appointees Aided Russiagate Plot Against Him
21-Nov-2025
When Obama administration officials manufactured U.S. intelligence tying Donald Trump to Moscow following his stunning 2016 victory, they had no idea Trump’s own political appointees would help them undermine Trump’s presidency – and his chances of reelection in 2020.
RCI’s review of recently declassified documents and exclusive interviews with former Trump officials reveals for the first time how key members of Trump’s cabinet and other appointees during his first term shrouded the previous administration’s machinations and either deliberately or inadvertently misled the public into thinking the fake Russiagate intelligence was real.
Former Special Counsel John Durham, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former CIA Director Gina Haspel dismissed or buried evidence that cast doubt on a foundational document of the Russigate hoax – the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) prepared in the waning days of the Obama administration.
Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr, stopped the declassification and release of key exculpatory evidence debunking the ICA on the eve of the 2020 election, which has not been reported previously.
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While these Trump-appointed officials may not have initiated the weaponization of the CIA against Trump, they facilitated it by hiding evidence that exposed the claims that Russia tried to help Trump as a fraud. By obscuring Joe Biden’s own role in perpetrating the hoax, they may have helped Obama’s vice president win the close race for the presidency in 2020.
“The Russiagate betrayal continued in plain sight,” said former Trump national security adviser J.D. Gordon, with some in Trump’s own cabinet letting him twist in the wind instead of daylighting secreted material that would have cleared the clouds of suspicion hanging over his head before the 2020 election.
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Nevertheless, as Trump’s first term drew to a close, there was one more opportunity to expose the Obama administration’s machinations. Ironically, that was forestalled by the special counsel who had been appointed to investigate the origins of the Russiagate hoax, John Durham. It was Trump’s attorney general, Barr, who tapped Durham, an old DOJ colleague and friend.
While Durham’s final report, which was not issued until 2023, raised serious questions about the Russiagate probe, his most significant decision may have occurred in the final days of the 2020 election when he quashed efforts to expose the plot to weaponize U.S. intelligence. That October, then-National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe sought to declassify and release a devastating 44-page report that refuted the Obama-ordered Intelligence Community Assessment’s explosive finding that Moscow tried to swing the election to Trump. When the ICA was finally declassified this summer, it set off a firestorm of controversy, leading to the investigation of Brennan and Clapper and the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.
MOAR
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2025/11/20/exclusive_how_trumps_own_appointees_aided_russiagate_plot_against_him_1148719.html
@paulsperry_
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BREAKING: John Durham Stopped John Ratcliffe from Declassifying and Releasing Damning Report Debunking Obama-Ordered Intel on Russia Before 2020 Election
@paulsperry_
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“Durham specifically asked for that report to not be declassified and released, because he wanted to use it as part of his investigation and prosecutions – or so we presumed,” the former senior ODNI intelligence official familiar with Ratcliffe’s declassification effort said.
@paulsperry_
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“After we gave Durham the report, along with over a thousand pages of other classified documents, he went ghost,” said the former senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We didn't hear from him, and he didn’t appear to do anything with the report."
Nov 21, 2025 · 4:07 PM UTC
https://nitter.poast.org/paulsperry_/status/1991901359436857496#m