WASHINGTON IN SHOCK — VIRAL TEXTS LINKED TO OBAMA AND HILLARY SPARK MASSIVE BACKLASH.

# REPORT: Emails, Texts Show Obama, Clinton Coordination On Russia Hoax

A new round of declassified records has reopened one of the most bitter disputes left over from the 2016 presidential election.

The documents concern how U.S. intelligence agencies handled Russia-related information involving Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the investigation later known as Crossfire Hurricane.

They also contain material that raises legitimate questions about what senior officials knew, what the Clinton campaign was trying to do, and how the FBI evaluated politically sensitive intelligence.

But the strongest version of the claim now circulating — that newly released emails and texts conclusively prove Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton jointly coordinated a “Russia hoax” — goes further than the public evidence currently establishes.

That distinction matters.

The newly declassified material is significant.

It is not the same thing as proof that Russia did nothing in 2016.

It is not proof that every part of the Trump-Russia investigation was fabricated.

And it does not erase the conclusion, reached by multiple investigations, that Russia conducted an influence operation aimed at the U.S. election.

What the records do is expose a more complicated argument over three separate questions that are often collapsed into one.

Did Russia successfully alter votes or election infrastructure?

Did Russia conduct an influence campaign involving hacked material, propaganda and other activity?

And did the Trump campaign criminally conspire or coordinate with the Russian government?

Those are different questions.

The first is where one of the most important newly highlighted memos comes in.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released records in July 2025 that included Obama-era intelligence assessments saying Russian and other actors had not changed the election result through cyberattacks on voting infrastructure.

One document said there was no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count through cyber means.

Another concluded that the targeting of systems not used to cast ballots made it highly unlikely the activity could have altered an official state vote.

Those findings are important.

But they do not mean U.S. intelligence officials had concluded Russia played no role at all in the 2016 election.

The distinction is between manipulating votes and influencing voters.

The January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at the election.

That campaign included cyber activity, the theft and release of Democratic material, state media and other information operations.

The assessment did not claim that Russia secretly changed vote totals.

It also did not attempt to calculate whether Russian activity changed the final outcome of the election.

That is why the newly released election-infrastructure assessments do not, by themselves, overturn the broader conclusion about Russian interference.

They address a narrower question.

This is one of the most important corrections to the way the new disclosures have sometimes been described.

Gabbard has argued that Obama-era officials suppressed intelligence and then manufactured a politically motivated assessment designed to undermine Trump.

Her office has described the affair in extraordinarily serious terms, including as a conspiracy against the incoming president.

Former Obama officials and outside analysts have rejected that interpretation.

The disagreement is not over whether Russia changed vote counts.

There has long been broad agreement that it did not.

The dispute is over whether the later intelligence assessment about Moscow’s influence campaign was improperly shaped, exaggerated or politicized.

A separate CIA review released in July 2025 adds weight to some of the criticism of the process without concluding that the central Russia finding was invented.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe ordered career officials to review the tradecraft used to produce the 2017 assessment.

That review identified procedural problems.

It pointed to the compressed timeline, unusual involvement by agency leaders, uneven access to sensitive intelligence and the marginalization of normal analytic structures.

Those are serious criticisms.

They support the argument that the assessment was produced through an atypical and politically charged process.

But criticism of the process is not identical to a finding that Russia’s influence campaign never occurred.

That point is reinforced by earlier investigations.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election through multiple operations.

His investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in those interference activities.

That combination of findings is central to understanding the controversy.

Russia interfered.

The Mueller investigation did not establish a criminal Trump-Russia conspiracy.

Both statements can be true at the same time.

The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee also documented Russian interference and examined contacts involving people associated with the Trump campaign.

Its conclusions did not depend on a theory that voting machines or vote totals had been manipulated.

So when a memo says Russian cyber actors did not change election results through attacks on election infrastructure, that does not automatically contradict the broader Russia-interference finding.

The new records become more complicated when the focus moves from Russia to the Clinton campaign.

A declassified appendix to Special Counsel John Durham’s report, released by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley in July 2025, contains previously classified intelligence concerning what investigators called a possible “Clinton Campaign Plan.”

That material had been known in part before the annex was released.

According to Durham, U.S. intelligence obtained information alleging that Clinton had approved a proposal to connect Trump to Russia as a way to distract from controversy surrounding her private email server.

CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama and other senior officials on intelligence concerning that alleged plan in August 2016.

The FBI also received a referral.

The existence of that briefing is not new proof that the allegation itself was true.

It shows that the intelligence existed and reached senior officials.

Durham’s newly declassified appendix adds more detail.

It includes intelligence derived from Russian-acquired material and communications that Durham’s team examined while investigating whether there was a Clinton campaign effort to promote a Trump-Russia narrative.

Some of the material involved purported emails associated with Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundations.

Durham’s office did not simply accept those documents at face value.

Its assessment was that the purported emails were likely a composite assembled from several genuine emails obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of U.S.-based organizations.

That finding creates an unusual evidentiary problem.

The material could contain genuine communications while also having been assembled or presented by a hostile intelligence service.

That is precisely the type of evidence that requires caution.

Durham nevertheless found other communications that he said gave at least some support to the idea that Clinton campaign figures were trying to tie Trump to Russia.

One part of the annex discussed campaign adviser Julianne Smith.

The communications reviewed by Durham indicated that she contacted or sought information from people connected to the National Security Council and the Office of the Vice President regarding Russia and Trump.

Durham wrote that it was a logical deduction that Smith was, at minimum, playing a role in the campaign’s efforts to connect Trump to Russia.

The annex also said the communications lent at least some credence to the existence of such a plan.

That is meaningful.

It is also more limited than saying the documents prove Obama and Clinton jointly ran a government operation against Trump.

There is a difference between a campaign seeking help or information from government officials and establishing a coordinated conspiracy directed by the president.

The declassified material raises questions about those contacts.

It does not, on its own, supply every answer.

That is also why reports of additional texts and emails deserve scrutiny.

RealClearInvestigations reporter Paul Sperry reported that sources told him there were communications showing Clinton campaign aides interacting with people in the Obama White House, National Security Council, State Department and intelligence community while seeking information connecting Trump to Vladimir Putin.

Some of the underlying communications overlap with material later discussed in the Durham annex.

But claims based on unnamed sources should still be separated from documents that have actually been released and authenticated.

The strongest publicly available evidence shows that Clinton campaign figures were interested in building a Trump-Russia case and that some sought information from government contacts.

It also shows that U.S. officials were aware of intelligence alleging a Clinton campaign strategy.

What remains contested is whether those facts amount to direct Obama-Clinton coordination in the sense implied by the headline.

Durham’s investigation is important here because it spent years examining the origins and handling of the Trump-Russia investigation.

His 2023 final report sharply criticized the FBI.

Durham concluded that the bureau relied too heavily on information from politically connected sources and failed to apply appropriate rigor before opening and expanding parts of its investigation.

He also found that the FBI did not take adequate investigative steps to corroborate or disprove intelligence concerning the possible Clinton campaign plan.

But Durham did not conclude that Russia’s 2016 influence operation was “baseless.”

That is another distinction frequently lost in political summaries of his report.

His focus was on the conduct of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies and whether they had a proper basis for investigative steps involving the Trump campaign.

Mueller’s investigation, meanwhile, had already concluded that Russia conducted an interference campaign but did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

The Steele dossier is another area where the language must be precise.

The dossier was political opposition research compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and funded through a law firm working for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Many of its most sensational allegations were never substantiated.

The FBI used Steele material in applications to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, and the Justice Department inspector general later identified serious errors and omissions in the Page FISA process.

That history is well documented.

But Crossfire Hurricane itself was not initially opened because of the Steele dossier.

The FBI opened the investigation after receiving information concerning Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and his statements about Russia having politically damaging information related to Clinton.

The dossier arrived later and became part of the investigation.

That does not excuse failures in how the FBI evaluated Steele.

It does mean that saying the dossier “launched Crossfire Hurricane” is inaccurate.

The 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment presents another nuance.

The CIA’s 2025 tradecraft review criticized how senior leaders handled material connected to Steele.

But the dossier was not the sole foundation for the assessment’s central judgment that Putin ordered an influence campaign.

The broader intelligence picture included Russian cyber operations and information activity that had been examined independently.

The political controversy has now moved beyond historical review.

Gabbard referred declassified material to the Justice Department in 2025, and the department announced that it would evaluate the disclosures.

By May 2026, Reuters reported that FBI agents had begun interviewing current and former CIA personnel as part of a Justice Department investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and his role in the 2017 Russia assessment.

That makes the Brennan issue an active investigative matter rather than merely a political threat.

But an investigation is not a criminal conviction.

Public reporting has not established that Brennan has been found guilty of perjury, conspiracy or any other offense arising from the assessment.

Claims that he deliberately lied to Congress about the dossier therefore remain allegations unless and until prosecutors prove them in court.

James Comey presents a different issue.

Comey has faced renewed legal scrutiny, but current charges against him should not be confused with proof about Crossfire Hurricane.

In April 2026, a federal grand jury indicted Comey over a 2025 Instagram post that prosecutors allege constituted threats against President Trump.

That case concerns the social-media post.

It does not establish that Comey committed a crime in connection with the Russia investigation.

Keeping those matters separate is essential.

The same caution applies to claims of a secret 200-page congressional audit and private Justice Department meetings.

RealClearInvestigations reported in July 2025, based on anonymous Trump administration sources, that officials had met to discuss additional Russiagate records, including a roughly 200-page congressional review and possible declassification of more material.

Some of the broader declassification effort later became public.

But not every allegation from that report has been independently established in the form originally described.

That is the larger lesson running through the current controversy.

There are genuine new documents.

There are genuine failures documented by inspectors general, Durham and the CIA’s later tradecraft review.

There is evidence that Clinton campaign figures worked to promote allegations connecting Trump and Russia.

There is evidence that senior Obama administration officials were briefed on intelligence concerning a possible Clinton campaign plan.

There are also real questions about how the FBI handled that intelligence.

But those facts coexist with another established record.

Russia conducted an influence campaign against the 2016 election.

U.S. investigators did not find that Russia altered vote totals.

Mueller did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.

And none of the newly declassified election-infrastructure memos changes those distinctions.

That is why calling the entire matter a “hoax” can obscure more than it explains.

There were allegations about Trump and Russia that were never proven.

There were serious investigative mistakes.

There were politically funded claims that should have received greater skepticism.

There were also real Russian operations.

The argument now is increasingly about whether Obama-era officials knowingly blurred those lines, whether they handled intelligence with political bias and whether campaign-linked information improperly influenced government investigations.

The declassified records justify asking those questions.

They do not justify skipping directly to a final criminal verdict.

The Durham annex is particularly important because it shows how uncertain intelligence can move through the government.

A hostile foreign service acquires communications.

Analysts try to determine whether the material is genuine.

Political campaigns seek damaging information about opponents.

Government officials receive reports about those efforts.

Investigators must then decide what can be trusted, what requires corroboration and what may itself be foreign disinformation.

That is precisely where the FBI’s judgment has come under the harshest criticism.

Durham argued that the bureau failed to investigate some politically sensitive intelligence with the same intensity it used elsewhere.

Grassley and current Trump administration officials have interpreted those failures as evidence of institutional weaponization.

Former Obama officials reject the claim that they manufactured the Russia assessment.

Those competing interpretations are likely to remain politically explosive.

The current Brennan investigation may eventually produce additional evidence.

More records may be declassified.

Witnesses may be questioned.

Prosecutors may decide whether any conduct crossed a criminal line.

Until that happens, the most responsible conclusion is narrower than either side’s most dramatic slogan.

The latest disclosures strengthen the case that investigators and intelligence officials made serious procedural and analytic mistakes during one of the most politically sensitive investigations in modern American history.

They also add evidence that people associated with Clinton’s campaign were actively seeking to connect Trump to Russia and were reaching toward contacts in government while doing so.

What they do not yet establish is a proven criminal conspiracy jointly directed by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to fabricate the entire Russia story.

Nor do they overturn the established finding that Russia itself carried out an influence campaign in 2016.