President Donald Trump has ordered the declassification of some classified documents related to Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s “Russia” investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign.
The materials were not immediately released to the public. Trump previously promised to declassify all information related to the “Russiagate” affair. He said on Oct. 11 last year that the new documents related to the “Russiagate” case were “shocking” and would be released to the public soon.
In a memo to the attorney general, the director of national intelligence and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Trump said the Justice Department provided the White House on Dec. 30, 2020, with a folder of documents related to the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation, some of which were classified and not released to Congress or the public.
“I requested these documents for declassification review so that I could determine how much of this document should be released in unclassified form,” Trump said in the memo, “and I determined that the material in this folder should be declassified and made public to the extent possible. “
Trump said the FBI, in its Jan. 17 response letter, “continually objected to any further declassification of the material in this folder and, based on a review that took into account the interests of the intelligence community, identified the passages that the bureau believes are most critical and should not be made public.”
“I have decided to accept the FBI’s proposal in its Jan. 17 submission to continue to keep the relevant passages confidential,” Trump said, “and I hereby declassify the remaining material in the folder. This is my final decision under the declassification review, and I have directed the Attorney General to deliver a properly redacted copy to the White House in accordance with the revisions proposed by the FBI in its January 17 submission.”
The President added, “My decision to declassify the material in the document is subject to the limitations described above. and does not involve material that must be protected under a FISA court order, nor does it require the disclosure of personally identifiable information, or any other material that is required to be protected by law. Therefore, at my direction, the Attorney General conducted an appropriate review to ensure that the White House could disclose it as required by law.”
The FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” counterintelligence investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign was launched in July 2016 to investigate allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including possible links between Russia and any political campaign.
The investigation was taken over in May 2017 by Robert Mueller, then special counsel and former FBI director. By April 2019, he concluded that while the Russian government was found to have interfered in the 2016 election, the investigation did not find any evidence that Trump or his campaign intentionally conspired or coordinated with the Russian government to sway the outcome of the election.
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