The FBI spent three years investigating Donald Trump for a Russia plot Hillary Clinton's campaign invented.
John Brennan wrote down what happened next – and the CIA has kept it buried for nearly a decade.
What he wrote in that room – and who was sitting across the table – is what the CIA does not want a judge to see.
What Brennan Wrote Down About the Clinton Plan
Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the CIA in June 2026 after the agency refused to respond to an August 2025 request for John Brennan's unredacted handwritten notes from an August 3, 2016 White House briefing.
The publicly available version of those notes – released in 2020, heavily redacted – already told a damning story.
Brennan wrote that he was briefing the room on intelligence showing Hillary Clinton had personally approved "a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services."
The date was July 26, 2016 – three months before the election.
Clinton wasn't a victim of Russiagate. She created it.
Obama Was in the Room
The briefing wasn't a staff meeting. Brennan brought that intelligence directly to Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, FBI Director James Comey, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Special Counsel John Durham confirmed in his 2023 report that Brennan "personally received" the Clinton Plan intelligence and then briefed senior officials in the White House Situation Room.
The Durham annex – declassified by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and former Attorney General Pam Bondi in July 2025 – named every official who heard it.
Comey heard that Clinton's campaign had fabricated the Russia story. He then used a Clinton-funded document – the phony Steele dossier – to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign official Carter Page.
The Crossfire Hurricane Referral the FBI Buried
Durham's investigation turned up a document that should have put people in handcuffs.
On September 7, 2016, the CIA sent Comey and FBI agent Peter Strzok a formal investigative referral containing the Clinton Plan intelligence – a direct memo documenting the scheme to frame Trump.
Not a single FBI official Durham interviewed could recall seeing it.
One agent, shown the memo by Durham, became so upset he left the interview room, returned with his lawyer, and said he felt personally betrayed that no one had told him.
The referral sat there, buried, while the FBI ran a full-scale investigation of a leading presidential candidate based on the same story the referral said Clinton's campaign invented.
Brennan Perjury Probe Moves Toward Charges
The Judicial Watch lawsuit lands while Brennan is already in a federal prosecutor's crosshairs.
By February 2026, Bondi confirmed the DOJ had received a criminal referral from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan accusing Brennan of lying to Congress about the Steele dossier's role in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment.
A federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida subpoenaed Brennan, along with former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, in November 2025.
In March 2026, the House Intelligence Committee voted to send classified hearing transcripts tied to Brennan directly to DOJ prosecutors – federal prosecutors had asked for them by name.
Brennan's lawyers called it forum shopping. That's what guilty people say when the venue doesn't favor them.
Obama and Comey Responses Still Blacked Out in Durham Report
Obama's written response to that briefing and Comey's remain blacked out in every publicly available version of the Durham report.
The CIA has now been sued to produce the full, unredacted notes – what America's top intelligence officials said on the day they learned the Russia investigation was built on a lie a Democrat candidate invented.
Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton saidy: "The Russiagate scandal was a politically driven operation. It served as an enormous deflection from Hillary Clinton's use of a nongovernment email server."
Nine years later, a federal court will force that room to answer.
Sources:
- Tom Fitton, "Judicial Watch Sues CIA for Brennan's Notes on Obama-Era Briefing about Clinton Campaign Plan to Tie Trump to Russia," Judicial Watch, June 5, 2026.
- Ashley Oliver, "Bondi Confirms DOJ Has Received Criminal Referral Alleging Brennan Perjury Over Steele Dossier," Fox News, February 11, 2026.
- Chuck Grassley, "Newly Declassified Appendix to Durham Report Sheds Additional Light on Clinton Campaign Plan to Falsely Tie Trump to Russia," Senate Judiciary Committee, July 31, 2025.
- "Department of Justice, CIA Transmit Declassified Durham Documents to Senator Chuck Grassley," Department of Justice, July 31, 2025.
- "Chairman Jordan Refers John Brennan to DOJ for Criminal Prosecution," House Judiciary Committee, October 21, 2025.
- "DOJ Investigation of Former CIA Director John Brennan Deepens," VOR News, March 28, 2026.
- "FBI Questioning Current and Former CIA Officials in DOJ Probe into John Brennan's Role in Russia Assessment," Fox News, May 12, 2026.
