The Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley released some damning material, the just-declassified “Annex” to the May 12, 2023 report by Special Counsel John Durham. Grassley’s press release stressed the lower level dirty operations run by the Democrats—and they are undeniable. Yet he featured two notable bombshells.
The infamous “Hillary Clinton plan” of July 2016 (at the time of her nomination at the Democratic convention)—to divert attention away from the fixing of the Democratic primary process in her favor, and from the scandal over her use of a private email account to hide certain official business—was actually afoot at least four months before. An email from Leonard Benardo to DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz shows this. Grassley does not state it, but it means the plan was not a reaction to Julian Assange’s public announcement and releases of June and July.
According to the Durham Annex, at the time, the “Clinton staff, with support from special services, is preparing scandalous revelations of business relations between Trump and the ‘Russian Mafia.’” On March 31, 2016, FBI personnel, including then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, shared the intelligence regarding the potential Clinton Campaign plan with high-ranking career officials at the Justice Department.
It should be noted that the Durham annex qualified the authenticity of the Benardo email as follows: “Certain [redacted] analysts and officers whom the Office interviewed, and who were well-versed in the Sensitive Intelligence collection, stated that their best assessment was that the Benardo emails were likely authentic.” However, the annex report suggests that their source might have summarized several Benardo emails into the two presented.
