They knew it could spark a geopolitical catastrophe. They did it anyway.

Let’s dispense with illusions: Vladimir Putin is not misunderstood. He is an autocrat. He lies, he invades, he suppresses dissent, and he trades ruthlessly in realpolitik. His regime has poisoned opponents, jailed journalists, and bombed civilians.

He has aligned himself—out of both strategy and necessity—with the Chinese Communist Party, America’s chief geopolitical adversary.

In short, he needs no fabrication to appear villainous—his record speaks for itself.

But that’s what he got. According to the recently declassified Durham annex, senior U.S. officials weren’t content to let Putin’s record stand on its own.

They sought to amplify it—to demonize him alongside Donald Trump and turn the Russian president into a political cudgel. The aim was to hang Putin like a leaden albatross around Trump’s neck as part of a broader strategy to bring Trump down.

This was a multi-pronged operation—inside and outside the government—with a domestic objective at its core: to destroy Trump before he could win or govern, by laundering a phony narrative through the Steele dossier and fabricated claims of collusion.

And by their own words, Putin was in the crosshairs too.

Which raises significant questions: What exactly were they trying to provoke? Were they attempting to drive U.S.-Russia relations into permanent hostility? A new Cold War—while risking a “hot” one?

To goad a nuclear adversary into miscalculation? Or were U.S.-Russia relations simply collateral damage—acceptable fallout in a calculated effort to legitimize a manufactured Trump-Putin narrative and politically cripple their chosen target?

Perhaps there was a hierarchy of objectives, undoubtedly with Trump’s destruction at the top. But the targeting of Putin was not incidental. It was deliberate, and it cannot be dismissed.

The Durham annex makes that crystal clear.

One of the most revealing suspected emails cited in the declassified Durham annex didn’t come from an intelligence officer.

It came from Leonard Bernardo, a top official at George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, reacting to internal Clinton-camp discussions about how to frame the Russia narrative.

Julie says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire... Anyway, things are ghastly for US-Russian relations. —Leonard Bernardo, July 25, 2016 email (Durham Annex, pp. 9-10) [emphasis added].

The annex itself notes that “Julie” appears to refer to Julianne Smith, a foreign policy advisor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

At the time, Smith was Director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, where she served from 2014 to 2018. She later served as President Biden’s Ambassador to NATO from 2021 to 2024.

Let that sink in. As early as July 2016, a Soros-linked operative was acknowledging—privately—that the Clinton operation would weaponize intelligence, politicize federal law enforcement, and court geopolitical blowback—all to score a fleeting post-convention bounce, while openly admitting it was just the start of a long-term political operation.

And they knew the “ghastly” consequences it could have for U.S.-Russia relations.

The Durham annex notes that certain analysts and officers interviewed by the Special Counsel’s office assessed the Bernardo email—and others—as “likely authentic.” 

While Bernardo later denied some details, he reportedly acknowledged that describing U.S.-Russia relations as 'ghastly' was something he might say.

To grasp the recklessness of this operation, consider what Russia brings to the table:

Russia is not a country one antagonizes casually—least of all by fabricating evidence that its leader colluded with a U.S. presidential candidate.

Yet that’s precisely what Clinton allies—with Barack Obama’s tacit blessing—did.

And the Kremlin was watching. Russia had the memos. Given the timing and the content, it's reasonable to assume they had real-time or near real-time visibility into the fraud America’s political class was unleashing—not just on its citizens, but on the world.

So while American voters were being told that Donald Trump was a Russian asset, the actual Russians were watching U.S. officials knowingly promote disinformation about them.

They watched a sitting American president allow his agencies to be turned into political weapons against Trump.

And they realized something breathtaking: America’s political class was more corrupt—and more unstable—than they had imagined.

This was an elite political operation that weaponized the intelligence community, torched its credibility, and shredded America’s vaunted republican ideals and constitutional norms in the most Machiavellian way imaginable.

The very institutions entrusted to defend liberty and safeguard peace were commandeered for one purpose: raw political power.

It wasn’t the Kremlin destabilizing American democracy. It was the political leadership at Langley. Foggy Bottom. McLean. And 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

They injected deliberate disinformation into America’s political bloodstream. They turned national security into a domestic weapon. And they did it knowing the global consequences could be catastrophic.

Russia didn’t need kompromat on Trump. They had something far more damning: evidence that America’s ruling elite would jeopardize international stability to cling to power.

That is the real revelation of the Durham annex. Not just that Hillary Clinton greenlit the smear. Not just that Obama knew. Not just that the FBI and CIA leadership ran with it.

Those were long-held suspicions—now confirmed and surpassed by the disclosures themselves.

What’s new is this: They knew the risks were existential—and they did it anyway.

Because in their calculus, none of it mattered—so long as Trump lost or was destroyed.

On the extreme end of possible outcomes, they risked World War III. Yes—nuclear war. Armageddon.

And the irony is almost too rich to process: It was Democrats who warned—loudly and wrongly—that Trump’s election might lead to global war.

And yet it was they who risked exactly that, in their desperate effort to stop him from winning.

They knew the stakes. They knew the risks. They knew the consequences. 

They likely assumed the Russian government knew—or would soon find out. And it did.

After all, Moscow had the memos—and its intelligence services were more than capable of tracing the fingerprints of the Clinton-Obama-Soros operation straight back to Washington.

This wasn’t just reckless. It was peril unhinged—a devil-may-care plunge into geopolitical chaos, so long as they achieved their ends.

Simply put, it is hypocrisy, corruption, and treachery on a scale that should disqualify them from public office—and tarnish their legacy.

Forever.

Charlton Allen is an attorney and former chief executive officer and chief judicial officer of the North Carolina Industrial Commission. He is founder of the Madison Center for Law & Liberty, Inc., editor of The American Salient, and host of the Modern Federalist podcast. For media inquiries or speaking engagements, please click here. X: @CharltonAllenNC

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