A new report based on a formerly classified document says that a top player on the George Soros network knew about the Russiagate hoax in its infancy.

On Thursday, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa released a declassified version of an appendix to a report written by former special counsel John Durham, who investigated the shadowy beginnings of the debunked narrative that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was colluding with Russia.

The website Just the News dug into the pages to glean that Leonard Benardo, an official with George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, and Julianne Smith, a foreign policy adviser to 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, were knee-deep in the developing stage of smearing Trump, with one communication appearing to acknowledge that the FBI was there to help.

“During the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information through the FBI-affiliated …technical structures … in particular, the Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect companies, from where the information would then be disseminated through leading U.S. publications,” the classified document said.

“The media analysis on the DNC hacking appears solid …. Julie [Campaign Advisor] 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,” the document said.

A purported Bernardo email said, “HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] approved [Campaign adviser Julie’s] idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections. That should distract people from her own missing emails.

“The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue … In absence of direct evidence, Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect will supply the media, and GRU [Russia’s Main Intelligence Directive] will hopefully carry on to give more facts,” the email continued.

Durham’s classified annex reported, “The office’s review of certain communications involving Smith provided possible additional support … to the notion that the Clinton campaign was engaged in an effort or plan in late July 2016 to encourage scrutiny of Trump’s purported ties to Russia, and that the [Clinton] campaign might have wanted or expected the FBI or other agencies to aid that effort (‘put more oil into the fire’) by commencing a formal investigation of the DNC hack.”

The Durham classified annex also assessed that “it is a logical deduction [REDACTED] [Julianne] Smith was, at minimum, playing a role in the Clinton campaign’s efforts to tie Trump to Russia” and that the communications reviewed by the special counsel “certainly lends at least some credence that such a plan existed.”

In a news release on his website, Grassley said that the appendix brings Americans one step closer to the truth.

“Based on the Durham annex, the Obama FBI failed to adequately review and investigate intelligence reports showing the Clinton campaign may have been ginning up the fake Trump-Russia narrative for Clinton’s political gain, which was ultimately done through the Steele Dossier and other means,” he said.

“History will show that the Obama and Biden administration’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies were weaponized against President Trump,” Grassley said.

“This political weaponization has caused critical damage to our institutions and is one of the biggest political scandals and cover-ups in American history. The new Trump administration has a tremendous responsibility to the American people to fix the damage done and do so with maximum speed and transparency,” he said.

The site noted that a March 2016 memo concerning then–Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Bernardo, and his fellow Soros official, Jeffrey Goldstein, said “the Clinton staff, with support from special services, is preparing scandalous revelations of business relations between Trump and the ‘Russian Mafia’”

Durham’s document said that “based on an analysis and translation of the intelligence, FBI analysts believed that, at the time, the ‘special services’ in the March 2016 memorandum could refer ‘to the FBI and the CIA or more broadly to the intelligence and law enforcement communities’ in the United States.”

Grassley’s site noted that in the appendix, Durham wrote, “Analysts and officers whom [Durham’s team] interviewed, and who were well-versed in the Sensitive Intelligence collection, stated that their best assessment was that the Bernardo emails were likely authentic.”

The site also noted that, according to a January 2016 memo, “President Barack Obama intended to scuttle the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and mishandling of highly classified information during her time as Secretary of State.”

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