{"id":1797,"date":"2025-08-05T00:06:03","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T00:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/?p=1797"},"modified":"2025-08-05T00:29:32","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T00:29:32","slug":"william-shipley-what-the-durham-annex-tells-us-about-the-russiagate-hoax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/05\/william-shipley-what-the-durham-annex-tells-us-about-the-russiagate-hoax\/","title":{"rendered":"WILLIAM SHIPLEY: What the Durham Annex tells us about the Russiagate hoax"},"content":{"rendered":"

On July 31 and Aug. 1, The New York Times ran two stories pouring cold water on the release of the previously classified “Annex” to the Report of Special Counsel John Durham<\/a> dated May 23, 2023.\u00a0 But the authors \u2013 Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman \u2013 misdirected their readers’ attention from the start to a non-issue, with the help of a literally false headline claiming Durham found certain documents in the Annex to have been “faked” by Russian intelligence.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the basis upon which the Times, Washington Post, Politico, network news, and other legacy media have myopically focused their reporting on the FBI\u2019s Crossfire Hurricane investigation<\/a> of President Trump \u2013 which we know was “faked” by the FBI, CIA, and Obama White House.<\/p>\n

JONATHAN TURLEY: DEMOCRATS PULLED THE GREATEST POLITICAL CON JOB EVER ON AMERICANS. IT’S FINALLY UNRAVELING<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Part of Durham\u2019s investigation looked into why the FBI did NOTHING \u2013 literally \u2013 after first receiving the Russian intelligence information in late July 2016, as contrasted with how the FBI reacted to information nearly 60 days old received from an Australian diplomat about a meeting in a London bar.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

The Annex includes previously classified information on the receipt of “Special Intelligence” throughout the first part of 2016 from a friendly foreign government, showing Russia\u2019s seemingly real-time knowledge of the inner machinations of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Annex is a document authored by Durham\u2019s team.\u00a0Since the source documents upon which the Russian memos were based were not provided \u2013 or at least not made public \u2013 the accuracy of Russian memos\u2019 paraphrasing\/referencing to the source documents is unknown.\u00a0 All those qualifiers go to the work of “analysis” \u2013 what is this document, where does it originate, what does it say, what does it rely upon, can it be corroborated separately, what is our level of confidence in accepting the contents as accurate at face value, etc.?<\/p>\n

Two items that have attracted the most attention, and which the Times’ stories focus on, are “emails” purportedly written by Leonard Bernardo, dated July 25 and July 27, 2016.\u00a0Bernardo worked for a George Soros-related entity.\u00a0His emails were hacked, and he had communications with senior Clinton campaign officials.<\/p>\n

The Annex does not have actual “emails” as you might find them on Bernardo\u2019s computer or a recipient\u2019s computer \u2013 they have none of the typical email formatting.\u00a0What they appear to be are “retyped” versions of the text in the body of emails into a Russian language memo, the Russian memo was translated into English, with Durham “cutting & pasting” the English translation into his report.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The July 25 “email” includes the allegation that Hillary Clinton approved a plan conceived by a “foreign policy adviser” to “vilify” then-candidate Donald Trump by falsely linking him to Russia Pres. Putin.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

As for the Russian language memo \u2013 we don\u2019t know the date — Durham provides an English translation that includes the following:<\/p>\n

“According to data from the election campaign headquarters of Hillary Clinton, obtained via the U.S. Soros Foundation, on July 26, 2016, Clinton approved a plan by her policy advisor Juliana Smith \u2026 to smear Donald Trump by magnifying the scandal tied to the intrusion Russian special services in the pre-election process to benefit the Republican candidate.”<\/p>\n

The Russian memo says next “As envisioned by Smith\u2026.”\u00a0This suggests that maybe among the documents supporting the memo is a description of Smith\u2019s plan either by Smith herself or someone else familiar enough with the details to describe it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“As envisioned by Smith, raising the theme of ‘Putin\u2019s support for Trump’ to the level of the Olympic scandal would divert constituents\u2019 attention from the investigation of Clinton\u2019s compromised electronic correspondence.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Russian memo, which had to have been written after July 27 since it had contents from a July 27 email in it, describes precisely what followed over the next 100 days leading up to the election \u2013 establishing “Putin\u2019s support for Trump” was the goal of the supposed “plan.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Russian memo goes on:<\/p>\n

“\u2026by subsequently steering public opinion towards the notion that it [the public] needs to equate \u2018Putin\u2019s efforts\u2019 to influence political processes in the United States via cyberspace to acts against critically important infrastructure (resembling a national power supply network) would force the White House [read “OBAMA”] to use more confrontational scenarios vis-\u00e0-vis Moscow\u2026.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

The memo says the Clinton campaign will seek to blow up the significance of Russian election interference \u2013 which happens in every election \u2013 by equating it to an attack on vital national infrastructure, and link Putin and Trump together in the effort, i.e., any election interference by Putin is really a proxy for an attack on democracy by Trump.<\/p>\n

FBI’S CONTROVERSIAL TRUMP-RUSSIA ACTIONS PREDICTED WITH ‘ALARMING SPECIFICITY’ BY FOREIGN ACTORS: SOURCES<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Either the Russian intelligence services are clairvoyant and should be playing the lottery every week, or they wandered into a trove of correspondence between people associated with the Clinton campaign describing precisely the game plan executed by the campaign, and White House, CIA, and FBI on its behalf.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The July 27 email attributed to Bernardo is also relatively short in terms of what Durham sets forth as the verbatim text taken from the Russian memo, and it confirms that Clinton approved “Julia\u2019s idea.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Times’ authors falsely reported that Durham called the two Bernardo emails “fake” \u2013 and said that they were “concocted” by Russian intelligence. Hence, according to the Times, all the controversy surrounding the release of Annex materials was made irrelevant by that finding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Durham didn\u2019t conclude the emails were fake. What did he conclude?\u00a0<\/p>\n

His team\u2019s “best assessment” was that they were “composites” \u2013 some portion of the text of each was taken from other sources and combined into the text that appeared under Bernardo\u2019s name as an “email.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is clear that Bernardo did not write them, i.e., they are not “authentic.”<\/p>\n

But it is also clear that some amount of the content in each was accurate \u2013 and predicted events that would unfold over the next 100 days.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Durham reached that conclusion only after a long and involved process designed to understand both what the emails were, and how much of the content of the Special Intelligence was accurate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Everything \u2013 and I mean everything — Durham did to answer those questions were things the FBI chose to NOT DO in or after August 2016.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Durham asked intelligence analysts \u2013 FBI and CIA presumably \u2013 if the emails appeared authentic.\u00a0 Most said that they did.\u00a0Some noted that Bernardo was, in fact, a victim of hacking by the Russians, so it would not be surprising if his emails were in the Russians\u2019 hands.\u00a0It was noted by some that the Russians could have fabricated or altered the original information taken from the source documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just the fact that some analysts believed the emails appeared to be authentic should have been enough to push the FBI into action.\u00a0But it did nothing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Durham interviewed Bernardo and showed him the emails.\u00a0The FBI never did that.\u00a0Bernardo said he did not recognize them, and there was language in them that he would not have used — specifically the sentence “Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”<\/p>\n

Judging intelligence translated from a foreign language is tricky.\u00a0Bernardo denied using that phrase, but how far off is that from a very similar phrase more commonly used by a native English speaker \u2013 “Pour gas onto the fire”?\u00a0 Bernardo\u2019s original document would have been in English \u2013 then translated to Russian \u2013 then the Russian version translated back to English.\u00a0That\u2019s how “gas onto the fire” ends up as “oil into the fire.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bernardo also said he did not know who “Julie” was as referenced in the July 25 email.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But he noted that the final sentence in the July 25 email \u2013 that “things are ghastly for US-Russian relations” was phrased as something that he would write.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Durham gathered documents with grand jury subpoenas and search warrants.\u00a0He looked for the documents obtained by Russian hackers.\u00a0As for the July 25 and July 27 emails, Durham did not find those among the emails of the Soros Foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But he found other emails \u2013 either emails or attachments to emails sent by people other than Bernardo \u2013 with language identical to Bernardo.\u00a0Specifically, a passage in the July 25 email was taken directly from an email written by Tim Mauer, who worked for the Carnegie Endowment as a cyber expert.\u00a0Mauer had never seen the Bernardo emails but agreed that one passage was taken from an email he had sent to colleagues at Carnegie \u2013 also hacked by the Russians.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Durham also interviewed Julianne Smith, who was a Clinton campaign foreign policy advisor, and who did involve herself in efforts to amplify the threat of the Putin-Trump relationship to U.S. national security.<\/p>\n

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

It is noteworthy that Durham begins this portion as follows:<\/p>\n

“Smith stated she did not specifically remember proposing a plan to Clinton or other Campaign leadership to try to tie Trump to Putin and Russia.”<\/p>\n

That phrasing is never accidental \u2013 “did not specifically remember” leaves much room to extricate oneself if a document emerges later that says what it is you claim to not remember.\u00a0Agents are trained to note such phrases exactly as stated by the person being interviewed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Smith did say “it was possible” she had proposed ideas to campaign leadership “who may have approved those ideas.”\u00a0 Again \u2013 Durham is showing her emails about a “Clinton Plan” she supposedly hatched, and she cannot be confident what other documents he might have that he isn\u2019t showing her.<\/p>\n

While she didn\u2019t remember much of anything about anything, the one thing she was certain of is that she would never have made a proposal that had as part of its execution the involvement of the FBI in furtherance of the effort.<\/p>\n

Prior to Durham, the FBI did none of this \u2013 and has never offered an explanation for why.<\/p>\n

THAT was the point made by Durham\u2019s Annex.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM WILLIAM SHIPLEY<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On July 31 and Aug. 1, The New York Times ran two stories pouring cold water on the release of the previously classified “Annex” to the Report of Special Counsel John Durham dated May 23, 2023.\u00a0 But the authors \u2013 Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman \u2013 misdirected their readers’ attention from the start to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1798,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions\/1798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}