Newly declassified materials have revealed further evidence of a secret plan by the Hillary Clinton campaign to use the FBI and media to spread the false claim that Donald Trump was a Russian asset. This has led to the emergence of a narrative suggesting the Clinton campaign’s operation involved funding the Steele dossier, which was created by Fusion GPS and a former British spy, Christopher Steele, to craft a salacious account of Trump’s Russian ties. The documents expose a complex plan that leveraged the FBI’s involvement and the media’s willingness to propagate the narrative, resulting in a significant political illusion that influenced the Trump administration’s first term.
The process, outlined in the article, followed the three steps of a classic magic trick: The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige. The Pledge stage involved the initial suggestion that something extraordinary was about to occur by publicly presenting ordinary events. The Clinton campaign used this phase by funding the Steele dossier and using it to set the stage for the narrative. The Turn required government involvement to transform the situation into an elaborate Russian plot, which the Clinton team helped by feeding the dossier to the FBI, leading to an all-consuming investigation. The Prestige stage involved the magician facing the trick’s toughest part, which in this case was the public’s eventual re-election of Trump and the subsequent declassification of evidence showing foreign involvement in the scheme.
These materials show that the FBI was aware of the dossier’s flaws, as one CIA analyst noted that it ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment. However, the illusion was maintained by the public’s acceptance of the narrative. The CIA’s recent declassified material also suggests that foreign actors were involved, including the Open Society Foundations, which were hacked to reveal their awareness of the Clinton conspiracy. These foreign sources were even aware of the plan’s specifics, indicating a widespread conspiracy involving the U.S. government, the media, and foreign entities. The article concludes that the American people were the only ones taken in by the trick, but now, with the evidence coming to light, they are about to see how it was done.