Classified Clinton Annex Released

Yesterday Senator Grassley released the classified annex of a 2018 OIG report on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

The report largely covers 8 thumb drives sourced from “T1” containing emails that the FBI never made attempts to verify due to privilege concerns. At the same time, the FBI concluded certain aspects of the files lacked credibility.

Sleuth News sources confirm that T1 is the same source responsible for the Clinton Plan Intelligence, Renteria Memo, and curiously, played a role in Special Counsel Mueller’s Concord indictment (which relates to the alleged troll farm Internet Research Agency).

That is one of the points worth emphasizing. When the emails suggested anything negative towards Clinton, they lacked credibility. But material from the same source was used to support a federal indictment against the Russians.

As to the legitimacy of the emails, nobody has attempted to verify them, though 2023 New York Times reporting suggests that the Durham team sought an order for email header information to verify emails from Leonard Bernardo. This appears to relate to something Sleuth News reported in April. There is an alleged email from Clinton campaign official Jennifer Palmieri sent to Leonard Bernardo stating that part of Clinton’s plan involved having the FBI “amplify” their allegations.

“T1” is Dutch Intelligence. It appears that Russian intelligence reports weren’t the only thing provided to us in 2016, they had obtained emails hacked by the Russians which could potentially verify the Russian intelligence reports.

The group that the Dutch was obtaining these materials from is less clear, though we’ve known about their surveillance of APT-29 (Cozy Bear). Fool_Nelson reminds us that Shaltai Boltai had obtained documents on Concord:

We’ve previously reported this intelligence channel was blown up when John Brennan called Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia’s FSB.

With this additional context and the arrests of Sergei Mikhailov (FSB), Dmitry Dokuchaev (FSB) and the Shaltai Boltai group in the fall of 2016, it appears the Dutch were also watching Shaltai Boltai, who may have been compromised by Brennan’s phone call.

Shaltai Boltai is a complicated story in a complicated part of the world. They have released sensitive documents on Russian leaders, including leaking a speech of Vladimir Putin. Their head was a man named Anikeyev, who sought asylum in Estonia before his arrest.

Fool Nelson reminds us that information on the Internet Research Agency was obtained through a delegation trip to Estonia:

We suspect these emails are legitimate. I might do a stream to try to break this down a bit better, some of the details are a bit esoteric.

We hope the declassification continues.