Judicial Watch Sues Justice Department for Withheld and Missing Records on Crossfire Hurricane/Russiagate Investigation

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for fully unredacted records and previously withheld or missing portions of former Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Crossfire Hurricane/Russiagate investigation (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:26-cv-00138)).

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Justice Department failed to respond to an August 5, 2025, FOIA request for: 

• The complete, unredacted notes taken by former CIA Director John Brennan during the August 3, 2016, White House briefing, which reportedly discussing intelligence regarding a Hillary Clinton campaign plan to link Donald Trump to Russia.
• The full, unredacted Inspection Division Report from the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General that critiques the FBI’s handling of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
• The 14 missing pages of the Durham Report appendix that have not been publicly released.
• All unredacted transcripts, summaries, or notes from interviews conducted by Special Counsel John Durham with the following individuals regarding the 2016 election and related investigations:

• • Hillary Clinton (interviewed May 2022)
  • John Brennan (interviewed August 2020)
  • Stefan Halper
  • Alexander Downer
  • Jake Sullivan (interviewed November 2021)
  • John Podesta (interviewed January 2022)
  • Robby Mook

• All unredacted records of referrals made by Special Counsel John Durham to the Department of Defense or any other federal agencies.
• All emails and communications between Fusion GPS and The New York Times, The Washington Post, or other major media outlets as well as between Fusion GPS and the Hillary Clinton campaign or the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
• All unredacted emails, memoranda, or other communications between former head of British Intelligence Sir Richard Dearlove, U.S. intelligence officials (including CIA and FBI personnel), Stefan Halper, and Christopher Steele.

In July 2016, during the presidential election campaign between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. In August 2016, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama and other senior officials on intelligence reportedly showing a Hillary Clinton campaign plan to link Trump to Russia. 

In May 2019, Durham was appointed special counsel to investigate the origins and conduct of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

In May 2023, Durham released his final report, concluding that the FBI opened a full investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence” and displayed “confirmation bias” in pursuing the investigation. The report noted problems with the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) surveillance practices, noting that unverified information from the Steele dossier was used to help justify FISA applications targeting Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The report also noted that an FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty to altering an email used in a FISA application.

In July 2025, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) made public the formerly classified Appendix (“Durham annex”) to John Durham’s 2023 Special Counsel report, which “contains previously classified information exposing a reported Clinton campaign plan to falsely tie President Donald Trump to Russia.”  

“We are fighting to get complete, unredacted records of the Durham investigation and subsequent report so that the American people can see every possible detail about the worst government corruption scandal in U.S. history,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Judicial Watch has been instrumental in uncovering much of what the public knows about Crossfire Hurricane/Russiagate, which involved a long list of Democratic political figures, lawyers, and staffers who shaped the narrative around the Trump-Russia hoax.

In November 2025, Judicial Watch provided an in-depth recap of the Crossfire Hurricane/Russiagate debacle. 

In May 2025, Judicial Watch sued the Justice Department for all records regarding the FBI, under then-Director James Comey, initiating an investigation of then-2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In October 2020, Judicial Watch uncovered heavily redacted email communications among top-level State Department officials and a U.S. ambassador expressing skepticism about reports by Christopher Steele’s London-based private intelligence firm Orbis Business Intelligence. (Steele was the author of the Clinton-funded, anti-Trump dossier.) The emails show one assistant secretary of state saying some of Steele’s reports sound “extreme” and others “do not ring true,” while the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine called some of the Steele reports “flaky.”

In May 2020, Judicial Watch forced the declassification and release of the “electronic communication” used to launch Crossfire Hurricane, written by former FBI official Peter Strzok.

In April 2020, Judicial Watch obtained emails between former FBI official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page, including an email dated January 10, 2017, in which Strzok said that the version of the dossier published by BuzzFeed was “identical” to the version given to the FBI by McCain and had “differences” from the dossier provided to the FBI by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and Mother Jones reporter David Corn. January 10, 2017, is the same day BuzzFeed published the anti-Trump dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele. The emails also show Strzok and other FBI agents mocking President Trump a few weeks before he was inaugurated. In addition, the emails revealed that Strzok communicated with then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe about the “leak investigation” tied to the Clinton Foundation (the very leak in which McCabe was later implicated).

In September 2019, Judicial Watch released State Department records revealing that Steele had an extensive and close working relationship dating back to May of 2014 with high-ranking Obama State Department officials including Jonathan Winer and Victoria Nuland.

In August 2019, Judicial Watch obtained “302” report material from 2016 FBI interviews of Associate Deputy U.S. Attorney Bruce Ohr, who was removed from his position in December 2017. (A Form 302 is used by FBI agents to memorialize interviews they undertake during an investigation.) In a November 22, 2016, interview, Ohr said that “reporting on Trump’s ties to Russia were going to the Clinton Campaign, Jon Winer at the U.S. State Department and the FBI.” In a late September 2016 interview, Ohr described a person (likely Christopher Steele) as “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President.” A report states that “Ohr knew that [Fusion GPS’s] Glen Simpson and others were talking to Victoria Nuland at the U.S. State Department.”

In July 2019, Judicial Watch obtained records revealing a September 2016 email exchange between then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer, a close associate of dossier author Christopher Steele, discussing a “face-to-face” meeting on a “Russian matter.”

In August 2018, the Justice Department admitted in a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit court filing that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held no hearings on the FISA spy warrant applications targeting Carter Page, a former Trump campaign part-time advisor who was the subject of four controversial FISA warrants.

Judicial Watch in July 2018 released records about FISA warrants targeting Page, which appeared to confirm that the FBI and DOJ misled the FISA court by withholding material information showing that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC were behind the “intelligence” used to persuade the court to approve the FISA warrants targeting the Trump team.

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