Declassified: Trump to release FBI’s Russia probe documents
CNN
President Donald Trump on Tuesday declassified a host of materials from the FBI’s 2016 investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia, the latest instance of Trump using the power of his office to relitigate his past political grievances.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday declassified a host of materials from the FBI’s 2016 investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia, the latest instance of Trump using the power of his office to relitigate his past political grievances. In signing the executive action, Trump completed a process he started during the final days of his first term, when he ordered a full declassification of the FBI’s Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane. That effort led to a behind the scenes scramble as Republican aides and Trump officials worked to collect and redact a binder filled with highly classified material. Trump officially declassified the material on January 19, 2021, during his last full day in office, but the documents were never made public. An unredacted copy of the binder ended up mysteriously disappearing, as CNN first reported in 2023. Among the binder’s contents were reams of information about the Russia investigation, including highly sensitive raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election. That material is likely to be redacted in the documents that are being released publicly. It also included classified information about the FBI’s problematic foreign intelligence surveillance warrants on a Trump campaign adviser from 2017; interview notes with infamous dossier author Christopher Steele, and internal FBI and DOJ text messages and emails, among other documents. Trump noted in his memorandum that material the FBI proposed for redactions in January 2021 should remain classified, as well as “materials that must be protected from disclosure pursuant to orders of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”
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