WASHINGTON — FBI Director Kash Patel discovered “burn bags” filled with thousands of documents dating back to the bureau’s Trump-Russia probe during the 2016 campaign, a source familiar with the findings told The Post Wednesday.
One of the documents, discovered in a purported secret room at the FBI’s DC headquarters, is a classified annex to the 2023 report by then-special counsel John Durham that scrutinized the original probe, code-named “Crossfire Hurricane.”
The 29-page appendix to the Durham report, which has never been publicly released, includes details of the intelligence he reviewed, according to Fox News Digital, which first reported on the discovery.
In official parlance, “burn bags” refer to containers that hold classified documents that are meant to be destroyed after a certain period of time.
It was not immediately clear whether the documents found by Patel had yet to reach their destroy date or were preserved due to an oversight by officials.
The annex will be declassified and turned over to Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for eventual public release, a source confirmed to The Post.
Grassley’s office didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry about when the documents would be released.
Fox News Digital reported Tuesday that the annex includes information that foreign sources warned members of the US intelligence community that the FBI would help spread a narrative that the 2016 Trump campaign illegally colluded with the Kremlin to win the election — before the bureau launched “Crossfire Hurricane” in July 2016.
Those involved in examining the papers include Patel, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Attorney General Pam Bondi and acting National Security Agency Director William Hartman.
“I want everything to be shown,” President Trump told reporters Wednesday when asked about the news. “You know, as long as it’s fair and reasonable, I think it will be shown.”
The FBI investigation culminated in the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in March 2019, which found that there were links between the Russians and Trump, but that there was no evidence that he “conspired” with the Kremlin.
Then-Attorney General Bill Barr assigned Durham to investigate the origins of Crossfire Hurricane in October 2020, after congressional investigators discovered the FBI had lied in statements when obtaining warrants to surveil then-Trump adviser Carter Page.
Durham’s final report concluded “Crossfire Hurricane” was “seriously flawed” and had no basis in evidence.
At the time of the Mueller investigation, Patel was chief investigator for then-House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who launched an investigation into the conduct of “Crossfire Hurricane” in 2017.
Last month, Patel hinted at the discovery in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan.
“When I first got to the bureau, [I] found a room that [former FBI Director James] Comey and others hid from the world in the Hoover Building, full of documents and computer hard drives that no one had ever seen or heard of,” he said. “They [l]ocked the key and hid access and just said, ‘No one’s ever gonna find this place.’”
Earlier this month, Gabbard released evidence of what she called a “treasonous conspiracy” by Obama administration officials to undermine his successor, a claim former CIA Director John Brennan and ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called “patently false” Wednesday.
A key finding released by Gabbard is that the Obama administration was prepared to conclude that Russia played no role in influencing the 2016 election results before Comey’s FBI pulled rank.
In a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday, Brennan and Clapper insisted that Moscow did influence the election by shaping voter preferences before the voting booths — even if they didn’t change the numbers directly.
“The real politicization is the calculated distortion of intelligence by administration officials, notably Mr. Trump’s directors of national intelligence and the CIA, positions that should be apolitical,” they wrote.
“We find it deeply regrettable that the administration continues to perpetuate the fictitious narrative that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election. It should instead acknowledge that a foreign nation-state — a mortal enemy of the United States — routinely meddles in our national elections and will continue to do so unless we take appropriate bipartisan action to stop it.”
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