President Donald Trump has issued an executive order directing the FBI to immediately declassify all remaining documents related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the controversial probe that examined whether Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the presidential election.
The decision marks a significant moment in a years-long battle over transparency regarding the origins and conduct of the FBI’s investigation.
Trump has long maintained that Crossfire Hurricane was a politically motivated effort to undermine his presidency, and by ordering the full declassification of these files, he says the American public will finally see the truth.
“You probably won’t bother because you’re not going to like what you see,” Trump said, addressing the media after signing the order. “But this was total weaponization. It’s a disgrace. It should have never happened in this country. But now you’ll be able to see for yourselves. All declassified.”
The FBI officially launched Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016, as a counterintelligence probe into whether Trump campaign officials had coordinated with Russian operatives to influence the election.
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The investigation was reportedly triggered by intelligence that a Trump campaign advisor had discussed Russia’s possession of damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
However, newly declassified records show that just days before Crossfire Hurricane began, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama about a possible Clinton campaign strategy to tie Trump to Russia.
According to intelligence reports, a Clinton foreign policy advisor suggested creating a narrative that would implicate Trump in colluding with Russian operatives, potentially as a way to distract from the controversy surrounding Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State.
This revelation raises questions about whether the FBI’s investigation was genuinely justified or whether it was influenced by partisan motivations.
One of the most critical and controversial elements of the Crossfire Hurricane probe was the so-called Steele dossier.
The dossier was compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, and was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) through the law firm Perkins Coie.
It contained a series of unverified and sensational allegations, including claims that Trump had been compromised by Russian intelligence and that his campaign had conspired with the Kremlin.
Despite the lack of corroboration, the FBI relied heavily on the dossier to obtain surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). When applying for these warrants, the FBI failed to disclose that the dossier had been funded by Trump’s political opponents.
In a later investigation, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe testified that no surveillance warrant would have been sought without the information from the Steele dossier. This admission suggests that the FBI’s case was largely built on unverified claims from a partisan-funded document.
The Crossfire Hurricane probe continued even after Trump won the presidency in November 2016. In May 2017, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, citing Comey’s mishandling of both the Russia investigation and the Clinton email probe.
Days later, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to take over the investigation.
While Mueller’s probe moved forward, congressional Republicans also began examining whether the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) had acted improperly in launching Crossfire Hurricane.
One of the key figures in this investigation was Kash Patel, who served as the chief investigator for the House Intelligence Committee under Chairman Devin Nunes.
By February 2018, Patel had uncovered widespread surveillance abuses within the FBI and DOJ, particularly in how they had obtained FISA warrants against Carter Page. These findings were compiled into a now-famous memo released by Nunes, which detailed how:
The Steele dossier played a crucial role in obtaining FISA surveillance warrants. The FBI failed to disclose the dossier’s partisan origins when applying for these warrants. Senior DOJ and FBI officials, including Comey, McCabe, and Rosenstein, signed off on the applications.
While Democrats initially dismissed the memo as partisan spin, its core claims were later validated by an internal investigation conducted by the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Horowitz’s report confirmed that the FBI had committed at least 17 significant errors or omissions in its FISA applications and that the bureau misled the FISA court about the credibility of its evidence.
Robert Mueller’s investigation lasted nearly two years and cost American taxpayers millions of dollars. In April 2019, his final report concluded that there was no evidence that Trump or his campaign had conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
Despite this finding, many media outlets and Democratic lawmakers had spent years promoting the Trump-Russia collusion theory. Even after Mueller’s report debunked the claim, some continued to argue that Trump had obstructed justice by criticizing the investigation.
Trump and his allies, meanwhile, pointed to Mueller’s findings as proof that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was politically motivated from the start.
Following Mueller’s report, then-Attorney General Bill Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate the origins of Crossfire Hurricane itself. Durham spent several years examining whether FBI and DOJ officials had acted improperly in launching and conducting the probe.
In his final report, released in May 2023, Durham concluded that:
The FBI had no actual evidence to justify opening Crossfire Hurricane. The DOJ and FBI had failed to uphold their mission by pursuing the investigation despite weak evidence. The FBI ignored clear warnings that the Clinton campaign was attempting to manipulate the law enforcement process for political purposes.
Perhaps most significantly, Durham’s report revealed that Brennan had briefed Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, and other top officials about intelligence showing that the Clinton campaign planned to tie Trump to Russia. However, neither the FBI nor the DOJ took any action to reassess the validity of Crossfire Hurricane in light of this information.
Durham’s findings further bolstered Trump’s argument that the Russia investigation was politically driven.
With Trump’s executive order, the FBI is now required to declassify all remaining documents related to Crossfire Hurricane. This move is expected to provide further transparency into how the investigation was handled and whether political bias played a role in its inception.
Trump’s supporters see the declassification as a victory for accountability, arguing that the American public deserves to know the full story. However, critics argue that releasing sensitive documents could compromise national security and intelligence-gathering methods.
Regardless of political perspectives, the Crossfire Hurricane saga has left a lasting impact on American politics. It exposed deep divisions within the FBI and DOJ, led to major reforms in how surveillance warrants are obtained, and fueled ongoing debates about government overreach and political weaponization.